Three Cheers for Mr. Sam

Wow. Ride the High Country is Peckinpah's first major film, and it's really a Western without any sort of precedent or successful imitator. It's a film about old men and dying - with enough action and sentiment to keep you hooked, but with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea keeping you convinced that this time around isn't anything special. Scott and McCrea's tales of the old West keep you plugged into the myth, even as McCrea claims that the "poor man dies with the clothes of pride on his back" and when quizzed about good and bad, right and wrong, Scott grudgingly acknowledges that "it doesn't always work that way."

Also, there's the scene where the great Randolph Scott calls some guys "redneck peckerwoods." Which is worth the price of the rental alone.

It's an early Peckinpah film, and although the spectacular, balletic violence of his later films hasn't yet kicked in, his interest in human mortality and myth fading into the absurd is already apparent. There's only a little violence, and Peckinpah's recognition of the weight of killing is there throughout the movie. In one scene, a young gunslinger surprises and shoots a badman - a hick would-be rapist who we lack sympathy for entirely. Even so, the scene is remarkable: instead of the quick death-agony of your usual villain, the guy keeps breathing - still, silent - and the young "good guy" hesitantly takes the gun from his passive, living hands. The scene is almost singular in film history - what other moments of righteous killing are so shot through with regret, resignation, and love?

I know these posts are meandering - what I mean to do - besides writing more, obviously, is put things into concrete categories. We'll do "art", "politics", "movies & TV", "music", and "sports" or something like that. Brilliant, original categories - that's what we're about here.

Back with a little on Deadwood tomorrow - I just finished Season 1 tonight.