Ride the High Country - Film Impressions

Directed by Sam Peckinpah, 1962

I had seen this film about a week ago, but I'm re-posting my review here for posterity's sake, and so my blog feels more complete. Starting with this film; and excluding The Wild Bunch until the end, I will be watching eight films by Sam Peckinpah (two of them for the first time).

Ride the High Country, it seems to me, as a moral mosaic for Peckinpah as a film maker, and seeing it again today (I believe it is my third viewing) I’m amazed at how effortlessly and modestly he put so much of his own person into the film. It’s a film about growing old in a changing world; the world here the old west, and growing old are two of our four protaganists, Steve Judd and Gil Wetsrum (played respectively by Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott; Scott in his final and most well known role, not too long after finishing the Ranown cycle which I feel terrible about not reviewing)...two old law men who today must take on odd jobs to pay their way.

From the film’s start, Peckinpah separates these characters into seemingly simple types. Judd is a proud, sturdy old man; who doesn’t want the two old bankers (who are giving him his job) to see him pull out his reading glasses, but is nonetheless a very sharp guy who can tell a lot about a man. Gil, on the other hand, is introduced wearing fake facial fur and cheating people out of their money at a carnival game, and strikes us as none too strong a person. The other two protaganists are given similarly simple-seeming roles: Heck Longtree is the typical young rascal, eager to start a fight and prove his prowess (much to our amusement), and to strive for the affections of our fourth protaganist. She is Elsie, a rebellious young girl desperate to get away from her over-religious father (a complicated character burdening under a confused religious fervor, another Peckinpah theme) and marry her beloved in the town of Coarse Gold.

What Peckinpah does with these characters, however, is to defeat such initial reactions against them as the story develops, and so effortlessly that his icoloclastic approach can be barly noticeable. The two old men are, no matter their strengths, imbued with a distinguished frailty (and, of course, mortality)...Judd’s glasses, of course, and the moment that most struck me of all in prior viewings, Gil Westrum’s proclamation that he “don’t sleep so good anymore” (among other telling signs that our two heroes are old men, and regard themselves as such). Heck Longtree, who is Gil’s current partner, is given a surprising amount of moral depth and potential; a sense that seems to take flower (it seems to have already been in root, somehow, just never properly watered) in Judd’s presence. This results in a truly remarkable rift between he and Gil; his partner and ‘teacher’, as he begins to realize how ineffectual Gil is by comparison; not to mention ethically unsatisfactory and less compassionate by comparison (‘compassion’ towards wayward youths is something Boetticher’s films suggested, ironically with Randolph Scott as the advocate).

Elsie’s character, who tags along to Coarse Gold to marry Billy Hammond, is the catalyst of one of Peckinpah’s strongest trademarks (in addition to what becomes the film's central struggle of battle): the trashy baddies, embodied here by the Hammonds. Its all here; the baddies of Straw Dogs, Alfredo Garcia, and then even some of the good guys of The Wild Bunch and Cable Hogue, all hark back to the Hammonds, whose portrayals are among the most viscerally authentic and individually realized in the film, as well as its darkest and most entertaining figures. The entire town of Coarse Gold is a visceral kind of moral purgatory, where the younger characters get a strong taste of where their future lies if they choose the wrong path. The film giving us a good, hard look at the dregs of the west; a look which Robert Altman would surpass in McCabe and Mrs. Miller almost a decade later (also in the cold snow!), and which truly stands out for its evocative, Gomorrah-ish nastiness, considering that John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would come out the same year.

While its story may follow a predictable trajectory, its characters do not, and its in them that its heart lies. Peckinpah’s treatment of violence is also surprisingly subdued, considering it is sadly what he’s most well known for. But the heart and soul of his famous exploration of violence is here; epitomized perhaps by the slow death of one of the Hammonds’ pitiful deaths. What is then striking about the film is, amid the moral ambiguity and complexity of most of its characters (even Billy Hammond chides his older brother for trying to take on Judd and Westrum while their guard is down, indicating he has a sense of family honor that could be besmirched), is the absolute grace and moral clarity of Judd, who truly drives the film, both narratively and thematically, and could readily be called McCrea’s best performance. It’s a stunningly no-nonsense character, played to utter perfection. Thinking back, in addition to being a western, and an “old man film” in tradition of Ikiru and Wild Strawberries, the film could readily be called a morality play of sorts. Ride the High Country is so many things, and yet its so compacted within the film’s classical narrative structure; itself flawlessly and economically constructed, played and executed, that its easy to miss its depth on just the first and second viewings. I never much liked the film before this viewing, but it almost feels like a first viewing, because it suddenly just seemed to open up to me. A truly great film. On a 100 scale, I would give this film a 90.

I have the DVD from Warner Bros. in the states, with a few special features, including a commentary, and a fine but not remarkable transfer. Its available separately, or as part of a DVD boxed set with Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.