By Peter Lenihan
The name of this series is half-borrowed from a very short post of screen captures I did for Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man a while back that I entitled “Rediscovering John Ford in the Twenty-First Century”. That’s the purpose of this post as well, and I hope you all forgive its somewhat digressive nature.
2010 saw the release of two superb oaters—Kelly Reichardt’s defiantly allegorical Meek’s Cutoff and the Coen brothers’ endearingly eccentric adaptation of the Charles Portis classic True Grit. I’m not interested in elevating one of these movies (or a particular style of filmmaking) at the expense of the other—they’re both great, and although more different than similar (it’s instructive that the two films are set on virtually the opposite sides of the country), they do share an awareness, if not a pre-occupation, with their cinematic forbearers, even as they supposedly distance themselves from a “classical” approach (…which they don’t, but that’s a discussion for another time). True Grit’s most obvious point of reference isn’t Henry Hathaway’s uneven, disappointing 1969 effort as much as The Night of the Hunter (which had been explicitly alluded to in several of the boys’ previous productions), but the palpable, almost omnipresent sense of giddiness has nothing to do with Laughton and everything to do with the fact that they’re working on the same terrain that Mann and Boetticher once did. As such, they’re less interested in referencing specific films (although both Ride Lonesome and The Naked Spur are at least suggested) than doing justice to a certain milieu, and their refusal to go for the easy landscape shot or the obvious “lonesome violin” soundtrack cue is an unusual, old-fashioned choice that should be celebrated.
Reichardt’s film is a bit more complex in this regard—although its scenario shares a lot with those of Wellman’s Westward the Women and Ford’s own Wagon Master, they probably aren’t the best points of reference, and even comparing it to a kinda-feminist western like Richard Pearce’s neglected Heartland paints a less-than-accurate picture. The “existentialist” (can’t believe I’m using that word) finale owes something to Hellman, certainly, and while the modesty of the plot could be compared to that director’s spaghetti China 9, Liberty 37, the bleak, ambiguous framings of an unknown desert stretching out into infinity has far more to do with the amorphous, mysterious landscapes of silent cinema. There’s nothing enigmatic about the Coens’ Arkansas; it’s rough, unpredictable country that has given birth to rough, unpredictable people, but it’s geographically and historically grounded, and the directors’ (or, more accurately, Portis’) emphasis on Greil Marcus’ oldweirdAmericaisms guarantees that for all the moral disorientation (articulated most clearly in Bridges’ magnificent “I bow out” soliloquy), the characters still know the way back to town. Meek’s Cutoff, by contrast, seems to use the word “lost” in every line of its not exactly verbose script, and we’re never completely certain that the characters are in Oregon or, for that matter, on Earth. Generally, dialogue contextualizes and familiarizes and grants a sense of realness that moves beyond the physical; by making a talking silent picture, Reichardt foregrounds the material that makes up this world, and generates an uncanny atmosphere that seems more tied to the films of Victor Sjostrom or Mauritz Stiller than the aforementioned Boettichers and Manns.
Connecting a John Ford film to Stiller or Sjostrom (& implicitly distancing it from Boetticher or Mann) might seem counterintuitive, especially when one considers Reichardt’s unambiguous rejection of macho western iconography—however, 3 Bad Men captures the sense of spectral presences wandering across an unfathomable land better than even The Wind does, and its timelessness and placelessness has more in common with Meek’s Cutoff (or The Turin Horse) than the brands of conventional genre filmmaking it’s often compared to. Reichardt is working towards the landscape Ford reached, and here the great director was able to capture the American landscape as it was even as he turned it into something alien and still unknown.
It’s like this—the three bad men of the title, unrepentant murderers and hustlers and thieves, interrupt a vicious hold-up, killing the bandits they catch and firing away at those that escape across the horizon. The spoil is a batch of thoroughbreds and Bull, the trio’s leader, turns to the only survivor and gets ready to execute him. The he turns out to be a she however, and the bad men instead decide to protect her against the vultures, of which they are proudly or not-so-proudly among. And yes, these are what they call plot mechanics—there’s a lot of them in 3 Bad Men, and they all work. So you get the sister who abandoned her family running into her brother just before she dies, and of course the villainous gangster / sheriff that everyone has every reason to kill is the man who led her to a sinning life to begin with. We know this, and these conventions are so plainly employed it almost seems like the film is begging you to view it as just another twenties oater. Which is frankly impossible.
These are shootouts at the end of the world—the dust never clears and the characters never escape their histories, or each other. I mean, this just doesn’t look like anything else. Ford always talked about watching the eyes and that was never more apparent than here; every actor has the kind of possessed quality one tends to associate with Dovzhenko, and in its most frenzied sections, which in their imagery and editing suggest a bizarre kind of active religiosity, it’s hard not to see the film as an early inspiration for the Soviet director’s Earth (also: that shot of waving grass towards the end). A priest lifts up his arms, a cross on fire burning behind him. Is this what it all comes to? Is this what we have built? There is madness here.
It’s paradoxical (and Ford is nothing if not paradoxical) that a silent made in ’26 remains one of the director’s most modern and accessible works, but so it is; these bad men ain’t his later godfathers, and there’s a searing violence to the images that transcends the (minimal) homespun sentimentalism of the domestic scenes. The film concludes with a series of shoot-outs that you’ve seen even if you haven’t—which is to say that they’ve appeared in several thousand westerns and action pictures since, but there’s still a singularity to them that kicks your ass the second you let down your guard. Ford doesn’t play it elegiac, despite the ghostly epilogue; that three hard, drunk, occasionally noble men have to die isn’t sad yet, and Ford suggests there might be relief in this. Like a great scene a bit earlier—Bull stands over his sister’s grave as thousands of men, horses and caravans move across the frame in the background. He doesn’t want to re-join that rat race, to hunt down Layne Hunter and whatever awaits him in those canyons. He goes, of course. But he’d rather just sleep.
“Connecting a John Ford film to Stiller or Sjostrom (& implicitly distancing it from Boetticher or Mann) might seem counterintuitive, especially when one considers Reichardt’s unambiguous rejection of macho western iconography—however, 3 Bad Men captures the sense of spectral presences wandering across an unfathomable land better than even The Wind does, and its timelessness and placelessness has more in common with Meek’s Cutoff (or The Turin Horse) than the brands of conventional genre filmmaking it’s often compared to. Reichardt is working towards the landscape Ford reached, and here the great director was able to capture the American landscape as it was even as he turned it into something alien and still unknown.”
Fascinating. Obviously you and I are often on drastically opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum, and your high regard of MEEK’S CUTOFF and curt dismissal of this year’s THE ARTIST illustrates this tellingly. Yet, not until today do I feel I have laid eyes on an argument that places Reichardt’s film in a palpable context with the parallel’s here to the Ford film you superlatively assess in more ways than one. My defensive side immediately kicks in when you assert that 3 BAD MEN goes further in that ‘spectral’ sense than my beloved THE WIND does, but without (lamentably) having seen this silent Ford, I am unable to dispute -nor corroborate for that matter- your claim. In the end I am even more concerned with your proclamation that 3 BAD MEN for it’s long-age release date remains modern and accessible. This is no small order for a genre and period that has been long ackonowledged for it’s dated qualities.
You mentioned Wellman’s WESTWARD THE WOMEN in your discussion of the Reichardt film. This is one from the director I have not seen to this point, but coincidentally I will be watching it at the Wellmann Festival this coming Friday at 9:10 P.M. in a double feature with TRACK OF THE CAT that will be moderated by film historian (Prof) Foster Hirsch. I will keep in mind what you said here, about this connection with the Reichardt and WAGON MASTER.
As always you have really expanded the Ford literature here today, with a piece of exceeding scholarship. I really need to sit down and watch this film again, as I originally crammed it after acquiring the DVD set, thereby given it short shrift. I remember placing it comparatively low on a Ford rundown at Dave Hicks’ GOODFELLAS site a while back.
Sam, as Ed mentions below, it’s very modern and the aspects of Ford that bother a lot of people (the sentimentality especially) is near-absent here–it would be very easy for me to imagine Maurizio, for example, watching it and loving it, and I do think that any contemporary audience that could get over the fact that it’s silent (which, honestly, isn’t that big of a hurtle) might fall for it more easily than they would even for The Searchers. & I love The Wind, it’s a great film and I don’t mean it as a slight–but 3 Bad Men is one too–definitely rewatch it soon.
Westward the Women is gorgeous but pretty obnoxious in spots–Track of the Cat is far better; whether or not it’s the masterpiece its champions claim it is, it’s certainly one of the weirdest westerns of the studio era.
Agreed Peter on both. WESTWARD, though undeniably entertaining and beautifully filmed on a great print, is often hokey. TRACK OF THE CAT is not a masterpiece, but it’s still quite impressive and one of the eeriest of genre overlappers. The print for that one was stupendous.
I just saw this film recently, Peter, and loved it – I’m starting to explore silent Ford myself, and like you I’m struck by how MODERN even some of his very earliest films can feel, which is surprising because modernity is not a trait often associated with Ford – there’s a few shots in the even earlier Bucking Broadway that I swear prefigure film noir. I like your ideas about the film taking place in an almost abstract wilderness, all wide open spaces and nothingness. It’s space just waiting to be filled, though of course that space is actually Native American land waiting to be invaded, something the film both makes much of and underplays, other than a couple of suggestive shots of Sioux people stoically watching the lines of invaders, who are anxiously awaiting the deadline when they can rush into the land.
The action scenes towards the end are especially great, and that’s where that end-of-the-world vibe really comes out, with fire and chaos everywhere, the villain glaring maniacally at the camera, and then the steady pace of the final shootouts, which are so predetermined in their outcomes that it feels like destiny. I especially love the scene in the gunpowder shack.
A great early Western, and this is a great essay as usual.
Absolutely Ed, agree one hundred percent. I didn’t mention the Native American (non)presence so thanks for pointing it out–though marginalized they still exist within the frame, which only contributes, I think, to the sense that it’s a movie about ghosts.
Fantastic writing as always, Peter. I should see this again, in the sense that merely one viewing of any Ford film can only yield so much, and this was one of my first, but as I remember it it’s my favorite Ford silent, as impeccably crafted and deeply felt as anything else I’ve seen from him in the period, and certainly a more interesting, much more Fordian picture than THE IRON HORSE, which gets the accolades today as the Big Important Silent Ford, but doesn’t hold up nearly as well (though it’s still very good of course).
I’m also really interested in how you contextualize MEEK’S CUTOFF (still my favorite thing from last year) in terms of what Ford’s doing here as opposed to WAGON MASTER, which is very much the Ford I’ve always tied to Reichardt. Three masterpieces at any rate. And no one quite filmed visions of apocalypse like some of these silent westerns; here certainly, and also in something like HELL’S HINGES, the way they captured all this fire and mania and landscape with such elemental purity provides a much stronger sense of doom then any modern attempts at such a thing have.
I will end up writing on The Iron Horse at one point, so I shouldn’t say too much, but it’s interesting; the scale of 3 Bad Men isn’t as large as that film’s but it’s still pretty massive–the rush to the mountain must have been an absolutely insane undertaking–yet it always feels very small, a very close look at a town and its inhabitants trapped at the end of the world. I remember seeing a movie poster for 3 Bad Men at one point that says “A Cast of Thousands!” which is probably true but you’d never think of it because the central drama is so focused.
Haven’t seen this one Peter. However, I do love Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff. I did find it shared plot elements and some visuals with Meek’s, however, Reichardt is far more interested in a realism aspect. I felt terrified by the predicament in Meek’s. Not so with Wagon Master, although Wagon Master and Meek’s are both masterpieces in their own right, they do separate. I didn’t care much for the Coens’ film. I will have to track down this film. Peter, have you thought of providing a list of the films that you will cover so the rest of us can try to see them before you print your essays? Just wondering 🙂
Fair enough Jon. From now I’ll post at the beginning of the piece what the following one will be on. The Quiet Man.will be discussed in the next installment.
Haha Thanks!!! Can’t wait for the next installment. One of my favorites!
I’d be interested in knowing if there are some serious parallels with this film and Ford’s later ‘3 Godfathers’ which is immediately recalled.
Yes & no–both movies are about bandits that abandon their lifestyle to protect someone, but their treatments are radically different; 3 Godfathers is practically a Christmas movie, even with its hallucinatory crossing of the desert, 3 Bad Men most certainly is not.
3 Bad Men is my favorite silent film, so I very much enjoyed reading this. It is one of the best westerns ever made, too, and should always be mentioned when they are seriously discussed. Tom Santschi’s “Bull Stanley” is simply magnetic. The film bursts with emotion, then climax is (literally) both explosive and haunting. Keep them coming.
Well, I finally caught up with this one, so I thought I’d comment.
I really liked it, and I think the emotional and character elements are clearly stronger here than in The Iron Horse. It is, as you say, clearly a more Fordian film. Nevertheless, perhaps because I saw The Iron Horse on a big screen in a theater and just watched 3 Bad Men on my laptop, I’m not sure I could say for certain that 3 Bad Men is better. The Iron Horse just as an epic sweep to it, a sense of history happening before your eyes, that’s thrilling, even if it’s characters are completely one-dimensional. And 3 Bad Men’s plot gets really complicated in the middle, in ways that aren’t all resolved by that thrilling ending (what about the map to the gold that dying guy left them?). So I’m not sure which one I’d pick.
Also, I’m not sure I completely buy your idea of 3 Bad Men as happening in a void like Meek’s Cutoff. The fact that it’s set in the Dakotas is clearly stated repeatedly, the town is named (Custer), and by the end the land is settled and people have lovely little farms with quaint fences around them. It does get weirdly apocalyptic near the climax (would the evil sheriff really have that many followers willing to burn a bunch of women alive in a church??), and the three bad men themselves are wonderful characters whose deaths and ghostly final image are certainly evocative, but ultimately, for much of the running time, it strikes me as a comedy. A comedy that suddenly becomes fearsome and fiery and ends with a classic series of last stands that has re-done a million times, but still a genuinely funny film with a pretty girl and the men who love her at the center.
But I completely agree with your analyses of both True Grit and Meek’s Cutoff, and it’s an excellent movie I’m glad I’ve seen.
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