Movie Westerns and Real Life

As we sit here very much wanting the gallant Ukranians to win in some fashion, and yet somehow doing so in a way which will not mean nuclear war, and the end of the human race and most of the animal species, I think about how the great Westerns made mostly in the early 1950’s dealt with existential issues.

Right vs wrong, though often nuanced. Wanting to survive yet not running away. People with various motives which may at key moments subsume the common purpose. Moral redemption. Courage from those from whom you might not expect it; shifting loyalty from someone who you thought would take a moral stand. And in the best ones, someone finding a way to save as many people as possible while not giving up.

I don’t like Westerns nearly as much as film noirs, but there is certainly something compelling about the very best Westerns. Various shades of human character, issues more complex that those of the old-fashioned Westerns where you could tell the good guys from the bad guys by the color of their hat.

Two men walking toward each other on a dusty street, knowing that at most one will live–unless, like Henry Fonda’s marshal for hire in “Warlock,” he throws down his guns to Richard Widmark’s newly minted lawman, rather than kill him, because he knows it is the right thing. Or like Jimmy Stewart somehow standing up to fight the evil gunfighter Liberty Valance, and being saved from certain death by John Wayne’s heroic rancher, who gives up the woman he loves because he knows that Stewart’s decent lawyer is the future of the West, not Lee Marvin’s sociopathic Valance.

We all know “High Noon,” seen by most critics as a metaphor for the McCarthy and HUAC hearings, when so many people would not stand up to them for fear that their careers would also be ruined. We know “3:10 From Yuma,” where the protagonist proves to his wife and boy that he is not a coward. We know “Shane,” who has given up his gunfighting days, but stands up to fight for a family and town. And Gregory Peck’s “The Gunfighter,” whose reputation as the fastest gun follows him everywhere he goes, and he has to fight every young gun who is trying to make a reputation, or who thinks he has a family quarrel to settle with him.

You cannot escape your past in many of the classic Westerns. Kill somebody, even in self-defense, and somebody in his family will believe it differently, and will not be satisfied until they duel it out. Henry Fonda’s Clay Blaisedale n the aforementioned “Warlock” finds a very nice woman, but she ultimately tells him, as he prepares to leave that town and find other ones to serve as marshal in, that she could not bear to worry every day about him, the “backshooters” who will always be there trying to kill him. In another story, Grace Kelly’s Quaker woman in “High Noon” hates violence, but ultimately has to make a choice when her new husband is fighting for his life.

I am thinking of these, because last night I watched a movie which I had only seen once very recently on a movie channel, and then bought. “Garden of Evil,” directed by Henry Hathaway, the script written by perhaps the most underrated screenwriter of all time, Frank Fenton, who wrote the script of “Out of the Past.” Music by the virtually unparalleled Bernard Herrmann, doing a rare Western score. Starring Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, and Cameron Mitchell. Wonderful cinematography.

The basic story is that three gold-hunters , who are all strangers, but are going on a boat to search for gold, are forced to get off the damaged boat, and stay for a few week in a small Mexican town. In comes Susan Hayward to the bar where they are marking time, and tells them that her husband was badly injured in an accident in a mine shaft, and that she needs someone to help extricate and help him. She offers a lot of money, $2,000 each. They all decide to go, along with a gentlemanly Mexican man.

They find that the ride to her abode is almost impossible, going through the edge of a sheer cliff. They ask if there is an easier way back, and she says that she has never heard of one. When they get there, they find signs of Apaches having been there, and this appears to be their Festival of the White Moon, where the goal may be to kill as many White people as possible.

The husband has a broken leg, is angry and embittered, and thinks that his wife doesn’t care about him, she just wants someone to help get the gold out of the mine. What she is really like is not obvious, though from her facial expressions, one thinks that she is hurt by the accusations. All the men like Hayward for one reason or another, though she is not obviously encouraging it. The threat from the Apaches grows, and they realize that they have to get out of there. But the husband cannot walk after Cooper has set his broken leg.

Hayward says that if they all leave, and she stays, she will move around a lot so that the Apaches will think they are all still there. Widmark , who seems to be playing the same kind of gambler type looking for gold as he did in the fine Western “Yellow Sky,” sees her when everyone else is occupied, and says that he doesn’t believe her, she knows that the men will not let her stay by herself to be killed, and that she is manipulating them just as her husband has accused her of doing.

But she appears to mean it. The deal she wants is that they agree to take her husband, even if they have to carry him. Apparently he thinks he can ride, however. At the last moment Cooper hits her on the jaw to knock her out and take her with them. Skip down if you don’t want to see how it comes out.

In the next scene, they are out there, seeing the Apaches gathering on the hills. One of them says that they will all die. Hayward’s husband tells Mitchell, who is unhappy that he is slowing them down, that if he finds him a horse, he will take it and ride off. When Hayward finds that he has left, she is upset and saddened, but Cooper tells her that as she wanted to give him a chance, by demanding that they take him along, so he, realizing that he is slowing down any possible escape, wanted to give her a chance. This seems to make her feel somewhat better.

Some argument breaks out, and just as the hotheaded Mitchell is about to shoot someone, he is killed by an Apache arrow. As they wonder why the Apaches don’t kill all of them, Cooper suggests that maybe their goal is to kill them one by one. Later, they find Hayward’s husband nailed to a post. The Mexican has been killed by arrows in a memorable scene, as he shouts defiance at the Apaches.

The only way for the remaining three to try to survive, is to go back to that sheer cliff which gives them some cover. Cooper, who has told Widmark that he had previously been a sheriff, is able to kill a few Apaches ready to shoot them. Finally, Widmark suggests that the only course is for one of the two men to stay, and try to provide cover for the other two as they try to escape. Cooper does not want to, but Widmark talks him into it They will draw a card from Widmark’s deck, after they shuffle and cut a few times. High card “wins,” and stays.

They each draw a card, and they show them. Widmark says he wins, he will stay. Hayward realizes that he is not the “nothing” she told him he was, back at the house. She sincerely hugs and kisses him. She and Cooper ride off, until he says that he thinks that they have gotten away. They can still hear the sounds of Widmark’s rifle shooting at the Apaches. Cooper had jokingly said earlier that he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, but he apparently is surpassing that.

Cooper and Hayward are talking. He says that Widmark cheated him some way, made it come out that he would have the high card and have to stay. He says that he has to go back and tell him that, and that he was a better person than he had thought he was. Hayward says that she understands. He rides back along that frightening path (poor horses!), and he finds Widmark having been shot by an arrow. They talk. Cooper had earlier said that one always stays behind, someone who help the others get through. Widmark says that there is always someone who dies, this time it is him.

Widmark dies. Cooper prepares to ride off. As the blazing orange streaks of the setting sun are shown, Cooper is heard saying in voiceover, that if the earth were made of gold, people would be risking their lives to find dirt. It looks like the end of the movie, but the last shot, almost indistinct, shows a horse riding up to where another horse is there, waiting. Then we see the two horses, hard to make out, riding off in tandem together. From this, one can hopefully surmise that Hayward waited for Cooper to come back, and they will live a life together.

I almost always like happy endings in dramas, even noirs. Sometimes the poignant ending stays with one longer, but I still almost always root for the upbeat ending, even in the midst of sad events. So I liked this ending. And I liked the movie, not an absolute classic, but very atmospheric, very well acted, and a with a literate and sometimes poetic script which is the hallmark of Frank Fenton.

The movie took me away from the awful daily news, and the fears for the future of humanity. The story we are watching is not scripted, and there may never be a clearcut ending, which in this case, is almost certainly preferable. The same issues do arise; good and evil, honor and treachery, doing the “right” thing all the way, or pulling back to try to achieve the greater salvation.

If all the characters at a Western showdown are killed, there is still someone to tell the story, or to rebuild the town. In the real world, this is not a given. The longer view, something that many characters in these movies do not, or cannot afford to, have, is of ultimate importance, no matter how one might come out on the matter of choices and risks.

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