the groundhog day project

We're introduced to Mattie (Kim Darby) in the original True Grit --I will also be watching the remake later--through a window. She's inside at a desk and she seems to know as much as or more than her father about the business of their ranch. She also has a short haircut that doesn't immediately suggest femininity, at least within the setting. But, True Grit brings up an interesting thing about the setting, about the genre. In an interview with The Guardian regarding the Coen Brothers' remake, Joel Coen compares the film to Alice in Wonderland ... In our minds, we never got real close to thinking about it in terms of the western. We weren't thinking: let's shoot it in widescreen like Sergio Leone. Ethan Coen interrupts. Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing... and it's definitely not opera. And it's definitely not that John Ford tragic thing. Our sensibility has nothing to do with that. Joel continues: If anything... we were thinking ...

The opening scene of Rio Bravo plays a bit like the opening of West Side Story , choreographed like there's a dance number coming. Instead, Chance (John Wayne) tells a guy he's under arrest. The Western has moved indoors over the last few films. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , 3:10 to Yuma , The Left Handed Gun ... it's remarkable how we think of Westerns as being about big, wide open spaces yet so many of them are a whole lot of dialogue until the situation explodes into violence. In a way, the more the Western stays confined to town, the more it plays like other genres, gangster films (or gang films more recently)... like West Side Story without the songs. Then again, I've argued before that all movies are basically the same. Genre is just details. Which is a weird thing to say when I'm only a week into this month of Westerns. Trying to build it up but I just can't help bringing it back down a little... How about a little Wright to set things right? (I ...

Two movies today-- The Naked Spur and Shane . Twenty minutes into The Naked Spur , I'm wondering why Wright (1975) categorizes it under the vengeance plot. Howard Kemp (Jimmy Stewart) is a bounty hunter... and he did rip off the bottom of the wanted poster where it mentioned the reward, so maybe he's got a personal stake in this. I tend to like writing during the movies for this blog, but reading about a Western that, yes, I've probably seen, but no, don't remember, can spoil what's coming. There's some interesting gender commentary going on in this film. The wanted man, Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) claims he took in Lina Patch (Janet Leigh) because her pa was his best friend. And, the old prospector Jesse Tate, asked if he ever married one of the good women he's known, says he never had to with his good looks. Thing is, the male/female opposition is like a footnote at the edge of the main story. The real story here is Ben trying to put wedge between...

Let us just get right into this. We begin with Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford. A name we'll see again soon. We also see a bit of Monument Valley right away. That will be a familiar sight in the coming days. Same with John Wayne. A seeming conflict is set up right away--Geronimo is going to be involved. And, let us set up a regular commentary from Will Wright's (1975) Sixguns & Society: A Structural Study of the Western ... For most Americans, and for a large percentage of the world's population, this scene [I deliberately leave out the specific scene Wright is describing] is familiar, though few people have actually experienced it. It does not simply present a familiar setting, it envelopes the setting in social and moral meanings which are immediately understood. (p. 4) This is our genre. Something familiar even to those who have never really seen its exemplar. The scene literally tells a story... (Let's ignore the abuse of literally .) ...for i...