Fit or Myth

With a most impeccable cast, you would think the modern set western drama The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston (The Asphalt Jungle), would be best remembered for its acting... though sadly it’s remembered for the tragic deaths soon thereafter of its three main cast members – Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift. Written by Marilyn Monroe’s then husband (but soon to be ex) Arthur Miller (the famed playwright of “Death of a Salesman”), the Reno area set story follows the aptly named misfits, including recent divorcée Roslyn Taber (Monroe – River of No Return; The Seven Year Itch), a lonely aging man’s man of a cowboy in Gay Langland (Gable – Gone with the Wind; It Happened One Night), aged divorced landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter – Miracle on 34th Street; A Letter to Three Wives), and widowed tow truck driver Guido Delinni (Eli Wallach – The Magnificent Seven; Seven Thieves) – and they all have one thing in common... abject loneliness.

I’ve said it here on Filmizon before, and I’ll say it here once again... 1969 is arguably the best year for westerns. On top of rather avant-garde boundary pushers like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 100 Rifles, Paint Your Wagon, and others, there were also a slew of more traditional style features from the genre, including the movie reviewed here today, The Undefeated (1969) – which has often been a bit overshadowed by another John Wayne starring western that was released the same year, True Grit. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, the story is set in a rather interesting period – just as the American Civil War has come to an end. Swapping between two intersecting stories, Union Col. John Henry Thomas (Wayne – Arizona; The Quiet Man) has stepped away from his military role, taking his few remaining men west to gather some wild horses to sell before heading home

A Spaghetti Western set during the chaotic time period of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), 1967's A Bullet for the General (sometimes known by its original Italian title Quién sabe?, in English – Who Knows?), directed by Damiano Damiani, is a lesser known gem found within the subgenre best known for titles like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Django. Written by Franco Solinas – the famed Marxist political writer who a year earlier scribed The Battle of Algiers, his screenplay is filled with the tension, violent action, and the politics of this historical time period... and, to add a layer on top of a layer, this film is considered the first Zapata Western – a subgenre of the Spaghetti Western that delves into this era in Mexico, usually juxtaposing the themes of intense revolution with cold hard cash.

Long before the wilderness of Alberta awed and amazed in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 frontiersman epic The Revenant, it was widely featured in an impressive Technicolor CinemaScope picture, Otto Preminger’s 1954 western River of No Return. Shot in the beauty of Banff and Jasper National Parks (though some of the river scenes are shot at Salmon River in Idaho – where the actual story takes place), the scrumptious background is matched by the glorious foreground. . . which held two Hollywood greats – the chiseled features of Robert Mitchum and a woman whose looks need no descriptors, Marilyn Monroe (a rather intriguing historical note finds the actress causing a pile-up on the main street of Jasper while walking down the street in her tight-fitting jeans that she wears throughout most of the movie).

Before we get started today, I just wanted to write something on Ennio Morricone, the iconic composer who passed away on July 6th, 2020. With a mind-blowing 519 composing credits to his name, he was a master of music. . . scoring everything from gialli (including Dario Argento’s famed “Animal Trilogy” – the first being The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and spaghetti westerns (arguably his most famous work, the “Dollars Trilogy” with Sergio Leone) in his native Italy, to big budget Hollywood blockbusters such as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Roland Joffé’s The Mission, Barry Levinson’s Bugsy, and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (which won him his only competitive Oscar). Today’s review of For a Few Dollars More (1965) is a prime example of his craftsmanship – a dynamic combination of diegetic and non-diegetic music (the former meaning a tune being heard by both the characters in the film and the audience, the latter being heard only by the audience), the score is built around the diegetic sounds of a musical pocket watch held by two different characters, yet this is only the beginning. . . listen for his fascinating combination of chanting, whistling, different sounds, and instrumental music that lingers somewhere between its nineteenth century western setting and some yet undiscovered post-modern style of music.

Often considered the best year for westerns (which is saying something), 1969 brought forth a wide array of spectacular and dynamic films (ranging from traditional to more modern style fare) – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, The Wild Bunch, The Undefeated, Paint Your Wagon, Mackenna’s Gold, Support Your Local Sheriff!. . . the list goes on and on. Also add 100 Rifles, co-adapted and directed by Tom Gries (from the 1966 novel The Californio), to that illustrious list. Set in 1912, the narrative brings together three intersecting storylines in a rather engaging way: a beautiful young woman, Sarita (Raquel Welch), is forced to hang from her father’s legs as he is being hung (helping him die a little bit quicker); a half-Yaqui, half Alabaman robber, Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds), hides out somewhere in Mexico (after having just stolen six thousand dollars from an American bank), while an African American officer, Lyedecker (Jim Brown), is on the hunt for this slippery fellow.