River Rafting

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.

When you are so in love with movies and tv series (as I am – and I’m sure many of you are as well), you can really get drawn into the idea that what you are watching is vital art and thrilling entertainment. Though that may be true, it can sometimes lead us to forget that at its core, everything we watch is actually a money making decision – which makes sense, though it can cause film lovers many frustrations. Movies shelved due to political issues, sequels canned due to underperforming box office returns, projects never getting green-lit due to their uniqueness, beloved television series being cancelled before getting their just endings. . . there are countless examples of disgruntled and frustrated fans never seeing projects they have long hoped for coming to fruition (or getting a satisfactory conclusion). Yet, every once in a while, a miracle happens. Flashback sixteen years and I was a movie and television obsessed teenager, bingeing numerous shows on DVD that have long since ended (somehow, Supernatural and The Simpsons are still there), one of which was Deadwood. A story like none seen before, it was western both traditional and modern, a cacophony of bloody good violence, foul language, entrancing historic stories and so much more. A show that opened firing on all cylinders, fans sopped up its muddy streets (and equally muddy characters), critics embraced every minute detail, and everything seemed right with the world. A few years later, all still seemed well in the world of Deadwood. . . until, out of blue, it was unceremoniously cancelled (after season three).

The narrator – the gateway into so many stories. From film noir and western, to coming of age. . . or a plethora of others, this is the voice that guides us through these movies. Sometimes we listen to a seemingly doomed main character like Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, or an author reflecting back on his youth (Richard Dreyfuss in Stand By Me), perhaps it is a more obscure Stranger like Sam Elliot’s character in The Big Lebowski, or one of my favourites – The Grim Reaper (Gabriel Byrne) overlooking the sordid happenings in Perrier’s Bounty. In any case, they can lead and mislead, critique and reflect, observe and report, infer or be all knowing. . . a wonderful vehicle to drive a narrative to its conclusion. One of the most unique premises I’ve seen in some time, editor Eric Kissack (Daddy’s Home; Veep; The Good Place) takes a turn directing the 2014 western short The Gunfighter (written by Kevin Tenglin), in what you would expect to be a pretty typical nine minute shoot `em up. . . yet it is anything but.

Reworking the spaghetti western one strand at a time, Quentin Tarantino updates the Italian sub-genre for the modern age, 2012's Django Unchained, an epic tale of lost love and hopeful reunion. . . and, of course, bloody revenge. Following a charmingly charismatic and cunning bounty hunter. . . who used to be a dentist, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) is a master planner who has a flair for the dramatic. Tracking down a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx), he needs the man to help him finger his next set of criminals (setting him free for the task). Without giving away what happens on the first bounty Django joins him on, it is the quintessential mix of Tarantino humour combined with bloody violence – a scene of utter perfection.