"... represent one of the great director-star collaborations in Hollywood history. All written, with the exception of DECISION AT SUNDOWN and BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, by expert screenwriter Burt Kennedy, the films made the most of their lean production values, achieving an expressively stripped-down stylistic purity that served to heighten their psychological tension. With Scott cast in each film as a taciturn loner pitted against a memorably complex adversary, the Ranown westerns display an extraordinary thematic and stylistic coherence that mark them as the work of a true, underappreciated auteur."
That's the description of "The Ranown Westerns" at the Criterion Channel, a streaming service I highly recommend if you want a big selection of high-quality movies from the entire history of film. (Ranown is the name of the production company, a combination of the names Randolph and Brown.)
I'd clicked on the first one — "7 Men from Now" — out of mild curiosity, but we massively enjoyed it and, the next night, watched "The Tall T." It was hard to decide which was better, and I saw that both movies were rated 100% "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes. On the third night, we watched "Decision at Sundown," and there was something off about the writing, and we ended up laughing at it a lot. Perhaps only "expert screenwriter Burt Kennedy" can pull the various elements together. But "7 Men from Now" and "The Tall T" also had a great bad guy to balance Scott — Lee Marvin and Richard Boone, respectively. In "Decision at Sundown," Scott himself was a nasty guy. That could have worked....
Posts
6 comments:
lohwoman writes:
""7 Men from Now" is one of my very favorite movies. I became hooked on Randolph Scott and bought the Films of Budd Boetticher set as a result. In one of the commentaries Martin Scorsese (can't recall if he was quoting Budd or not) says "Randolph Scott was the Fred Astaire of the western."
"Also it is Richard Boone, not Robert Preston, in "The Tall T.""
I'll say:
I've fixed the name screwup. Weird. I do know the difference. This is like my decades long confusion of Ted Nugent and Todd Rundgren. They're not much alike, just first names beginning with the same letter.
"Randolph Scott was the Fred Astaire of the western."
Yes, but we need to talk about Gail Russell. From Wikipedia:
"Gail Russell was cast as the female lead due to her previous work with Wayne in Angel and the Badman and Wake of the Red Witch, in which Wayne's wife at the time accused them of having an affair (denied by both and rejected by the court during Wayne's divorce proceedings). She had not worked on a movie for nearly five years prior to Seven Men from Now, due to her struggles with stage-fright-induced alcoholism. Boetticher worked very hard to keep her from drinking during the filming."
She had a quality that afterwards I realized might be that she'd been drinking. I liked the lascivious interaction between her and the upstanding Scott. It was fun to watch "The Tall T" the next night, because in that the woman starts out unsexy but heats up. That woman is played by Maureen O'Sullivan — not to be confused with Maureen O'Hara. O'Sullivan is Mia Farrow's mother (and Tarzan's Jane).
Temujin writes:
"Thank you, thank you for the tip on the Criterion Channel. I was not aware of it and suspect I will love it.
"Also, thanks for the thought of mixing up Ted Nugent with Todd Rundgren. I can envision Todd with a hunting bow strapped on his back while he's flailing away on a Gibson Byrdland. And Ted, sitting at the piano singing 'Hello it's me'. Ahhh, no. That could never happen."
LOL.
i learned of and watched the Boetticher-Scott partnership through the writer-critic Terry Teachout, who is a big fan. He had a project like your son's, where on his artsjournal blog he listed his favorite film for each year of his life, 1956 through 2016. Sometimes two, once none.
https://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2021/05/lookback-sixty-one-years-sixty-eight-films.html
He slotted in The Tall T for 1957. (Westerns dominate his picks for the fifties.)
He is also a music critic/musician, with a fondness for classic film scores, and yesterday tweeted (pinned) his 10 favs, including 7 Men from Now by Henry Vars.
He also put me on to Peckinpah's 1962 Western, Ride the High Country, the last major starring roles for Scott and Joel McCrae.
PS I should add that my favorite Boetticher-Scott film is Ride Lonesome, with Pernell Roberts of Bonanza fame.
We watched Ride lonesome yesterday!
Post a Comment