list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Ride the High Country on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Ride_the_High_Country/28911/default.aspx Title: Ride the High Country
Year: 1962
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Plot: Sam Peckinpah's feature film directorial debut was intended as the cinematic swan song for both Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea; while McCrea would unexpectedly emerge from retirement, this 1961 western serves as an excellent valedictory for both men. The time is the early 1900s, when the Old West was slowly and stubbornly giving way to the new. McCrea plays Steve Judd, an ex-lawman living on the fringes of poverty but maintaining his dignity and honesty. Hired to escort a gold shipment from the wide-open mining town of Coarse Gold, he engages his old pal Gil Westrum (Scott) to help him. But Gil hasn't Steve's integrity, and he and his young saddle pal Heck Longtree (Ronald Starr) hope to talk Steve into helping them steal the gold. En route to Coarse Gold, the three riders spend the night at the farm of a religious fanatic (R.G. Armstrong), whose daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley in her film debut), chafing at her father's loud piety, is planning to elope with her boyfriend Billy (James Drury). The next day, Elsa insists on joining up with the group so she can marry Billy at Coarse Gold, leading to numerous complications and, of course, a final shoot-out that allows Steve and Gil to reconcile their differences and pave the way for the film's elegiac finale. Released at the tail end of the western genre, and virtually thrown away by MGM, Ride the High Country feels like an elegy for the western itself -- and Peckinpah himself would go on to revise western conventions with such later efforts as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 1
Number of Lists: 7
Number of blog posts: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:42:11 GMTRide the High Country1962Sam Peckinpah<a href="/players/P___105940/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Sam Peckinpah</a>'s feature film directorial debut was intended as the cinematic swan song for both <a href="/players/P___110578/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Randolph Scott</a> and <a href="/players/P____47163/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Joel McCrea</a>; while McCrea would unexpectedly emerge from retirement, this 1961 western serves as an excellent valedictory for both men. The time is the early 1900s, when the Old West was slowly and stubbornly giving way to the new. McCrea plays Steve Judd, an ex-lawman living on the fringes of poverty but maintaining his dignity and honesty. Hired to escort a gold shipment from the wide-open mining town of Coarse Gold, he engages his old pal Gil Westrum (Scott) to help him. But Gil hasn't Steve's integrity, and he and his young saddle pal Heck Longtree (Ronald Starr) hope to talk Steve into helping them steal the gold. En route to Coarse Gold, the three riders spend the night at the farm of a religious fanatic (R.G. Armstrong), whose daughter Elsa (<a href="/players/P____30813/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Mariette Hartley</a> in her film debut), chafing at her father's loud piety, is planning to elope with her boyfriend Billy (<a href="/players/P____20216/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>James Drury</a>). The next day, Elsa insists on joining up with the group so she can marry Billy at Coarse Gold, leading to numerous complications and, of course, a final shoot-out that allows Steve and Gil to reconcile their differences and pave the way for the film's elegiac finale. Released at the tail end of the western genre, and virtually thrown away by MGM, Ride the High Country feels like an elegy for the western itself -- and Peckinpah himself would go on to revise western conventions with such later efforts as <a href=/films/38324/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>The Wild Bunch</a> (1969) and <a href=/films/26198/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid</a> (1973). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide1Slightly Tagged (1-5)713http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t69423n9dk5.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Ride_the_High_Country/28911/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/mbsgirl/archive/2009/12/11/44521.aspx Post By: mbsgirl
Post To: mbsgirl Blog
Post Date: 12/11/2009 9:41:17 PM
Body: This film is generally considered one of the top ten westerns of all time--right along with "Shane", "Red River" and "High Noon." When the film was released, it was considered a bomb (and an undesirable throwaway) by the film studio/company. How wrong they were--because this film has stood the test of time! The film has majesty and honor all over it. Sam Peckinpah did a magnificent job, as director, but this film is not centered on bloody violence--as his later films were. Even though I viewed this film several years ago, it still impacts me today! See it and enjoy it! Anonymous film lover
]]>Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:41:17 GMTmbsgirlmbsgirl Blog12/11/2009 9:41:17 PMThis film is generally considered one of the top ten westerns of all time--right along with "Shane", "Red River" and "High Noon." When the film was released, it was considered a bomb (and an undesirable throwaway) by the film studio/company. How wrong they were--because this film has stood the test of time! The film has majesty and honor all over it. Sam Peckinpah did a magnificent job, as director, but this film is not centered on bloody violence--as his later films were. Even though I viewed this film several years ago, it still impacts me today! See it and enjoy it! Anonymous film lover http://www.spout.com/blogs/shaunhuston/archive/2008/6/18/31390.aspx Post By: ShaunHuston
Post To: ShaunHuston filmblog
Post Date: 6/18/2008 9:01:56 PM
Body: The Western Top 10 is the toughest for me. As some of you may know, while I'm hardly Richard Slotkin or Jane Tompkins, I write, teach, and think about this genre on a regular basis, and, as a result, my views are not only fairly strong, but well-informed. And, where certain well regarded classics are concerned, they are also iconoclastic. This is probably nowhere more obvious than with The Searchers (1956), the film that tops the AFI list. This film does not resonate with me on any level. I have never found the ending credible. John Wayne does not portray Ethan Edwards with any of the complexity needed for his embrace of Debbie (Natalie Wood) to ring true after his 118 (or so) minutes of hard, racist ranting about Native Americans and his intent to kill her. I also find the photography and production design to be garish without purpose, and for all of its superficial sophistication about Native peoples, the talk of ritual, the use of indigenous language, it only serves to perpetuate the myth of white mastery. After all, it is white men who “know” and understand Native peoples, not the other way around. Native Americans are no less the brutish savages in this film than they are in Stagecoach (1939), but at least that film doesn't pretend to be anything but pulpy fantasy (indeed, it remains my favorite John Ford/John Wayne Western). And the landscape changes in The Searchers drive me crazy. Even though no one seems to actually leave Texas, the weather and land change in absurd ways during the course of the quest. Where are these people supposed to be? I fully recognize that I am a freak when it comes to this film, and as a result, I'm not going to make a pitch for taking it off of the list, although I do think that it needs to be demoted. The other film worth arguing about is one that I would knock of the AFI list, and that is Shane (1953). My biggest block with this film is Joey (Brandon de Wilde). The whining, oh the whining. Gah. I can't get past it. At the same time, I don't think that Alan Ladd makes for a convincing hero; he has too much of a “contemporary” presence. Van Heflin's Joe Starrett is virtually the same guy as Dan Evans, Heflin's character in 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and much less interesting. As menacing as Jack Palance's black hatted gunfighter is, he's also more hollow than the norm. And, yes, I understand the subtext about the Frontiersman and his lack of place in civilization, but that theme is punctuated in many a film without Shane's weaknesses. The selection of Cat Ballou (1965) still seems like some kind of a joke, but it is perhaps typical of an industry that has wanted to bury this genre for the past five decades or so. Red River (1948) made no impression on me when I saw it. Is that a reason to take it off the list? I don't know, but I would have no shortage of replacements if it is. Part of the difficulty with these lists is how the boundary is drawn around “American” film. I can see where Sergio Leone's movies with Clint Eastwood might be precluded as “American”, but, given some of the other selections on other lists, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) seems perfectly fair game to me (it was, after all, co-produced by Paramount, not to mention featuring a group of notable American actors in all of the lead male roles). Were it up to me, this film would certainly be on the list, and possibly even on top (I might just elevate High Noon, 1952, to the top spot depending on how much of a classisist I want to be). Undoubtedly, The Wild Bunch (1969) is Sam Peckinpah's magnum opus, but that's hardly a reason to make it his only film on the list. Ride the High Country (1962), for example, is an early elegiac Western that explores Western archetypes in more interesting ways than most of the films on the list from its same general period. The AFI's definition of the Western - “a genre of films set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier” - also seems to leave room for a movie like Lone Star (1996), or, and I know I'm pushing it here, Serenity (2005) (and you can scoff at this if you want, but Joss Whedon's movie re-imagines the Frontier and the supposed line between savagery and civilization in interesting and vital ways; I think that it certainly makes a more original contribution to the genre than does Shane). Two other recent Westerns for which I have a great deal of affection are The Claim (2000) and Open Range (2003). I'm not sure I'd end up placing all of the films listed above on a reconstructed list, but I do think that there is a tendency to treat the Western as a “dead” genre, killed at some point in the 1960s, with an occasional raising from the dead, and it's not so. It's also a genre with a fairly well-rehearsed canon. Placing The Searchers at the top of a list like this is much like putting Citizen Kane (1941) at the top of the AFI's ur-list: it's almost reflexive. Link to introduction. Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs
]]>Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:01:56 GMTShaunHustonShaunHuston filmblog6/18/2008 9:01:56 PMThe Western Top 10 is the toughest for me. As some of you may know, while I'm hardly Richard Slotkin or Jane Tompkins, I write, teach, and think about this genre on a regular basis, and, as a result, my views are not only fairly strong, but well-informed. And, where certain well regarded classics are concerned, they are also iconoclastic. This is probably nowhere more obvious than with The Searchers (1956), the film that tops the AFI list. This film does not resonate with me on any level. I have never found the ending credible. John Wayne does not portray Ethan Edwards with any of the complexity needed for his embrace of Debbie (Natalie Wood) to ring true after his 118 (or so) minutes of hard, racist ranting about Native Americans and his intent to kill her. I also find the photography and production design to be garish without purpose, and for all of its superficial sophistication about Native peoples, the talk of ritual, the use of indigenous language, it only serves to perpetuate the myth of white mastery. After all, it is white men who &ldquo;know&rdquo; and understand Native peoples, not the other way around. Native Americans are no less the brutish savages in this film than they are in Stagecoach (1939), but at least that film doesn't pretend to be anything but pulpy fantasy (indeed, it remains my favorite John Ford/John Wayne Western). And the landscape changes in The Searchers drive me crazy. Even though no one seems to actually leave Texas, the weather and land change in absurd ways during the course of the quest. Where are these people supposed to be? I fully recognize that I am a freak when it comes to this film, and as a result, I'm not going to make a pitch for taking it off of the list, although I do think that it needs to be demoted. The other film worth arguing about is one that I would knock of the AFI list, and that is Shane (1953). My biggest block with this film is Joey (Brandon de Wilde). The whining, oh the whining. Gah. I can't get past it. At the same time, I don't think that Alan Ladd makes for a convincing hero; he has too much of a &ldquo;contemporary&rdquo; presence. Van Heflin's Joe Starrett is virtually the same guy as Dan Evans, Heflin's character in 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and much less interesting. As menacing as Jack Palance's black hatted gunfighter is, he's also more hollow than the norm. And, yes, I understand the subtext about the Frontiersman and his lack of place in civilization, but that theme is punctuated in many a film without Shane's weaknesses. The selection of Cat Ballou (1965) still seems like some kind of a joke, but it is perhaps typical of an industry that has wanted to bury this genre for the past five decades or so. Red River (1948) made no impression on me when I saw it. Is that a reason to take it off the list? I don't know, but I would have no shortage of replacements if it is. Part of the difficulty with these lists is how the boundary is drawn around &ldquo;American&rdquo; film. I can see where Sergio Leone's movies with Clint Eastwood might be precluded as &ldquo;American&rdquo;, but, given some of the other selections on other lists, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) seems perfectly fair game to me (it was, after all, co-produced by Paramount, not to mention featuring a group of notable American actors in all of the lead male roles). Were it up to me, this film would certainly be on the list, and possibly even on top (I might just elevate High Noon, 1952, to the top spot depending on how much of a classisist I want to be). Undoubtedly, The Wild Bunch (1969) is Sam Peckinpah's magnum opus, but that's hardly a reason to make it his only film on the list. Ride the High Country (1962), for example, is an early elegiac Western that explores Western archetypes in more interesting ways than most of the films on the list from its same general period. The AFI's definition of the Western - &ldquo;a genre of films set in the American West that embodies the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier&rdquo; - also seems to leave room for a movie like Lone Star (1996), or, and I know I'm pushing it here, Serenity (2005) (and you can scoff at this if you want, but Joss Whedon's movie re-imagines the Frontier and the supposed line between savagery and civilization in interesting and vital ways; I think that it certainly makes a more original contribution to the genre than does Shane). Two other recent Westerns for which I have a great deal of affection are The Claim (2000) and Open Range (2003). I'm not sure I'd end up placing all of the films listed above on a reconstructed list, but I do think that there is a tendency to treat the Western as a &ldquo;dead&rdquo; genre, killed at some point in the 1960s, with an occasional raising from the dead, and it's not so. It's also a genre with a fairly well-rehearsed canon. Placing The Searchers at the top of a list like this is much like putting Citizen Kane (1941) at the top of the AFI's ur-list: it's almost reflexive. Link to introduction. Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/friendship/MemberTagFilms.aspxfriendship
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