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Figures in the desert, the stark Budd Boetticher providence. "Fancy runnin' into you in all this empty." The beautiful opening adjusts the vision to the CinemaScope rectangle, mounted rider like a spec amid boulders, descending crane followed by lateral pan and dolly-in to find the fugitive with coffee cup over a campfire. The backshootin' gunslinger (James Best) waits for the sheriff turned bounty hunter (Randolph Scott) to "catch up and have it out 'n' over," one bluff later and he's headed to Santa Cruz in handcuffs. A pit stop at the swing station introduces the widow (Karen Steele) and the outlaw (Pernell Roberts) and his comrade (James Coburn), Mescalero braves circle the junction. Roberts wants Best for the chance of a new start ("amnesty" is the Biblical word), Scott needs him as bait for the older brother who murdered his wife. Lee Van Cleef completes the composition as the killer who barely recalls his foul deed. "Way I see it, it ain't near as hard for a man if he knows why he's gonna die." Revenge answered by revenge, the tranquility of men who tell each other they're going to kill them, all delineated by Boetticher with compact delicacy. Pale expanses tend toward abstraction, warm eccentricities (i.e., Coburn's surprise and delight at being recognized as more than a dim sidekick) reveal the flesh in the sand. The cocked shotgun and the speared driver atop the runaway stagecoach, three days and nights building to the forest clearing with the gnarled hanging tree. One showdown is resolved with a few quick strokes and the other dissipates with a guffaw, up in smoke goes the past of hatred and violence. "A man needs a reason to ride this country. You got a reason?" Mann's The Naked Spur is a barbed forerunner, Hellman's The Shooting the lysergic beneficiary. Cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr.
--- Fernando F. Croce |