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Hombre (1967)

The Movie

The Man with Three Names

Hombre is a movie about John Russell (Paul Newman), a white man who was kidnapped as a child and raised as an Apache, who was eventually rescued and educated among white people, but who then returned to live among the Apaches. There is also an indication that he has spent time living as a Mexican, but no emphasis is placed on that, mostly just the fact that he was a white man steeped in Apache culture. Because he has spent time among three different cultures, he has three names, one for each.

Russell Inherits a Boardinghouse

When the movie starts, he finds out that he has inherited a boardinghouse in the town of Sweetmary from “Old Man” Russell, his adoptive father.  He looks over the boardinghouse, which is run by Jessie (Diane Cilento).  She shows him the books and tells him he can make a regular income off the place without lifting a finger.  But he is not impressed.  He says he has an offer on the place for a herd of horses in Contention, and he has decided to take it.  Jessie is disappointed, for she really liked her job.

She has been sleeping with Sheriff Frank Braden (Cameron Mitchell), so she goes over to his office and tells him she no longer has a job, hoping he will marry her.  He doesn’t want to get married, however, so she decides to take the next stage leaving town and try to make her way somewhere else.

The Stagecoach Is Held Up

And so it is that she ends up on a stagecoach with Russell, who is on his way to Contention, along with a variety of characters, one of whom is Dr. Favor (Frederic March), the Indian agent at San Carlos, and his wife (Barbara Rush). Along the way, the stage is held up, and one of the passengers, Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone), turns out to be the ringleader of the bandits. We then find out that Dr. Favor has been embezzling funds by starving the Indians, and the bandits steal the money he has with him.

But things get complicated when Russell retrieves his rifle off the top of the stagecoach that the bandits did not know about.  He kills a couple of them, getting back the money, which he intends to return to the Indians that still live on the reservation.  One of the bandits he kills is Sheriff Braden, who admitted to Jessie when asked what he was doing there, “Going bad, Honey.”  No wonder he refused to marry her, if he was planning on being a part of this.

The Standoff

The rest of the movie is a struggle between the two groups of people, the bandits and the passengers.  But among the passengers, there is also a struggle between the ways of the white man and the ways of the Indian.  Russell has trouble understanding why white people persist in helping other white people, even though they don’t deserve it. He especially dislikes Mrs. Favor because she expressed contempt for the Indians, and because she was party to her husband’s embezzlement.  During the final standoff, Grimes has Mrs. Favor tied out in the hot sun with no water, saying that she will stay there until either she dies or someone brings him the money.  Russell is willing to just let her die, but Jessie is determined to save her. Russell knows Jessie will be killed if she tries to bring Grimes the money in exchange for Mrs. Favor’s release, and since he likes Jessie, there is nothing for him to do but rescue Mrs. Favor himself.  In the end, Russell kills Grimes and mortally wounds a Mexican bandit. Russell is also killed, though he did succeed in saving Mrs. Favor, which was white of him.  As a result, when the dying Mexican asks what the name was of the man that shot him, he is told the man’s name was “John Russell” rather than being given his Indian or Mexican name.

Was Mrs. Favor in on It?

Back when the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) had discussion boards for each movie, the question was posed, “Was Mrs. Favor in on it?” to which many people answered in the affirmative.  It certainly is an interpretation that makes sense of some of the peculiar things that happen in this movie. From what we can gather, Dr. Favor has been embezzling for years. For some reason, he suddenly decides to take the money and run. Perhaps he found out that the federal government was sending someone to San Carlos to do an audit, and he figured he would get out before the embezzlement was discovered. So, using the excuse that he and Mrs. Favor were going to Bisbee for a couple of days to settle some affairs, they go into town to take the stagecoach, intending to go to Mexico.

And yet, when they get to town, the heist is all set up. Not only do the bandits know that Dr. Favor has been stealing from the Indians, they also know that he has chosen just this moment to make off with the money, and that he and his wife intend to take the stage. Furthermore, because most of these bandits were from out of town, they had to know about Dr. Favor’s intention to abscond well in advance, so they could ride into the area and get things ready, which includes Grimes also getting on the stagecoach. Presumably, they had inside information. And a likely source would be Mrs. Favor. She could have been having an affair with Grimes, and during some pillow talk, told him about the money and exactly when she and her husband would be leaving.

After the robbery takes place, Grimes says to Mrs. Favor, “I figured you’d ride along with us a way.” And Mrs. Favor says, “I’d better not.”

I’d better not? That is not what an attractive woman says when she is about to be abducted by a bunch of desperadoes that, she should have every reason to fear, will gangrape her and leave her for dead in the desert. What we would expect her to do is scream and beg for mercy.

By way of contrast, consider the movie Niagara (1953). Marilyn Monroe is married to Joseph Cotten, who is very jealous and possessive. One night some young adults that are staying at the same hotel are having an outdoor party. Marilyn asks a young man to play her favorite record for her. He does, and then he asks her to dance. She looks over at her hotel room and sees her husband watching her through the window. She turns back to the young man and says, “I’d better not.”

Now, that is where that line makes sense, when a woman is worried about making her husband jealous. What would explain this is that Mrs. Favor and Grimes planned this robbery, and they agreed that she would rendezvous with him later in Mexico. This sudden change in plans worries her, for it might make her husband suspicious, especially since he has had time to wonder, as we do, just how the bandits knew so much about his plans.

Toward the end of the movie, the passengers, who are trying to make their way back to town by walking, decide to hide in an abandoned shack near a mine until nighttime.  It is located on top of a hill.  At the bottom of the hill is a smaller shack, which the bandits, with Mrs. Favor as their hostage, use as their base of operations when they discover where the passengers are hiding.  Grimes goes up the hill to try to make a deal, trading the woman for the money, but Russell rejects the offer. As Grimes tries to get back down the hill, Russell puts three slugs in him.  When Grimes collapses in the doorway of the small shack, we see the hands of Mrs. Favor dragging him inside, saving him from being shot any further. This means she cares about Grimes, confirming the theory that they were having an affair.

On the other hand, this could be an instance of the Stockholm syndrome. In fact, just prior to Grimes’ deciding to ascend the hill and try to make the deal, he asks her if she wants to send her husband a message, and she says, “Tell him I’m being well looked after,” which is characteristic: as a victim, she might be grateful that she has not been raped, thereby bonding with her captor. Furthermore, since they are alone in that scene, we would expect some kind of communication between them making it explicit that they were in cahoots, if indeed they were, but nothing of that sort is forthcoming.

At least, movie logic would require that.  Now, in real life, just because Grimes and Mrs. Favor were having an affair and had conspired against her husband, that would not mean that they would say something about it whenever they were alone.  But even though real-life logic would not require it, movie logic would, and this is, after all, a movie.

Let us further undermine the case against Mrs. Favor. A running theme through the movie is the irrational way white people, from Russell’s Apache perspective, will stick together and protect one another even after acts of betrayal. That Mrs. Favor would drag Grimes to safety would be just one more instance of this. That he would subsequently tie her up in the hot sun without water would simply underscore Russell’s belief that white people are foolish to be so trusting and forgiving of one another.

Finally, since the sheriff was also in on the job, he might, as a law-enforcement officer, have gotten wind of Dr. Favor’s treatment of the Indians, and might have also found out through someone connected to the reservation that Dr. Favor seemed awfully anxious to make that so-called trip to Bisbee.

In short, while there is a strong circumstantial case that can be made that Mrs. Favor was in on it, it is equally possible to make the case that she is innocent, at least in the sense that she did not betray her husband.

In any event, as noted above, Russell ends up in a shootout with the bandits, in which he and they are killed, leaving only the passengers still alive.  Actually, there is one more bandit, who went behind the hill to cut off their retreat, but we figure the passengers will not have any trouble with him, outnumbering him as they do.

Did Jessie Act Precipitously?

While we are thinking about what will happen after the movie has ended, allow me to suggest a subsequent scene:  About a week later, the man that was planning on buying the boardinghouse arrives in Sweetmary to find out why Russell didn’t show up to finalize the deal and take possession of that herd of horses.  And while he is there, he decides to check out the boardinghouse, asking, “Where is the woman who runs the place?  Did she quit?”

After all, there is nothing surprising about the fact that someone might inherit a business, but immediately sell it because he didn’t want to bother with it.  But you have to figure that the person who bought the business wanted to keep it as an income-producing asset.  Therefore, it makes no sense that Jessie would assume that she no longer had a job running the boardinghouse until she had a chance to talk to the man who bought the place.

The Novel

So, what with my wondering if Mrs. Favor was in cahoots with Cicero Grimes, and wondering why Jessie wouldn’t wait to see if the new owner of the boardinghouse would want to keep her on as the manager, I decided to read the novel, written by Elmore Leonard, to see if that would shed any light on the subject.

If you told me that the novel was written in the first person, I would have assumed that Jessie would be the narrator.  There are only two scenes in the movie she is not in.  The first is when Billy Lee (Peter Lazar) tells John Russell that the stage line is closing down and will no longer need horses, which Russell and a couple of fellow Indians were regularly supplying.  The second is when Russell goes to Delgado’s to talk to Mendez (Martin Balsam) about the boardinghouse, a conversation that gets interrupted when a couple of white men enter the bar and start insulting Russell’s two Indian companions. Russell bashes one of the white men in the mouth with the butt of his rifle just as the man was putting a whiskey glass to his lips.  Mendez, a resident of the boardinghouse, could have told Jessie about what happened.  On the other hand, there are several scenes with Jessie in which others in the story are not present.  She is the one that ties all the pieces of the story together.

Much to my surprise, then, I found that there is no such character as Jessie in the novel.  Needless to say, that means that the question as to why Jessie didn’t wait to talk to the new owner never comes up in the novel.  In fact, it is not even a boardinghouse that Russell inherits, but just the house his adoptive father lived in.  But even more striking is Jessie’s absence from the novel throughout.  We are used to movies eliminating characters in a novel to keep thing simple, but here is a case where the novel seems empty and flat without a character that exists only in the movie.  She is the one that makes this movie so much fun to watch, especially the way she is wont to make brutally frank comments about sex.

Also, I cannot help but mention that while the John Russell of the movie is a man with a ready wit, Apache style, of course, the novel is excessive in depicting Russell as the strong, silent type, practically making him a zombie.  In criticizing the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain said that Cooper violated most of the rules of romantic fiction.  One of those rules is the following:

 … the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

It is a detail that seems to have been overlooked by Elmore Leonard as well. Interestingly enough, the Natty Bumppo of the Leatherstocking Tales is a white man raised by the Indians just as John Russell was in this novel. Perhaps Leonard was guided by Cooper in creating the character of John Russell.  Now, I know that the old movies never represented Indians as being loquacious, but I always figured that was because their English was limited.  Hence, the stereotypical Indian who merely says, “Ugh!” But it seems that Cooper and Leonard both regard Indians as inherently laconic.

In any event, Russell and Jessie are not the only ones that made the movie better than the novel in this regard.  Billy Lee and his wife Doris (Margaret Blye), who have a miserable marriage, add to the fun, especially when Doris becomes infatuated with Grimes.  She flirts with him, saying she likes to see a man act like a man, and Grimes obliges by roughing her up sexually in the dirt.

Billy Lee of the movie sort of corresponds to Carl Allen of the novel, who is the narrator, but he is unmarried.  And instead of Doris, there is what Carl refers to as the McLaren girl, who had been kidnapped by some Indians.  They kept her prisoner for over a month, during which time Carl figures she had been repeatedly raped, but we never find out for sure.  Replacing Carl and the McLaren girl with Billy Lee and Doris was a good move on the part of the scriptwriters.

We are also used to movies changing the names of characters in a book for seemingly no good reason, but this movie goes one step further.  It turns out that the Cicero Grimes character in the novel goes by the name of “Frank Braden,” the name of the sheriff in the movie.  In what follows, the name “Frank Braden” will be understood to refer to the same character as Cicero Grimes in the movie, not the sheriff in the movie.

Anyway, at first I thought the novel would support the idea that Mrs. Favor and Frank Braden had been having an affair.  Carl describes a scene on the coach:

Frank Braden had eased lower in the seat and his head was very close to Mrs. Favor’s.  He said something to her, a low murmur.  She laughed, not out loud, almost to herself, but you could hear it. Her head moved to his and she said one word or maybe a couple.  Their faces were close together for a long time, maybe even touching, and yet her husband was right there.  Figure that one out.

And after the holdup, when Braden tells Mrs. Favor she is going to have to come with him, she makes the same odd remark:

Braden brought the horse over to her and said, “I thought you’d come along with us a ways,” sounding nice about it.

And just as nice, she said, “I’d better not,” as if they were discussing it and she had a choice.

But even so, the theory falls apart.  Lamarr Dean, the guy that got the whiskey glass smashed into his mouth, used to work for the man that delivered beef to Dr. Favor, and that was how he knew that Favor was claiming more beef was delivered than actually was, and then charging the government to get “reimbursed.”  Regarding Favor’s attempt to take the money he had embezzled and head for Mexico, Dean says, “I’ve seen this coming for two, three months.”

After Dean describes how Dr. Favor was cheating the government, Mrs. Favor says she recognizes Dean, but not Braden.  Dean replies, “No, Frank wasn’t anywhere near.  He was still in Yuma then.” So, Braden and Mrs. Favor could not have been having an affair.

And that might seem like the end of it.  We could just assume that the authors of the screenplay left out Dean’s remarks about how he was the one who figured out that Favor had been embezzling a lot of money and would try to leave with it soon, and that Braden had been in Yuma, presumably meaning the prison there.  In the movie, Dean does make reference to the way Dr. Favor cheated and starved the Indians, but it is not clear how he knows that, or if he is the ultimate source of that information.

But as if to prove that I have spent more time thinking about this than is good for me, it then occurred to me, upon finishing the novel, that these omissions in the movie were no mere oversight, but the result of a deliberate attempt to make us wonder if Mrs. Favor was in on it.  Dean’s explanation of how he knew what Favor was up to, along with the remark that Braden had been in Yuma, would have added only about two minutes to the length of the movie, not a sufficient reason for leaving it out.  One might justifiably conclude that the scriptwriters wanted to create the suspicion that Mrs. Favor betrayed her husband, only to be betrayed in turn by Grimes, the man she loved and trusted.

While that is debatable, there is no question but that the scriptwriters did the right thing by creating Jessie for this movie, even if they did leave us wondering why she didn’t stick around to talk to the new owner to see if she still had a job.

The Arrogance of Atheism

It was in my sophomore year in college, in the late 1960s, when I quit believing in God.  So, the next semester, when I was filling out the usual form for something or other, I came across the question asking for my religious preference, and I put in the word “Atheist.”  I happened to mention this to a friend of mine, and he cautioned me against it.  “John,” he said, “the whole point of a college education is to turn you into an atheist.  If you let them know you already are one, they will immediately give you a degree, and you will have to go out and get a job.”

I didn’t take that seriously, of course.  But a few days later, my father happened to see the form, which I had left on my desk for the time being.  He was appalled.  First he cautioned me against the imprudence of such action, for it might incur the hostility of some dean or professor at the university who saw the form.  Then, a few days later, he brought the subject up again, and tried to make me feel bad, pointing out that I would only be hurting those whose simple faith helped them endure a cruel world.  Finally, he went for the jugular.  “Girls have to believe that sex is God’s way of bringing love into the world,” he said gravely.  “If they find out you are an atheist, you’ll never get any.”

That last one did give me pause.  In the years to come, I would learn that it was no good pretending to be religious for sexual purposes.  (I once even went so far as accepting an invitation from a girl to go to church with her one Sunday.  I thought maybe I could fake it just long enough to get laid.  God punished me.)  At the time, however, I figured no coed would see the form, and I could always decide about what to tell the girls later.  So I handed it in unchanged.

You see, I have to confess that I had taken no small amount of pleasure in writing down the word “Atheist” in that blank.  This was back in the day when atheism was not the commonplace it is now.  Today, if you go into a bookstore, you are likely to find an entire shelf or two full of books about atheism.  Such did not exist 45 years ago.  First you had to find out that certain philosophers were atheists, such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Marx, and then you had to search out their writings, for the titles typically gave nothing away.  And if atheists were rare on the bookshelf, they were practically non-existent on campus.  In fact, I was the only one I knew personally who did not believe in God.  To have labored under an oppressive system of beliefs for almost twenty years, and then to have thrown off that burden and freed myself from it was exhilarating.  But in addition to that, I had done something that most people had not, nor ever would, and much as it pains me to admit it, I felt a little smug about the whole thing.

My sense of pride in this matter was only enhanced by the reaction of others. “There’s no such thing!” one girl said to me, when I mentioned that I was an atheist.  In other words, what I had accomplished in getting rid of God was not merely rare—it was impossible.  She was disgusted with my iconoclastic audacity, so I gave up on the idea of asking her out; but she had so stroked my vanity in refusing to believe that I did not believe, that I felt more than compensated by whatever I might have lost in the way of carnal desire.

It was not long, as you might imagine, before I heard the old saw that there are no atheists in foxholes.  Of course, if there really were an all-powerful, loving God, there wouldn’t be any foxholes.  But that aside, the truly ironic aspect of this remark is that it conforms to the atheist’s explanation for the existence of religion, which is that fear of death is a major reason people believe in God. But the point of the no-atheists-in-foxholes assertion is not to prove that there is a God, but to deny that the there is anything exceptional about the atheist.  It is not that the atheist is strong enough to get through life without God, the reasoning goes, but rather that his contempt for religion is a temporary condition, predicated on having a comfortable life, at a time when death is remote.  As reflected in such movies as San Francisco (1936) or The Spiral Road (1962), the foxhole theory presumes that when the atheist finally comes up against suffering or death, he will be brought to his knees just like everyone else.  To be regarded with such horror that one’s professed disbelief in God is rejected out of hand as just so much bluff and bluster cannot help but make one feel like some kind of Nietzschean superman.

There can be no doubt that some atheists are arrogant to the point of being obnoxious.  They give full vent to their contumely, never missing an opportunity to sneer at the silly superstitions of mankind.  But there is an inescapable arrogance in being an atheist that cannot be avoided no matter how polite or considerate one tries to be.  In asserting one’s atheism, one explicitly denies the existence of God, but implicitly asserts one’s superiority, in effect saying, “You need religion as a crutch, while I have the strength to face life standing on my own two feet.”  The atheist gives offense whether he wants to or not, and it is small wonder that it is a common religious fantasy that he will crawl in the end.

Consider the case of Rebecca Vitsmun, a survivor of the deadly tornado that went through Moore, Oklahoma a couple of years ago.  She tried to avoid affirming her atheism, looking down shyly, and saying, “Uh huh,” when Wolf Blitzer asked her if she thanked the Lord.  Only after being pressed, and in spite of herself, did she finally admit to being an atheist.  The reason for her reluctance is simple.  She did not want to make him or anyone else feel bad. It is to be noted that his belief in God did not offend her, but only embarrassed her.  And this is a fundamental asymmetry between belief and disbelief:  no one ever denied believing in God for fear of hurting the feelings of an atheist, but many an atheist has concealed his views on the matter, lest he make others feel uncomfortable by expressing them.  And this only adds to the atheist’s conceit:  when you have to lie about who you are to keep from hurting people, it is hard not to regard them as inferior.

Lately, however, there has been a disturbing trend.  Atheists have started to organize.  This reminds me of something else from my college days.  Those who did not join a fraternity or any other campus organization were called independents.  But then there was an organization for independents, which seemed a little paradoxical.  In a similar manner, there is something so individualistic about being an atheist that the idea of forming a group seems to go against the grain.

That aside, if it were just a matter of atheists seeking out like-minded people for social purposes, there would be no cause for alarm, even if I would not be inclined to join such a group myself.  What does concern me, however, is the way atheists as a group are in danger of becoming thought of as a minority, as a group that suffers discrimination.  At the present, this trend seems to be only in its infancy.  We have hardly reached the point where anyone is talking about affirmative action for atheists.  But the trend is there nevertheless, and I want to nip it in the bud.

Let us consider, for example, some recent remarks made by Joe Klein regarding his observation that there were no organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals in the wake of that disaster in Oklahoma. One diary on Daily Kos points out that Klein was mistaken, and that his oversight was the result of his prejudice that religious people are more caring than atheists. That much is fine, but there is in addition an expression of indignation, along with the suggestion that Klein should apologize.

Think of the implications.  Joe Klein has hurt our feelings.  We have been offended, and need an apology.  No, I won’t have it.  Remarks like those made by Klein are unworthy of my notice. I enjoy being disdainful of the opinions that people of have of atheism, and I will not ruin it by putting on a pout and sulking because someone has not given us atheists the respect we deserve.

Then there is the matter of chaplains for atheists in the military.  Part of the fun of listening to someone say that there are no atheists in foxholes is the smirk I have on my face when he says it.  But if he also brings up the fact that atheists want chaplains of their own in the military, it will completely put me out of my countenance.  As someone who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War, and therefore has never seen combat, I suppose it is not my place to begrudge those in the military a little spiritual counseling, if that is what they need.  But I cannot help but deplore the way this wounds my pride, nevertheless.

Finally, there is a recent article advocating changing the name of the National Atheist Party to the Secular Party of America.  The reason for making this change is that the word “atheist” has too many negative connotations, and that a term that is “richer and more positive” is what is needed, in order to be more inclusive.  Groan.  When I was a child, I learned that there were derogatory words that were used to refer to certain groups of people, and that I should avoid such slurs, and use polite words instead.  But as I got older, the polite words somehow became quasi-slurs themselves, and we were admonished not to use them as well, while new terms were then deemed appropriate.  It all seemed a little silly to me, but since I am nothing if not magnanimous, I went along with it in good humor.  “If that’s what makes them happy,” I said to myself, “then I suppose it won’t kill me to change the way I speak.”  But I confess that I was just a little bit contemptuous of all this need for political correctness.  And thus it is that I now cringe at the idea of atheists trying to avoid the very word that I was once so proud to write down on that form when I was in college.  The next thing you know, we will be asking religious people to tiptoe around us, never saying the A-word, because we regard it as demeaning.  If that day ever arrives, I will be embarrassed to admit that I am an atheist (or whatever politically correct term is then being used in its place).

One of the pleasures of atheism is the arrogance that naturally comes with it. Let’s not spoil it with a lot of whining about how we just aren’t being treated right.

The Godless Girl (1929)

In The Godless Girl, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Judy (Lina Basquette) and Bob (Tom Keene) are high school students. Judy is a militant atheist, who holds atheist rallies, accompanied by a monkey as a prop, whom she refers to as our cousin. Bob is a Christian fundamentalist who leads a bunch of like-minded Christians on a raid on one of those meetings. A mêlée breaks out, during which a girl accidentally dies. Bob and Judy are sent to a reform school. After enduring much brutality, they escape and fall in love. While bathing in a river, Judy admires the beauty of nature, made no less beautiful by a naked Judy, and she thinks how she might almost believe in a God who created it. Bob, on the other hand, recalling all horrors of the reform school, says there is no way he can believe in a God who would allow such things to happen.

So far there is balance between the two. But notwithstanding the fact that this is a pre-Code movie, I knew that it would be required that Judy pray to God before the movie was over. I thought of San Francisco (1936) and The Spiral Road (1962), where the atheists in those two movies end up getting on their knees and humbling themselves before God, and so I braced myself for the inevitable.

They are captured and returned to the reform school. Bob is handcuffed to the bench in his cell, but Judy is handcuffed to a pipe above her head, forcing her to stand with her arm extended upward. Within the movie, the difference between the way Bob and Judy are handcuffed seems to be just a matter of chance. But from outside the movie, it just did not make sense, since handcuffed like that she would not be able to use the bucket, but would have to foul her pants when she needed to defecate. Actually, having handcuffs on prisoners while locked in their cells does not make much sense anyway. I suspected there was a reason this was put in the movie, but I could not figure out what. Soon all was revealed. A fire breaks out in the reform school, and Judy is forgotten about as the flames close in around her. In desperation, she prays. It is a conditional kind of prayer, not exactly expressing full belief, but more importantly, because of the way she is handcuffed, she cannot kneel. She thus retains her dignity, literally standing tall, and thus figuratively as well.

After Judy is saved by Bob, they rescue the brutal guard, whose dying wish is that they be pardoned, and so they are. As they ride away from the prison, Bob curses the foul place, but Judy says that it was where they learned to believe and let believe. It is not clear exactly what each believes at this point, but they will clearly tolerate each other’s views, whatever they may be. More importantly, because we were not treated to a vulgar display of humiliation and self-abasement on the part of Judy, this is a movie an atheist can enjoy, regardless of what Judy may or may not believe in the end.

The Fastest Gun Alive (1956)

What makes The Fastest Gun Alive so unusual is not only that it has a twist ending, but also that the twist ending so thwarts our expectations that a lot of people do not remember it years later, but only recall the ending they were expecting.

By the time this movie was made, the Western formula of the gunfighter with a guilty past who wants to hang up his gun was well established, as in Shane (1953) and Johnny Guitar (1954).  In some of these Westerns, as in The Gunfighter (1950), the point is made that once a man has a reputation for being fast on the draw, he will be plagued by young punks trying to goad him into a fight so that they can prove they are faster, thereby establishing a reputation of their own.

And so it is that early in The Fastest Gun Alive, we are encouraged to fit George (Glenn Ford) into that category.  We see him practicing with his gun, which he has told his wife, Dora (Jeanne Crain), that he threw away a long time ago.  We believe that she does not like violence and killing, and she has made George promise to give up his gunslinging ways.  This recalls the way Peggy (Helen Westcott) in The Gunfighter left her husband, Jimmy Ringo (Gregory Peck), because she abhorred his life as a gunfighter. In other towns where George and Dora have lived, his reputation of being fast with a gun has resulted in his continually being challenged to a gunfight, just as with Ringo.  And just as Ringo promises his wife that he is through with gunfighting, and that they can start a new life in California where nobody will know who he is, George and Dora have started a new life in Cross Creek under assumed names.

Unfortunately, there is no glory in being a shopkeeper, and so every time George and Dora settle down in a new town, there eventually comes a time when he just can’t stand it any more, and ends up proving to everybody what a hotshot he is with a gun.  And once the word is out, he and Dora have to move again.  And thus it is that in Cross Creek, George once again finds himself irked one day when he hears a bunch of men in the saloon talking about men like Vinnie Harold (Broderick Crawford), reputed to be the fastest gun in the West.  George gets his gun and puts on a show, shooting coins out of the air and blasting a mug of beer before it hits the ground.

Now everybody knows.  And now Dora is disgusted.  She tells George that she is all through running.  George tells the townsfolk his problem, and they go along with keeping his expertise with a gun secret, but unfortunately a few letters have already gone out, and word has reached Vinnie, who arrives in town, threatening to burn it all down if George does not come out of the church to meet him in a gunfight.  The townsfolk turn to Dora, begging her to release George from his promise to her not to get into any more gunfights.

And then comes the twist no one expects and which many cannot even remember.  Dora tells them that she doesn’t care if George gets into a gunfight and she never has.  She says he has always been free to use his guns.  The problem is, George is a coward.  He has never been in a gunfight, and so every time men come around challenging him to a fight, he wants to run away and hide out in a new town.  And she is just tired of having to move.

So, George straps on his gun, kills Vinnie in a gunfight, and then the town digs a mock grave with a tombstone that has George’s name on it.  That way, George can stay in Cross Creek without having to worry about men coming around trying to prove themselves by challenging him to a gunfight, and at the same time, he can strut around town like a real man, because everyone knows he is the fastest gun alive.

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932)

In the opening scene of The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, the title character (Ann Dvorak) is crying because she is pregnant. Her rich boyfriend promises to marry her, but he quickly deserts her by leaving town.  There is, however, a nice guy who would be happy to marry her.  This is Jimmy (Richard Cromwell), a clean-cut medical student who is working his way through school as a bellhop. Jimmy loves Molly, but she rejects him. She is attracted to a gangster, Nicky (Leslie Fenton) and runs off with him instead, getting involved in a few of his crimes, and handing her daughter over to an orphanage. When she runs into Jimmy a few years later, he still loves her and wants to marry her and be a father to her daughter. At first she agrees to marry him, but she actually desires Scotty (Lee Tracy), a hardboiled reporter who promises only that he will show her a good time for a while and then dump her. She likes the idea. In fact, this makes her realize why her own mother abandoned her when she was a child, because when a woman really wants a man, nothing else matters, not even her own child. Jimmy walks in while they are kissing, and she tells him she has decided to run off with Scotty instead.

In the last reel, Scotty has a change of heart, promises to help her fight the charges against her for her involvement with Nicky, and then marry her. That a movie should feature a fallen woman who would reject the love of a good man like Jimmy (twice) and knowingly choose men who are scoundrels instead is amazing enough. That she should end up living happily ever after by doing so is a story that could exist only in the pre-Code universe. Or in real life.

Missing in Action (1984)

A long time ago, I saw an essay in a book of film criticism entitled, “How Hollywood Won the War in Vietnam.” I started to buy the book, but to my regret I did not, and so I never got to read the essay. However, I think I am safe in saying that Missing in Action was one of the movies the essay would have discussed, along with Rambo:  First Blood Part II (1985).

People who worry about words will quibble as to whether we “lost” the Vietnam War. Well, we did not lose it in the sense that we were not conquered by the Viet Cong, but we lost in the sense that we failed in our mission, that we gave up, pulled out, and let the Viet Cong take control of the entire country. And that made us feel bad.

But it is Hollywood’s job to create a better world than the one we actually have to live in. Now, Hollywood could not make a movie showing us conquering the Viet Cong and making the country safe for democracy, because the direct contradiction to reality would have been too stark. Instead, it made a movie in which an individual soldier, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris), along with a few associates, goes back to Vietnam and succeeds in freeing some American soldiers still being held in a prisoner-of-war camp.

The Vietnamese government categorically denies having these prisoners, but to what end is a mystery. We simply have to assume that they just enjoy making these American prisoners of war miserable, or that they know that we know they have the prisoners, and that they just enjoy frustrating American efforts to get them back. In either event, they are mean and spiteful.

But what is important is that they give Braddock a mission that he can carry out. The first part of Braddock’s mission is to appear at a diplomatic function and display his contempt, as when he refuses to shake hands with a Vietnamese general. This ostensibly is directed toward the general, but it is really a put-down of American politicians who think that diplomacy is the way to get things done.

The second part of his mission is to personally kill the general and a high-ranking officer who is shown through a flashback to be cruel and evil. This allows him some personal revenge before he sets out to kill a bunch of generic bad guys.

The third part of his mission is to sneak into the jungle and free the American prisoners. Braddock and his few associates kill over ten times their number in doing so, proving that the American soldier is a vastly superior to his Vietnamese counterpart. You see, it was embarrassing that the world’s greatest superpower was unable to defeat such a puny country. This movie essentially declares that it must have been a bunch of spineless politicians back home that caused America to lose the war, probably the same sort that are busy being polite at diplomatic functions, because it is clear that men like Braddock would have won the war given the chance to do so.

This movie allows us some imaginary revenge against an enemy that humiliated us, and that makes us feel good. Of course, we would have felt a whole lot better if the movie had actually been entertaining instead of dull and plodding.

Penny Serenade (1941) and The Marrying Kind (1952)

At the beginning of Penny Serenade, Julie (Irene Dunne) and Roger (Cary Grant) are separating because their marriage is on the rocks.  Roger leaves to do something, and while Julie is by herself, she plays a succession of records associated with different stages of her relationship with Roger. With the playing of each record, the tune becomes the background music of a flashback at important stages in their lives, beginning with when they first met. But the flashbacks show us what a great marriage they have, so we figure something really bad must have happened to cause these two to separate. After an accident, Julie is no longer able to have children, so they adopt a girl. At first I thought that somehow Roger was going to be responsible for her death, perhaps by accidentally running over her when she runs out into the street. She does die, but it is clearly not anyone’s fault, not even accidentally so. Furthermore, her death is not even seen, but only mentioned in a letter, followed by scenes of Roger and Julie being silent and sad. We never really believe that they are going to get divorced, and they don’t.

The plot of this movie is similar to The Marrying Kind, where another couple, Florie (Judy Holliday) and Chet (Aldo Ray) are about to get a divorce. Instead of records playing tunes from the past, the divorce judge, who can see that they have a good marriage, questions them, and their story is told in flashbacks, revealing what a good marriage they have, making us wonder when we are going to get to the part that made them so miserable. Once again, we find that a child died, this time by drowning; once again it is an accident for which neither of them can be thought to be responsible; and once again we can see that this is something that they will eventually get over.  Sure enough, in the end they do not get the divorce.

The moral of these stories is that people who are in an unhappy marriage should stay together and work things out. There is something irritating about the way both movies are dismissive of just how miserable a marriage can be, as if married couples who want a divorce simply don’t realize how much they really love each other.

The Creation of the Humanoids (1962)

I recently watched Ex Machina (2014) and Westworld(2016- ), and I have just started watching Humans (2015- ). Though these movies or television shows all qualify as science fiction, yet they do not seem as far-fetched as robot movies used to.  We are beginning to take seriously the rise of the robots and the implication that will have on humans. We are wondering if they are conscious or soon will be, if they are or soon will be persons rather than things.  And if they supplant us, whether that will be a tragedy or a blessing.

There are basically two types of robot movies:  mechanical men and humanoids. Actually, the term “humanoid” is sometimes used to include mechanical men as well, but I am using it here to refer to robots that look like humans.  So understood, humanoid movies have the advantage of allowing actors to play the parts just as they are.  In the case of mechanical men, it is often the case that an actor has to wear a metal and plastic getup.  It really does not matter, because many of the questions concerning robots and their implication for the human race remain the same, their appearance being of secondary importance. Sometimes the mechanical men are just servants or workers, but when they pose a threat, it tends to be physical; the threat of the humanoids typically constitutes an existential one.  There are exceptions to this, however.

Humanoid movies have a couple of extra features that mechanical men movies do not.  First, if they are humanoid, there is the possibility of having sex with them, although I suppose there may be a few out there kinky enough to want to have sex with a mechanical man or woman, assuming it makes sense to apply the concept of gender to them.  Sex with humanoids has all sorts of advantages: sex when you want it, the way you want it; you don’t have to shave first; you don’t have to worry about your performance; your humanoid won’t cheat on you and bring home an STD; and there will probably be an off-switch right there on your remote.  At least, that’s the way it will be until we start thinking of them as persons.  Then the questions of miscegenation and sex slavery will arise. And then you will have to shave first.

Second, with humanoid movies, there is the question of identity.  Who is a humanoid and who is a real human?  This can lead to paranoia, not unlike the fear of communists in our midst back in the day.  And even if we know who is what, the possibility of a kind of racism will emerge, one that might well be justified.

In any event, all this made me think of The Creation of the Humanoids, a cheesy science fiction movie made in 1962.  You almost get the impression that some friends got into a discussion one night about what was going to happen in the future when robots became advanced, and when the evening was over, they decided to put it into a movie. And because they wanted to get it all in, The Creation of the Humanoids ended up being 98% dialogue and 2% action. In one scene after another, characters speak didactically, informing us of the different types of robots, in what ways they are or are not like humans; the effect that robots are having on humans now that they are doing everything humans use to do only better; the relationships between humans and robots; and whether robots will eventually replace humans altogether. The end result is a low-budget movie with crude special effects that plods along from one dialogue scene to another, with the only redeeming feature being that some interesting ideas about the future of robots are discussed, ideas that are beginning to seem more relevant than ever.

In this movie, there is an organization called Flesh and Blood that is prejudiced against robots, derisively referring to them as clickers, with obvious similarities to the Ku Klux Klan. The main character, Kenneth Cragis, who calls himself “the Cragis” for some reason, is a high-ranking member of Flesh and Blood. He doesn’t hate the robots exactly, but he sure doesn’t want his sister to marry one. As a result, he is appalled to find out that his sister is “in rapport” with one of them, and you can guess what that means. When he went to confront her, I almost expected him to call her a clicker lover.

The robots are secretly trying to develop more advanced models, which are electronic duplicates of humans that have recently died, with all their memories implanted in them. They do this not because they are evil, but because they have been programmed to serve man, and they know what is best for man, even if the law actually forbids the development of robots beyond a certain level. These advanced models think they are human, except at special times, when they realize they are robots and report back to the robot temple.

Cragis falls in love with Maxine Megan, and they plan to enter into a contract, which is what they call marriage in the future. But then the special moment arrives, and they are taken to the temple, where they find out that they are robots. Cragis realizes that he has all the advantages of being human, with the robotic advantage of living for two hundred years, after which he can be replaced with another duplicate that will have all his memories. It is almost as if, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Becky and Miles found out that they had already been replaced by a couple of pods, only the pods were an improved variety that also duplicated emotions, making them just like humans, only better, because, being plants, they can live longer.

As for Maxine, when they duplicated her, the robots decided that she was getting a little fat, so they slimmed her down in the duplication process, which is just one more way in which Cragis benefits from this robotic duplication process. In any event, they are duplicates of humans in every way, except for being able to reproduce and have children. Now, I can’t speak for Cragis, but I would call that a benefit. However, Maxine says she wants the fulfillment of having a baby. Dr. Raven, the scientist who is behind these duplications, says he thinks that form of producing new robots is a bit crude, but he agrees to take her and Cragis to the last phase of duplication, which will allow her to get pregnant.

In the final shot, Dr. Raven turns to the camera and suggests that as a result of having taken robots to this final stage, we in the audience are robots too.

Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

In the early 1940s, Alfred Hitchcock made two movies in with a common theme:  appearances can be deceiving.  The first one, Saboteur, is preposterous; the second, Shadow of a Doubt, is disturbing.

In Saboteur, Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd) sabotages the aircraft plant where he is working, but the police think Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) did it.  And so, Barry has to flee from the police in order to find Fry so he can clear himself.  Along the way, he has to kidnap Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane) because she thinks he is the saboteur and would otherwise go to the police.

“You look like a saboteur,” Pat says to Barry accusatively.  Inasmuch as Barry is played by Robert Cummings, what are we to make of this remark?

First of all, there is reality. We all know that as a general rule, saboteurs do not have a distinctive look. Now, inasmuch as World War II had just broken out, I suppose that if Barry had been Japanese or German, her remark would have been appropriate. Of course, today we would call that racial profiling, but since this movie was made in 1942, she could have gotten away with it. But Barry does not appear to be either German or Japanese.  (No, I didn’t forget about the Italians, who were also one of the Axis Powers.  But as I noted in a previous review, even in World War II, Hollywood always portrayed Italians as good guys, or as gangsters who were patriotic about America.)

Second, there is type casting. A movie producer might call up an agent and say, “We’re making a spy movie. Do you have anyone who looks like a saboteur? If so, send him over for an interview.” And then the agent might send over someone like Norman Lloyd. But he would not send over Robert Cummings.

Because neither reality nor typecasting would make anyone say of Robert Cummings that he looks like a saboteur, it is odd that Pat would think that he does.  Furthermore, she has a very good reason for thinking he is a saboteur, which has nothing to do with his looks. When she first met him, she saw that he was wearing handcuffs, and she realized that he was the fugitive the police were looking for.

Actually, it is precisely because Barry does not look like a saboteur that he is able to avoid the police. Earlier in the movie, Barry is arrested.  After he gets out of the police car, he jumps from the bridge into the river below. The truck driver that had earlier given him a ride recognizes him, and he misdirects the police so that Barry can escape. Now, why would anyone do that? I would have helped the police by pointing out where Barry was hiding. All we can conclude is that the truck driver figured Barry did not look like a criminal, so he helped him escape.

Barry takes shelter in the house of a blind man, Philip Martin.  It is here that Pat makes her entrance into the movie, because she is his niece.  When she arrives at her uncle’s house shortly after Philip and Barry have become acquainted, she sees the handcuffs that her uncle already knew about on account of his acute hearing. She says he should have turned Barry in to the police. Her uncle accuses her of being cruel. He assures her that Barry is not dangerous. And besides, he argues, a man is innocent until proven guilty. Now, because Philip is blind, he obviously cannot be coming to these incredible conclusions simply on account of Barry’s looks.  However, he can hear the sound of Barry’s voice, and by virtue of that kind of appearance, Philip tells Pat that he can see intangible things like innocence.

Pat pretends to go along with what her uncle wants, which is to take Barry to a blacksmith to get the handcuffs off, but she tries to take him to the police instead. That doesn’t work, however, and after some complications, they find themselves in the company of some circus freaks. Some of them want to turn Barry over to the police, who are inspecting the circus trucks, but the deciding vote is the bearded lady who blathers about how fine it is that Pat has stuck with Barry through his difficulties, and therefore they must be good people. This makes about as much sense as when earlier a man and a woman saw Barry kidnap Pat, dragging her into the car against her will, and the woman said, “My, they must be terribly in love.”

What these three instances—that of the truck driver, Uncle Philip, and the freaks—have in common is that appearances, in one form or another, make people decide to thwart the police and help the fugitive. Toward the end of the movie, Tobin (Otto Krüger), one of the villains, says of Barry that he is noble, fine, and pure, and that is why he is misjudged by everyone. But save for the police, Barry is not misjudged by others. The point of this remark is to show just how much evil foreigners underestimate Americans. The idea is that Americans, being basically noble, fine, and pure, can readily see the goodness in others, which is why they are willing to help a fugitive from justice escape from the police: they can just tell from Barry’s appearance that he is noble, fine, and pure.  Of course, Otto Krüger is of German descent, which is why he was selected to play this part.

If this movie had been intended to alert Americans of the danger of enemy agents in their midst during World War II, it would have cast against type, letting Otto Krüger or Norman Lloyd play Barry, the innocent man, and letting Robert Cummings play Frank Fry, the saboteur, or Tobin, the chief villain.  Then the movie would have driven home the point that you cannot tell by a person’s appearances whether he is good or evil.  In such a movie, Pat’s remark that Barry looks like a saboteur would make sense, but the truck driver, Uncle Philip, and the circus freaks would have to be suspicious of Barry instead of trusting.  Instead, the movie seems intended to assure the wartime audience that they could just rely on appearances, which is a much more comforting notion.

We cannot completely blame Hitchcock for all this, because he thought Robert Cummings was wrong for the role, on account of his “comic face.”  And perhaps it was in reaction to the casting of this movie that he decided to make Shadow of a Doubt (1943) the next year, in in which appearances, instead of being dependable, turn out to be deceptive.  In this movie, Joseph Cotten plays Charlie Oakley, a man that murders rich widows.  Needless to say, audiences in 1943 watching a movie about a serial killer would have expected to see someone like Laird Cregar, not Joseph Cotten.

The weakest part of Shadow of a Doubt is the part that involves the detectives. Nothing really makes sense. They want a picture of Oakley so they can show it to witnesses to see if he is the Merry Widow serial killer. All they need to do is bring him in for questioning and take his picture. Failing that, they could have photographed him when he walked right toward them at the beginning of the movie. After he walks past them, they follow him. What for? Do they think that by following him, they will catch him in the act of killing another widow? I could go on, but what would be the point? Suffice it to say that everything involving these detectives is unrealistic. And it is a shame, because with a few changes in the script, they could have been left out entirely.

It is the rest of the movie, the parts where the detectives play no significant role, that the movie really engages us. When the it begins, it is clear that Oakley has just killed another widow, after first getting his hands on her money. But it is not the money he cares about. He hates these women, and it gives him great satisfaction to kill them. But now, thoroughly sated from his recent murder, he is weary, listlessly lying in bed, with some of the money carelessly allowed to fall on the floor. He finally decides to visit his sister and sends her a telegram.

Meanwhile, his niece, young Charlie (Teresa Wright), is first seen lying supine in bed in a way that matches her uncle when we first saw him, giving us just a hint of incest. Her fascination with her uncle is a little unsettling in this regard. They both have the same name, and she is convinced that they are alike, that they have a special connection between them. At first, she too is listless, as her uncle was, but she suddenly decides to send him a telegram, inviting him to visit them, right after he has sent her mother a telegram saying that he is coming.

When her uncle arrives, he gives Charlie a ring, which has an engraving on the inside, “T.S. from B.M.” Later, she reads in the paper that the initials of the deceased husband of a recently murdered widow were “B.M.” Both “T.S” and “B.M.” are abbreviations for expressions involving fecal matter, “tough shit” and “bowel movement” respectively, which is a way of suggesting something foul associated with the beautiful emerald ring. The evil hidden underneath beauty is the theme of this movie.

In a similar way, the town where young Charlie lives is one of those warm, wholesome towns, representing the goodness of America, and good-looking Uncle Charlie is the evil hidden within that town. But that is not the most disturbing example of this theme. We find such evil in young Charlie herself. As the movie keeps emphasizing, and as she keeps insisting, she and her Uncle Charlie are very much alike. And that means that she has her dark side too. Because young Charlie is played by Teresa Wright, a wholesome looking young woman, rather than an actress whom we might see playing a femme fatale in a film noir, the contrast between her innocent appearance and the evil within her is stark.

When she figures out that her uncle is the Merry Widow murderer, she does not turn the ring over to the police and tell them what she knows. Instead, she merely insists that he leave town, so that her mother will not be hurt by the knowledge of what her brother really is. And she does this even when she knows who his next victim will be, a widow he meets in town, and who will be leaving on the same train. This would have made her an accomplice to his next and subsequent murders had he simply left town as she wanted.

In another scene, she tells her uncle that she wants to kill him. And so she does. The scene in which she pushes him into the path of the oncoming train can be understood as merely the accidental result of her effort to get away from him, and it would have been an act of self-defense in any event. But what happens matches what she says she wanted to do. Of course, there is no way her dark side is anything like that of her uncle, the main difference being that her uncle had a head injury when he was young, which allowed his dark side to flourish. But the evil in her is there nevertheless. And so, the movie seems to say, in all of us.

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

In the old movies, when the Native Americans were depicted as savage Indians, they were a force to be reckoned with. They were part of what made the Old West a dangerous place, for they were always likely to attack a white settlement or wagon train, hoping to scalp the men and rape the women. This made for great cinematic entertainment. But then our conscience began to bother us, and so we started trying to make amends, with movies depicting the Native Americans as victims, more to be pitied than feared. Though such revisionist Westerns may be more faithful to the facts of the Native-American experience, yet they just are not as much fun, and Cheyenne Autumn is a good example of that.

When the movie begins, we see the pathetic Cheyenne Indians, who are forced to live on a reservation in Oklahoma, suffering from neglect at the hands of white men. They weary of this and decide to leave Oklahoma and return to their ancestral home in Wyoming, with the army in pursuit. Now, if I had been chief of this tribe, I would have waited until spring, because such a trek would be easier to make in warm weather. But no, they leave just before winter is about to set in, which only adds to their misery.

Anyway, things are moving along, and left at that, this could have simply been a boring two-hour movie. But John Ford directed this movie, and you know what that means. He always has to put some corny scenes in his movies. I think he calls it comic relief. So we have this pointless, painful segment about Dodge City, where Wyatt Earp (James Stewart) and Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy) act silly. There is only a tenuous connection between this segment and what is happening to the Cheyenne, and if it had been left out, you would never have missed it. But it was not left out, and that means that instead of a boring two-hour movie, we end up with a boring and painful two-and-a-half hour movie.