Placelore

The Western Film

I

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Thomas Wolfe : Look Homeward, Angel

Perhaps the draw of a good Western is its ability to point towards the unknown, and thus to plumb a truth of the human condition. The use of supernatural elements in Western films can be deeply haunting, and the truly great Westerns endeavour to place in question the archetypal forces of Good and Evil, and to portray the effort to continue to search for one’s place, often against apparently insurmountable odds.

One of the most striking sequences of all Westerns is to be found in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985). The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, wherein the rider of a pale horse represents Death. The main character, the Preacher, is an “out-and-out ghost” as described by Eastwood (who also portrayed him). We first meet him as he descends from on-high mountain country, accompanied by words from the 23rd Psalm, called out by a young girl as she buries her slain dog in a forest. When we next glimpse the Preacher, he is cast in the imagery of St. George, astride a pale horse on the edge of town. He is the supernatural anti-hero, apparently sent to help the small miners and farmers in their hour of need. The classic western Shane (1953) was an inspiration to Eastwood’s telling of Pale Rider, and he extends the earlier film’s use of subtle supernatural elements in both setting and plot. Each film ends with the mysterious stranger, the outsider, riding away alone, into the unknown.

The Western film genre portrays the range of human emotions set within a society that is often without ‘man made’ law, yet cast around codes of honour, justice and archetypes. With films such as The Furies (1950) and High Noon (1952), psychological dramas evocative of ancient Greek myths were established as part and parcel of the genre. High Noon, perhaps the greatest Western ever made, was directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starred the physically pained and ravaged Gary Cooper (who was actually ill at the time) as the Marshall abandoned by all the townspeople to face the outlaws. The film can be seen as a morality play about the issues confronting America, particularly the persecution of the film industry by Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

It is a wilderness West to which the searcher gravitates, seeking a life that is freer to grow up straight and become oneself, opportunities that are no longer found “back East”. The frontier also attracts the criminal and the outlaw, and, as writers and directors used the genre for exploration, the black and white, good and bad of earlier Westerns gradually gave way to many shades of grey. One has only to watch how John Ford directs John Wayne in three films-as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (1939), the paternal captain Nathan in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956)_-to witness this deepening of characterization and plot. Wayne’s simple form of character in Stagecoach has become in _The Searchers a wandering, moody, dark, obsessive misfit. He is shown at the end of the film turning away from a home and family; he is alone and in a way as cursed as the buried Comanche, into whose dead eyes he had earlier fired bullets, so that the Indian would have to ‘wander forever between the winds’-doomed to spiritual homelessness.

In Unforgiven (1992), the mingling of right and wrong, in both the retired gunslinger William Munny (Clint Eastwood), who tried to go straight, and the sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), is even more striking. They have similar backgrounds: both men are shaped from the same mould (and as Alan Ladd states in Shane – ‘A man has to be what he is; you cant break the mould. I tried it- it didn’t work for me’). It is a movie where the seasonal chill of the mountainous landscape outlives the characters, caught as they are by accident and by fate. Who are the good and who are the bad? The Sheriff, in order to uphold the law, whips a man to death; the Outlaw, outraged by such a brutal killing of his old friend, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), turns to merciless vengeance. It is the badly wounded Little Bill Daggett who, in the harsh, death-strewn, storm-shrouded denouement, says, ‘I don’t deserve to die like this – I was building a house.’ William Munny replies, ‘Deserve has nothing to do with it.’ Daggett counters, ‘I’ll see you in hell William Munny.’ The tension of the night scene is stretched into the scarred and unforgiving face of Munny who replies, ‘Yeah’. Evocative of the apocalyptic, the outlaw departs the rain-mudded town on a pale horse and it seems that, as Alexander Pope wrote, “…universal Darkness covers all.” In the final scene, the storm has abated, and the music is guitar gentle. Even the sky (is it dawn or sunset?) appears to offer redemptive peace. There is the humble house; clothes hung out to dry; a lone tree stroked by wind; a man standing by the grave of his wife. As we watch both the clothes and the man fade and, ghostlike, disappear, the rest of the scene remains to stir us to question our time-framed existence.

II

Films of the Western genre were set in the western United States during the late 1850’s to the end of the “Indian Wars” in the early 1890’s. However, both the setting and period have a certain elasticity, for the Western also incorporates the American Civil War and settings east of the Mississippi. It also crosses borders into Canada, Mexico, Australia, and, in the case of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Bolivia. The influence of the Western can be felt outside of its era in such films as Easy Rider(1969) and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). In Easy Rider, motorbikes supplant horses; gun violence and bigotry is meshed in circadian Southern heat, and New Orleans becomes the visited Wild West town. Three Burials draws upon the imagery and music of the Texas Mexican border, a film imbued with friendship, revenge, atonement and forgiveness. Though set in the modern era, the carriage of the film is almost entirely of the Western genre.

Although some attempts at capturing Western flavour had been made prior to 1900 (particularly with the short kinetoscopes of the 1890’s) it is The Great Train Robbery (1903), starring Broncho Billy Anderson, which can be said to be the first proper Western. The film, directed by Edwin S. Porter, was a remarkable effort. It established Anderson as the movie screen’s first cowboy star, and he went on to make several hundred western movie shorts. Porter made over 100 films between 1901 and 1908. His work is often seen as a precursor to W. B Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), having established the structure and codes of cinematic language and classic film making.

The Western genre itself has sub-genres. ‘Revisionist Westerns’ such as Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), The Long Riders (1980), Little Big Man (1970), stripped away romanticism, revealing the harsh, often brutal realities of life on the frontier. Its B-movies were the ‘Singing Cowboy Westerns’, many of which were produced throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s, making stars of Gene Autry, Tex Ritters, and Roy Rodgers. ‘Epic Westerns’ included Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and The Searchers. The ‘Spaghetti Western’ emerged in Italy during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Some of the best, made by Sergio Leone, were A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). In these movies, Clint Eastwood, the “Man-with-No-Name” character, embodies some of the archetypical qualities of the movie cowboy: toughness, self-reliance, quietness, skill with a gun; however, unlike the original archetype often portrayed by actors such as John Wayne and Randolph Scott, Eastwood’s characters portray moral ambiguity. The ‘Comedy Westerns’ included Way Out West (1937), starring Laurel and Hardy, Destry Rides Again (1939) with Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart, The Paleface (1948), with Bob Hope playing a cowardly dentist ‘Painless’ Peter Potter, and Jane Russell as Calamity Jane. As the Western film genre began to disperse and decline, comedy in films such as Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (1974) and Alen Cox’s Straight to Hell (1987) devolved into parody, and in a way were announcing the end of a once dominant genre.

III

A strong influence upon Westerns in the 1960’s was the Japanese samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. The Magnificent Seven (1960) was a remake of Kurosawa’s Shichinin no Samurai (The Seven Samurai 1954), and both a Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Last Man Standing (1966) were remakes of Yojimbo (1961). Kurosawa was himself deeply influenced by the work of John Ford, who in turn learned his trade as a director of early Universal Studios silent Westerns. An offshoot of the genre is the ‘Post-Apocalyptic’ Western, in which, following some form of major catastrophe, what remains of society is trying to survive and rebuild in a setting similar to the 19th century frontier. Good examples of these are The Postman (1997), and the Mad Max Series (1979–1985) featuring Mel Gibson.

It may be argued that Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) marked something of an apotheosis and an end. The tale of The Wild Bunch is set in 1913 and told from the point of view of nine outlaws who are bound by friendship and honour but hounded by bounty hunters. The film shows that the Old West is coming to an end, and so it was fitting that the film included such old stalwarts as Robert Ryan, William Holding, and Ernest Borgnine. Both Ryan and Borgnine acted with Lee Marvin and Spencer Tracey in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), a drama that contained many features of the classic Western. Tom Horn (1980) and The Shootist (1976) play out the death of the gunfighter. Monte Walsh (1970) examines what happened to redundant cowboys when their skills are superseded by technology. Walsh, played by Lee Marvin, turns down a job as a circus entertainer, adding that “I’m not gonna spit on my old life.” In The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970), the hero Cable, played by Jason Robards, dies under the wheels of a ‘new fangled automobile’. The death of the West, however, was not simply figurative. The 1970’s and 1980’s saw the passing of many of the directors and actors that were associated with the genre, including John Ford, Howard Hawks, Jacques Tourneur, Raoul Walsh King Vidor, and John Wayne. After the failure of Heaven’s Gate (1980) at the box office, Hollywood turned away from the Western.

If today the Western has all but disappeared from the screens, it is in part the result of both a shift in the genre itself and also in American society. Just as Bob Dylan took up the songs of Arlo Guthrie, science fiction films such as George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977–2002, I–VI) and Sci-fi television series such as Star Trek (1996–2002) borrowed extensively from the elements and conventions of the Western. Peter Hyam’s Outland (1981) is an adaptation of High Noon to interstellar space. Since the 1970’s the frontier for audiences has become outer space and maybe it is symbolic that the year The Wild Bunch was released coincided with American astronauts setting foot on the moon. Perhaps it could be said that the Western has not after all vanished, but moved to the new open spaces beyond the earth itself, or returned with a different view to old territory, with examples of Dead Man (1995) with Johnny Depp as accountant William Blake. encountering a strange Indian named “Nobody”, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Wim Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking (2005).

Winning and Loss in the Holy War

“It achieved little accept loss”

The ‘Road’ to Passchendaele, Basil H.Liddell Hart, Captain KOYLI, 1915-1918

 

“To know the reality of war is the Pythagorean harmony, the unity of opposites; it is the plenitude of knowledge of the real. That is why you are infinitely privileged, because you have war permanently lodged in your body, waiting for years in patient fidelity until you are ripe to know it.”

Simone Weil[1]

“War is the father of all. All things come into being and pass away through strife.”

Heraclitus

“We are caught in the cosmic war between good and evil.”

Paramahansa Yogananda [2]

 

I came to Passchendaele in April. It was a mud cold smouldering day. I walked among rows, of nameless ash-white gravestones. A good historian searches between the pain of birth and the loss of death for a name, so that it can be offered silently to the nameless. A fine dancer or receptive singer conveys the impression of this gesture.

A million names is but one name and all the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters of all the earth’s are of The One Father, The One Mother, The One Son, The One Daughter, The Family of The Holy One. I walked on through the brittle light of a coiled veiled sun. In the afternoon I came across the private, and the universal, inscribed simply upon eroding stone, “Please Remember me.”

  In ‘The Journey To The East’ Hermann Hesse wrote: -

“I do not think that ten books like it, each one ten times better and more vivid than mine, could convey any real picture of the war to the most serious reader, if he had not himself experienced the war. And there were not so many who had. Even those who had taken part in it did not for a long time experience it. And if many really did so – they forgot about it again. Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget.” [3]

In various museums around the world there are statues of Luohans. It may be more accurate to say statues of the Luohan representing different stages of life. The younger Luohan is fierce in his intensity. He is sculptured into a fiery moment of intention, almost unapproachable in his lone breath, and place of engagement. The older wiser Luohan has been released from this battle. In the realisation of loss, he is calm, softer, and more accessible. His presence conveys that each battle, each individual life will be lost, indeed must be lost before an entry can be acquired to a inner space. This is the place of Jihad[4], the Holy War, the inner immeasurable content of life reduced by some to the pulls of vengeance. It is only through all being lost that the war can be won.[5] This is not an external war, which is for the most part the contention of forces moving in violent confusion and reaction. It is an internal inner place of weather, oral, silent and written, coded in all traditions through all the ages. We forget as F.M.Alexander wrote to remember. But we are called to remember. But what form of remembrance?

The Greek root of the word loss means to set free, in Latin Luere, solvre, pay, solve. The roots of the word win winnan, gewinnan indicate to earn through the labour of suffering. There is the loss of winning and the winning of loss. In silence one comes to realise that the inner conflict reflects the cosmos, chaos and creation, entropy and life. How do we find and stand in our place amidst the contradictions, absurdities, tensions, and pain?

I gaze across the corrupted fields of Language and cropped Flanders towards Leper (Ypres) and feel the questing question ‘Who am I?’ resonating a little closer. “Each star is a soul”, so an old woman informed me in the wonder of my childhood. This may not be a ‘scientific truth’; nonetheless she accepted the stars as traces of her internal origin.

The light cannot meet the darkness directly neither can the darkness come directly to the light. Through the body and our being lies the meeting place for enormous forces manifesting through time and space. The dragon is within us, tormented. Caved in darkness wishing to come forth to the light. The force of its pain causes it to spit upon that which can salve, shaken by its terrible dark force the light wishes to withdraw.[6]  We falter; ask what’s the use? - Yet somehow remain searching, and so doing be received to in-sight. The light and the dark grow. Bearing witness[7]is the revelation in scripture of the meaningful life. Not “my” life, but a life rendered up to the means whereby.

In his ‘Selected Essays and Critical Writings’ A. R. Orage wrote that “no mere record of experience, however novel,” can obtain entry into true realism. “Entry is by divination, not by description. Compare, for instance, the descriptions of battles in Homer and in the Mahabharata with the descriptions of actuality. The latter are accurate, but the former are true. There never was such a battle as Vyasa described in the Mahabharata. Let us hope there never will be. But, as we read it, we feel that Nature has dreamed it, and only not actualised it because she had other plans. By this means, actuality itself becomes transfigured; experience is given a solace; and no mere reporting can accomplish that. What is the satisfaction in knowing that such and such a thing occurred? But there is satisfaction in knowing that it occurred as a consequence of choice among many alternatives! Freedom is given back to us. At each moment we stand at a new crossroads. The road Nature takes will be, in course of time, the actual; the roads she passes will remain the potential. The more of them there are, the richer life has become for us.”

In trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, to place words upon the wordless, to give some semblance of scale, and in the endeavour to make sense of our mechanical destructiveness, the conflict of 1914-1918 was called the Great War, a war to end war. But it was only in its part a terrible continuum, nonetheless the efforts that we make can deposit within us material necessary to transcend the placement of a material body that must organically dissolve into the time formed chemistry of earth, air, fire and water.[8]

At the point of greatest destructiveness lies the infinite point contained, yet unrestrained of return, the symbol of Ying and Yang.[9] Through the body, which by its nature and for the most part  resides in the here and now, we can live in the liberation of the unsullied neck receiving communication of our deepest sympathy. It does not matter then to be in the: “last scene of all,………Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.”[10]

“In this vast night, be the magic power

at your senses’ intersection,

the meaning of their strange encounter.

And if the earthly has forgotten

you, say to the still earth: I flow.

To the rushing water speak: I am.”

 

Last Sonnet to Orpheus

Rilke 

 

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[1] George A. Panichas, ed., The Simone Weil Reader New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1977),  p. 87.

René Guénon wote “Accordingly, the end of war is the establishment of peace, for peace, even taken in its most ordinary sense, is ultimately nothing else but order, equilibrium or harmony, these three terms being practically synonymous, and all denoting under somewhat different aspects the reflection of unity in multiplicity. In point of fact, multiplicity is not really destroyed but “transformed”; and when all things are brought back to unity, this unity appears in all things, which, far from ceasing to exist, thereby acquire on the contrary the plenitude of reality. In this way, the two complementary viewpoints of “unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity” (El-wahdatu fil-kuthrati wal-kuthratu fil-wahdati) are indivisibly united at the central point of all manifestation, which is the “Divine Abode” or “Divine Station” (El-maqamul-ilahi),..For whoever has reached that point, there are no longer any contraries, and therefore no longer any disorder; it is the seat of order, of equilibrium, and of harmony or peace; outside it for one who is merely striving towards it without having yet reached it, there prevails a state of war……since the oppositions in which disorder resides have not yet been permanently transcended.” Symbolism of the Cross p43.

[2] Paramahansa Yogananda Man’s Eternal Quest Self -Realisation Fellowship, Los Angeles 1988. P.279.  Is the good and evil that Yogananda  speaks of the same as evoked by Gerorge W. Bush “who has spoken about evil in 319 separate speeches, since the time he took office and June 16, 2003.” Peter Singer The President of Good and Evil Granta Books (London) 2004, p. 2, see also pps 207–209. Jiddhu Krishnamurti stated “Evil exists, but you dont know anything about it.” See Sunaanda Patwardhan A Vision of the Sacred Edwin House Publishing, Inc. (Ojai, California) 1999, P. 78. “The future of mankind very much depends, upon the recognition of the shadow……Evil is—psychologically speaking—terribly real. It is a fatal mistake to diminish its power and reality, even merely metaphysically.” Carl Jung in Jung and the Story of Our Time Penguin Books 1978, P.222. The Zohar describes evil as the by-product of the life process of the sefiroth. For an exploration of this theme see Gershom Gerhard Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem 1941). In Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away it is Harper, the ‘decent upstanding’ aunt harping on about good and evil who is the most dangerous character. See interview with Peter Brook in The Wednesday Review, The Independent 30^th January 2002. See also George Monbiot’s article Both Saviour and Victim in Comment and Analysis in The Guardian January 29^th 2002.

There is a view that it is at best naïve to view universal conflict in terms of good and evil. Milan Kundera wrote “Freeing the great human conflicts from the naïve interpretation of a battle between good and evil, understanding them in the light of tragedy, was an enormous feat of mind; it brought forward the unavoidable relativism of human truths; it made clear to do justice to the enemy. But moral manicheism has an indestructible vitality”. Translated from the French by Linda Asher. First published in Le Monde Diplomatique May 2003and in Guardian Review as part of article entitled The Theatre of memory 17 May 2003.

[3] Hermann Hesse The Journey To The East. Chapter 3, Page 45. Picador edition 1995. In his “All Quiet On The Western Front”, a searing attempt to convey with honesty the violent brutal corruption of mechanical war, Eric Maria Remarque observed, “This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.” Vintage edition 2003, p.100.

[4] “The Arabic term jihad, usually translated into European languages as “holy war,” more on the basis of its juridical usage in Islam rather than on its much more universal meaning in the Quran and Hadith, is derived from the root jhd whose primary meaning is to “strive to exert oneself.”  There is the lesser jihad and the greater jihad. See The Spiritual Significance of Jihad by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Parabola Magazine Volume VII, NO. 4. October 1982. The “lesser holy war” (El-jihâdul-asghar) has an outward application but the “greater holy war” (El-jihâdul-akbar) concerns itself entirely with the inward order. The remarkable Sufi ’Abd al-Qadir al Jilani regarded jihad as a personal holy struggle which took place within. To state as Shohei Imamura did in his contribution to the film entitled September 11  “there is no such thing as a Holy War” is a fundamental though understandable error. See review by Alexander Walker, Evening Standard, The Arts, (London) September 10, 2002. For an outer interpretation of the Jihad see Bernard Lewis The Crisis of Islam particularly Chapter II, The House of War, Phoenix edition 2004.

[5] A critique has been made of F. M. Alexander’s use of “masculinist, militarist themes” in his writings. See Terry Fitzgerald Invisible women: Another look at ‘The Evolution of a Technique’ Alexander Journal 17 Summer 2001 London.

[6] In the older icons of St. George and the dragon the saint does not destroy the dragon. Instead the dragon gazes upon the point of the lance which represents the light. The seeing compassionate point of the lance is carried within to transform the violent destructive forces in oneself. Later images show the lance or sword penetrating the chaos of throat or the dark heart. “The icon of St George is a commentary on the cosmic meaning of the spiritual warrior. We understand this if we grasp fully what is spiritual warfare.” Richard Temple, Icons (Element books 1990),  p, 125.  In a scene with supernatural overtones, the iconic image of St. George is evoked by Clint Eastwood in his archetypal film Pale Rider, (Malpaso, USA, 1985) which is based on the novel Pale Rider by Alan Dean Foster, Arrow Books 1985.  Drawing from Revalations 6.8. read by the widows daughter (Sydney Penny), “.. and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” One views the image inaccurately, though hauntingly presented, when the avenging preacher played by Eastwood is glimpsed astride a pale horse on the edge of town, and later when he arrives at the mining camp. “In ancient times, the term “icon” a word of Greek origin was intended to mean painted tablets (portraits) before it finally referred to the Christian religious paintings.”  Nabil Selim Atalla Orbis Terrae Aegyptiae, Coptic Icons Part I Lehnert & Landrock Cairo-Egypt,  p.6.  “Icon: In a generic sense it means any religious picture, especially the one placed above altars. But current use reserves the term for sacred pictures of Eastern art, representing Christ, the Virgin or saints.” Sing The Joys of Mary, Hymns from the first millennium of the Eastern and Western Churches Edited by Costante Berselli and Georges Gharib,  Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc. p.132. In Chinese mythology the dragon is associated with the sun and the power of Heaven (spirit). For a further view of the dragon see Coomaraswamy Traditional Art and Sybolism Bollingen series LXXXIX, Princeton University Press especially chapter entitled On the Loathly Bride, “Hero and Heroine are our two selves— duo sunt in homine— immanent Spirit (“Soul of the soul,”  “this self’s immortal self) and individual soul or self: Eros and Psyche. These two, cohabitant Inner and Outer Man, are at war with each other, and there can be no peace between them until the victory has been won and the soul, our self, this “I,” submits. It is not without reason that the Heroine is often described as haughty, disdainful, “Orgelleuse.” Philo and Rumi repeatedly equate this soul, our self, with the Dragon,….” Pps 366–367. 

[7] “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” St. John 18.37. “ …Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” St. John 8.32. “Disillusion me with truth,” A request from St.Teresa of Avila to García de Toledo.

[8] Empedocles (c490–430BC) was of the view that this elemental quaternary was the composition of all things in creation including the human form and psyche. The elemental is itself infused (Latin infundere, to pour) with two great forces or principles Eros and Strife (Harmony and Discord). The Zohar states that “At the moment of creation, the four cardinal points unite with the four constituent elements of the world here below: fire, water, earth, and air. It was by mixing these four elements that the Holy One, blessed be He, created a body in the image of that above. The body is thus composed of the elements of both worlds, those of the world below and those of the world above.”  

[9] “The old form of yang represents the sun with its rays: of yin a coiled cloud. To each was added the character fu (mound). Thus  according to the definition in the Erh Ya, a dictionary of the Chou period, yang describes “the sunny side of a mountain” and yin “the side in shadow.” Mai-mai Sze The Way of Chinese Painting, P.43.

[10] W. Shakespeare As You Like It  Act II Scene 7