The Western Kubrick Didn't Make
Rod Serling wrote a screenplay that was never adapted, based on The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider. The novel, based somewhat on the story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, was next worked on by Sam Peckinpah, whose script was picked up by Marlon Brando's production company Pennebaker Productions. Brando hired Stanley Kubrick to direct, but Kubrick wanted a different script, so Peckinpah was out and Calder Willingham, chucking much of the novel's content and leaving out the Billy the Kid/Garrett theme except as a vague idea, was in. Brando and Kubrick reportedly butted heads over some minor tiff, so the director was fired, leading him to make Lolita.
With filming about to begin, Brando volunteered to direct, the Paramount executives agreed. Years later, by his own admission, Brando "didn't know what to do." The film, called One-Eyed Jacks (1961), thus reflects its maker's stumbling, but combined with a majestic vision to create an epic western. Called the Heaven's Gate of its time, the film was over-budget and Brando shot a heap of film to the extent that his cut of the movie was four hours and forty-two minutes long. His mercurial nature (the thing that made him so brilliant as an actor but inconsistent, evidently, as a director) led him to walk away, leaving the final edit to the studio, resulting in the 141 minute final cut we now have.
This cut is efficient, gets the story told, and retains what I guess may have been Brando's intention to sprawl in his storytelling, a method used later in the 1960s in the westerns of Sergio Leone. In 1961, perhaps, a big character study with long sequences (shades of the much later Quentin Tarantino films, like his western The Hateful 8) wasn't what audiences or, certainly, studio executives or movie money men with business degrees were desiring in their entertainment. The passage of time has proved favorable to One-Eyed Jacks, earning it a place in the Criterion Collection, its print cleaned up and looking beautiful (or so I've read--I saw a faded version of the film on Amazon Prime, alas).
Even in a faded print, the film's gorgeousness is evident. Taking place in the 1880s, in a tamed west, the action starts in desert, in Sonora, Mexico, and relocates to the Monterey area in California by the ocean, seascapes anyone familiar with Hitchcock's Vertigo should recognize.
Two bank robbers, Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and Rio (Marlon Brando), get chased by police up a dusty hill with just one surviving horse and no more water. Rio remembers a little place a few miles away, run by an old man and his son, a watering station with fresh horses. Longworth takes their exhausted horse, leaving Rio behind by agreement to fend off the cops. Longworth will return with two fresh horses and water so they can make a getaway.
Longworth changes his mind, keeps all the bank heist money for himself, riding away on one fresh horse. Rio, apprehended, is ridden by the cops past the watering station, sees their tired white and gray mount among the other horses and realizes Longworth's betrayal.
Five years later, he escapes from a Mexican prison, determined to track down his former partner and kill him. In a saloon, he encounters two men who know where Longworth is and what he's doing. The two men (Ben Johnson and Sam Gilman) are also bank robbers, or claim they are. In exchange for sharing their information, they want Rio to agree to help them rob a "fat" bank in some town in California. Rio agrees. Longworth, it turns out, is the sheriff in that town.
Rio meets up with Longworth again, plays it cool, tells him a lie about what happened to him, says he got away from the Mexican police. Longworth lies too, saying there were no fresh horses at the watering station. Complicating things, Longworth has a Mexican wife (Katy Jurado, familiar from High Noon) and a step-daughter (played by Pina Pellicar). Rio, in spite of himself, grows fond of the young woman, aggravating Longworth no end. Dad Longworth starts the film as a character with shaky morals who becomes more and more despicable. Rio is a rogue at first, but gets darker with his revenge kick--still, he has redeeming qualities, brought out by his growing love for Luisa, the daughter.
The film's stripped-down plot resembles the layout of many westerns--something bad happened, something has to get done about it. Around these bones is an epic structure of dust, wind, ocean waves, horsemen in the distance, cards, periods of inertia, explosive eruptions of violence, the few occurrences of which make them all the more disturbing. Slim Pickens' portrayal of Sheriff Longworth's deputy stands out among the film's character actors. Coming on to Luisa in his hefty, hoggish way, his sickening insinuations to her; his mistreatment of Rio when the latter is in custody, his taunting and bullying, and finally Rio's pummeling treatment of him when the time comes, revealing a whimpering wretch, points to a true portrait of a slob so used to getting his way with gun and badge that when he's opposed firmly, he folds.
Ben Johnson, familiar from so many John Ford westerns, also comes across in a way we're not used to seeing him: an even-toned but bitingly offensive creep, sinister and lazy, acting tough but needing the prompts of the much more courageous Rio to accomplish his goal of robbing the supposedly easy to rip off bank. Throughout the film, too, is a compassionate portrayal of women, witnesses to violence and the dark pasts of their men, finding only a little solace in religion.
The movie should be given a lot of patience. It pays off, even amidst a tendency to get into a "we've seen this kind of thing before" in terms of plot elements, like a few cornball moments that seem out of place and maybe wouldn't have made it into a strong final cut. Even so, it's a testament to a talented actor who tried his hand at directing just one time, found the experience excruciatingly painstaking, so never tried it again. I think, too, that Paramount and any other studio, wouldn't have been eager to give Brando another film to direct. They lost money on the movie. Short term, their bottom line was sore. Long term, One-Eyed Jacks is with us now, grand and flawed, but magnificent, with mistakes easy to forgive.
Vic Neptune
Rod Serling wrote a screenplay that was never adapted, based on The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider. The novel, based somewhat on the story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, was next worked on by Sam Peckinpah, whose script was picked up by Marlon Brando's production company Pennebaker Productions. Brando hired Stanley Kubrick to direct, but Kubrick wanted a different script, so Peckinpah was out and Calder Willingham, chucking much of the novel's content and leaving out the Billy the Kid/Garrett theme except as a vague idea, was in. Brando and Kubrick reportedly butted heads over some minor tiff, so the director was fired, leading him to make Lolita.
With filming about to begin, Brando volunteered to direct, the Paramount executives agreed. Years later, by his own admission, Brando "didn't know what to do." The film, called One-Eyed Jacks (1961), thus reflects its maker's stumbling, but combined with a majestic vision to create an epic western. Called the Heaven's Gate of its time, the film was over-budget and Brando shot a heap of film to the extent that his cut of the movie was four hours and forty-two minutes long. His mercurial nature (the thing that made him so brilliant as an actor but inconsistent, evidently, as a director) led him to walk away, leaving the final edit to the studio, resulting in the 141 minute final cut we now have.
This cut is efficient, gets the story told, and retains what I guess may have been Brando's intention to sprawl in his storytelling, a method used later in the 1960s in the westerns of Sergio Leone. In 1961, perhaps, a big character study with long sequences (shades of the much later Quentin Tarantino films, like his western The Hateful 8) wasn't what audiences or, certainly, studio executives or movie money men with business degrees were desiring in their entertainment. The passage of time has proved favorable to One-Eyed Jacks, earning it a place in the Criterion Collection, its print cleaned up and looking beautiful (or so I've read--I saw a faded version of the film on Amazon Prime, alas).
Even in a faded print, the film's gorgeousness is evident. Taking place in the 1880s, in a tamed west, the action starts in desert, in Sonora, Mexico, and relocates to the Monterey area in California by the ocean, seascapes anyone familiar with Hitchcock's Vertigo should recognize.
Two bank robbers, Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and Rio (Marlon Brando), get chased by police up a dusty hill with just one surviving horse and no more water. Rio remembers a little place a few miles away, run by an old man and his son, a watering station with fresh horses. Longworth takes their exhausted horse, leaving Rio behind by agreement to fend off the cops. Longworth will return with two fresh horses and water so they can make a getaway.
Longworth changes his mind, keeps all the bank heist money for himself, riding away on one fresh horse. Rio, apprehended, is ridden by the cops past the watering station, sees their tired white and gray mount among the other horses and realizes Longworth's betrayal.
Five years later, he escapes from a Mexican prison, determined to track down his former partner and kill him. In a saloon, he encounters two men who know where Longworth is and what he's doing. The two men (Ben Johnson and Sam Gilman) are also bank robbers, or claim they are. In exchange for sharing their information, they want Rio to agree to help them rob a "fat" bank in some town in California. Rio agrees. Longworth, it turns out, is the sheriff in that town.
Rio meets up with Longworth again, plays it cool, tells him a lie about what happened to him, says he got away from the Mexican police. Longworth lies too, saying there were no fresh horses at the watering station. Complicating things, Longworth has a Mexican wife (Katy Jurado, familiar from High Noon) and a step-daughter (played by Pina Pellicar). Rio, in spite of himself, grows fond of the young woman, aggravating Longworth no end. Dad Longworth starts the film as a character with shaky morals who becomes more and more despicable. Rio is a rogue at first, but gets darker with his revenge kick--still, he has redeeming qualities, brought out by his growing love for Luisa, the daughter.
The film's stripped-down plot resembles the layout of many westerns--something bad happened, something has to get done about it. Around these bones is an epic structure of dust, wind, ocean waves, horsemen in the distance, cards, periods of inertia, explosive eruptions of violence, the few occurrences of which make them all the more disturbing. Slim Pickens' portrayal of Sheriff Longworth's deputy stands out among the film's character actors. Coming on to Luisa in his hefty, hoggish way, his sickening insinuations to her; his mistreatment of Rio when the latter is in custody, his taunting and bullying, and finally Rio's pummeling treatment of him when the time comes, revealing a whimpering wretch, points to a true portrait of a slob so used to getting his way with gun and badge that when he's opposed firmly, he folds.
Ben Johnson, familiar from so many John Ford westerns, also comes across in a way we're not used to seeing him: an even-toned but bitingly offensive creep, sinister and lazy, acting tough but needing the prompts of the much more courageous Rio to accomplish his goal of robbing the supposedly easy to rip off bank. Throughout the film, too, is a compassionate portrayal of women, witnesses to violence and the dark pasts of their men, finding only a little solace in religion.
The movie should be given a lot of patience. It pays off, even amidst a tendency to get into a "we've seen this kind of thing before" in terms of plot elements, like a few cornball moments that seem out of place and maybe wouldn't have made it into a strong final cut. Even so, it's a testament to a talented actor who tried his hand at directing just one time, found the experience excruciatingly painstaking, so never tried it again. I think, too, that Paramount and any other studio, wouldn't have been eager to give Brando another film to direct. They lost money on the movie. Short term, their bottom line was sore. Long term, One-Eyed Jacks is with us now, grand and flawed, but magnificent, with mistakes easy to forgive.
Vic Neptune
Comments
Post a Comment