Phil Karlson would have been 101 years old today!
In his time, he killed more than his share of dummies and he killed them with context, perspective and impact.
What he could have given us had he lived to see this day...
Happy Destructible Birthday,Over the edge...
Thanks to a terse (and perverse) screenplay by Frank S. Nugent (John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, TWO RODE TOGETHER) --
-- monumental cinematography courtesy of the reliably visionary, poetic eye of Charles Lawton, Jr. (TWO RODE TOGETHER, Budd Boettecher's RIDE LONESOME) --
-- and director Phil Karlson's unfettered metacinematical faith in the thematic complexities of dummy destruction --
-- GUNMAN'S WALK is another watermark in Karlson's career-long commitment to exploring the social circumstances in which acts of violence occur and the societal and psychological ramifications that swirl in their wake.
Bert Convy plays Paul Chouard, a “half-breed” American Indian who is caught in a crossfire of fragile egos and tenuous identities on a western cattle drive.
Chouard is laid victim to a racist and volcanically insecure Ed Hackett (Tab Hunter).
Ed's wholesale neurosis and psychopathic pathology was bought and paid for in total by his father (Van Heflin), a hard-as-nails cattle baron whose very large footsteps he has been made to follow all his life on a road paved with emotional eggshells.
Chouard finds himself in a very dangerous place indeed --
-- namely, anywhere between Ed Hackett and something Ed wants; in this case, a wild white mare that Ed has sights on presenting to his younger brother Davey Hackett (James Darren).
As both men pursue the rare equine prize, Ed runs Paul and his horse off the edge of a ravine and down into a sixty foot deep chasm thus allowing Karlson to execute a unique dual animal/man dummy demolition.
Close Inspection
Here, Karlson splits Hunter/Ed from Convy/Chouard in two separate directions in the frame before cutting --
-- which reveals both horse and man, now reconstituted as dummies for their horrifying plummet.
This transformation/substitution, a symbolic manifestation of Ed Hackett's racist perception of Paul as less than (or other than) human because of his Native American blood and the horse, now a non-horse (it is, after all, a half-breed’s horse) compared to the majestic, independent spirit and strength of the white stallion (Get it? A white stallion!) --
-- that is, until Hackett takes another look at his handy work over the edge of the ravine.
That is no dummy at the bottom of the cliff -- it's a very real human being that he has murdered in cold blood.
This act of violence has its roots in several psychological facets that, as the story progresses, prove to be Ed's undoing and allude to the abstract constructions that animate him.
Raised by his father to be his father's shadow while simultaneously living in his father's shadow, Ed is saddled with a wagon-load of spiritual contradictions that fuel his seemingly irrational behavior.
Ed is the reflection his father casts backwards into both his father's youth and the youth of a once open, wild frontier that is now shrinking around them under the inexorable march of progress, law and civilization.
Built by his father to function and thrive in an America that no longer exists, Ed is, himself, a rare breed -- a youthful anachronism.
As an incarnation of his father's "Id" he is an impulsive, arrogant, hard drinking, gunslinging, womanizing cowboy who makes his own rules and poses a mortal threat to the new order of things thus dooming him to inevitable elimination.
Van Heflin's Lee Hackett casts (aside from his own) a second reflection, this one into the future in the form of his son Davey.
Davey Hackett serves as a personification of his father's super-ego and who is, as such, also a man of his time and of his country, if not of his family.
The virginal Davey exists in opposition to his brother and that part of his father which his brother Ed represents -- eshewing drink, firearms, sexual promiscuity, bigotry and familial loyalty while embracing the imposition of an external construct of law and order and accepting the civic authority encroaching on their independent, heretofore solopsistic, way of life.
Davey is ultimately burdened with the impossible task of reining in his rampaging brother and becomes an impotent witness to Ed’s inevitable destruction.
With a tyrannical father and no mother in sight, Ed's gentle, passive brother Davey plays multiple roles:
-- protective brother --
-- sympathetic mother figure --
-- and --
-- not-so-oddly enough --
-- his suppressed romantic muse as well (when fraternal, maternal and romantic love become intertwined in his mangled psyche).
This confused miasma of repressed/displaced/combustble sexuality comes to a head in the above sequences inside and outside the ironically named "Gaiety Saloon" where Ed literally runs preferably into his brother's arms after an encounter with two lovely, tho entirely interchangeable young working girls.
During the pivotal courtroom scene (wherein Ed's "guilt" or "innocence" in the "murder" of Paul Chouard will be determined) two iconic portraits adorn and bracket the judge's bench: one of President Lincoln on screen left and one of President Washington on screen right.
These function as portraits of Lee Hackett's sons as well as bookends for the period of American history in which Ed and his father belong.
Washington was a rebellious revolutionary and combat veteran who wrested America, by force of arms, from the hands of King George aligning him, here, with Ed.
Abraham Lincoln was a self taught lawyer and statesman whose crucial role was that of national healer and uniter of the divided nation (in the wake of the jaw dropping carnage of America's Civil War) as well as staunch abolitionist -- all affinities shared with the character of Davey.
After more patriarcal corruption designed by Lee to, once again, protect his son, Ed continues to rebel in the only manner he knows -- as that same tarnished reflection of an antiquated father.
And all still for the same obsessive desire to claim and break-in that wild, white stallion for his brother...
Something's gotta give and it finally does when Lee, despite his best efforts, is forced to confront and, finally, kill his own son.
Ed's dying transformation is of a quadruple property: first, upon being disabled by his father's shot, Ed develops a respect for his father; second, at the moment of death, Ed is finally a man -- having stood up to his father; third, his death is a metaphoric transmutational absorption of Id back into his original host, Lee Hackett; and fourth, he becomes a corpse (but at least, a human one).
Here, patricide takes the form of self-castration and emasculation as Lee removes his gun and belt and lets them slide to the ground while he grieves over the lifeless body of his favorite heir.
In the broader thematic context of the story this amounts to a kind of national circumcision wherein a virile, independent (but destructive) element of national consciousness is (necessarily) amputated forever.
It's a tale as old as the hills the ranchers ride through -- the fathers build on the sacrifice of the sons. In this instance, the sons are never more than ghostly projections of an ambivalent father.
And now, Lee's transformation takes place. Simultaneously maturing into a remorseful, non-racist, loving father --
-- and a terrified infant...
Lee Hackett is a man torn in two.
Ed is now united with Paul Chouard in death - pulled into the vortex that he started spinning when his internal abstractions of competition, ignorance, love and greed moved him to kill.
The "half-breed" Paul antagonized and blurred the clearly drawn but artificial racial borders placed in Ed's mind, necessitating the dehumanization of Paul (via transformation of actor Burt Convy into articulated mannequin) prior to the murderous act.
The metamorphosis of dummy back into actor to depict the dead Paul allows the audience to share, with Ed, his brief glimpse of truth -- his own delusions broken and exposed on the rocks below.
In death, Paul Chouard can no longer be dehumanized in Ed Hackett's eyes. Here a character's personal perception is revealed to him as a self-deception and is depicted for the audience, cinematically, with the illusion of prosthetic transfiguration and thus registered in Ed's fragile -- or perhaps developing -- conscience.
Note the apt Spanish title for GUNMAN'S WALK: "THE WAGES OF VIOLENCE".
click to view enlarged imageIt is with overwhelming sadness that the The Flying Maciste Brothers report the death of director/cinematographer Jack Cardiff, OBE, B.S.C..
Not only was Cardiff an early pioneer of Technicolor cinematography in the UK --
-- not only was he responsible for the unfathomably ravishing photography on such films as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's hallucinatory triptych:
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946)
BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)
THE RED SHOES (1948)
-- Arthur Lubin's other-worldly PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN --
-- not only did he direct such enjoyable and disparate entertainments such as:
MY GEISHA
THE LION (both 1962)
YOUNG CASSIDY
(aka NAKED UNDER LEATHER)
(aka THE FREAKMAKER)
DARK OF THE SUN
THE LIQUIDATOR (1966)
THE LONG SHIPS (1963)
18 September 1914 - 22 April 2009Comedy or Conscience?
Dummy-deaths in comedies are a shoe-in for big laughs. It's a fact. Confirmed.
Think of the basic equations:
a) person + injury = a giggle
b) person + injury x dummy-for-human substitution + insinuation of death = shocked hilarity
Tried and true.
Comedies that utilize this math always tend to be funny, but their success also tends to pervert the impact of the application of the same formulas in dramatic films. Herein lies today's lesson.
Let us illustrate with these two examples: the first being a send-up of a series of "safety in the workplace" educationals that aired in the 1990's on German television. It is entitled "Staplerfahrer Klaus - Der erste Arbeitstag" or "Forklift Driver Klaus".
This is our example of dummy-death in comedy.
Very funny, ja? Das ist so.
Now, let's take a gander at the real deal. This was made (and is still commonly shown) for safety awareness purposes at industrial work sites. It is entitled "Will You Be Here Tomorrow?"
This is not a comedy.
A remarkable phenomenon. "Will You Be Here Tomorrow?" may actually be as funny, if not funnier than "Forklift Driver Klaus". Is this because of an innate human instinct to defend one's nerves from trauma when confronted with atrocity by instantly mocking the action with laughter? Or is it a matter of dummy-for-human death substitutions simply being universally funny despite the context of its placement?
The answer resides within you...
post © Howard S. Berger & Kevin Marr
Photo: Ray Massey/Stone/Getty Images
...out like a lamb!
What a difference a month makes! March certainly did come in like a lion -- and so did a handful of bloggers dedicated to the challenge of impromptu animal dummy-death analysis/critique for our DESTRUCTIBLE BLOG-A-THON.1!
And so, to prove we are no April Fools, The Flying Maciste Brothers welcome Springtime and bid 'adieu' to Winter with this humble offering -- multitudes of prostheticized lambs to the slaughter with this sequence from the Nicholas Roeg-lensed adaptation of Thomas Hardy's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.
Alan Bates plays Gabriel Oak, a farmer whose Border Collie (in this sequence) is a little something more than mischievous. Director Schlesinger --
-- known best for the once-upon-a-time X-rated MIDNIGHT COWBOY -- ingeniously employs clever day-for-night photography, shrewd staging of camera and beast, and impeccably designed sheep dummies substituted for the real veal (meat-centric poetic license) right at the crucial moments to concoct a wonderfully satisfying substitutional stew.
CLOSE INSPECTION
Later in the story, farm owner Bathsheba Everdene -- played by the eternally gorgeous Julie Christie -- encounters sheep problems of her own. To prevent all of her flock from dying of bloat, she asks the services of Oak who knows instantly what to do. Schlesinger knows what to do as well -- namely, to put that surplus of facsimilia of our lanolin-drenched friends back into use!
CLOSE INSPECTION
Waste not want not!
post © Howard S. Berger & Kevin Marr
Well, he's sure as Hecks gone and done it this time, alright! Never one to spit in the wind and get hit by it, our good friend Arbogast, who lives just a link-click away at ARBOGAST ON FILM, makes up for his cessation of posting comments here at DESTRUCTIBLE MAN and makes us feel loved again with his be-all-end-all examination of the totally batty dummy-death in Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY. This was written exclusively for our DESTRUCTIBLE BLOG-A-THON.1 and is quite an effort indeed!
By all means, flap your befurred airfoils over to Arbo's roost and fly headlong into into a uniquely Arbo-plectic elegy to the "Fat Bat" in cinema and then some! Post-haste!
Many thanks to the Fat Bat-tard in attendance for taking the time to think of his baby Brothers Maciste and making sure that we can all Arbo-gasmically take the dumm out of dummies!
BATTY! BATTY! BATTY!
Click here to view post at: ARBOGAST ON FILM!
post © Howard S. Berger & Kevin Marr
Posts
All Comments
