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A Western-lover’s Western
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In a post-Heaven’s Gate period of drought when A-Westerns weren’t being made (Cimino had almost sunk the genre single-handed), Clint Eastwood and the Kasdans (praise be unto them) revived the cowboy film half way through the decade with two first-class 1985 pictures, Pale Rider and Silverado. You could go to a movie theater and see a proper Western again.
They are both classic, straight-down-the-line Western pictures with no overly artistic or psychological pretensions (perhaps Pale Rider a little more than Silverado) and they are both a Western fan’s Westerns. Silverado is the more fun, the more full of energy. The whole crew must have had a whale of a time making it. Lawrence Kasdan (director, co-writer, co-producer) said, “We wanted to remind people of the pleasures that we had had in Westerns growing up.”
They succeeded. He and his brother Mark’s love of the genre shines through. Lawrence wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark with George Lucas, and Silverado too crackles with action and fun. The movie packs in all the traditional features of the Western of the golden age and yet manages to do it without clichés or corniness. It comes across instead as affectionate quotation. Peter Stack wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that the film “delivers elaborate gun-fighting scenes, legions of galloping horses, stampeding cattle, a box canyon, covered wagons, tons of creaking leather and even a High Noonish duel. How it manages to run the gamut of cowboy movie elements without getting smart-alecky is intriguing.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “This is a story, you will agree, that has been told before. What distinguishes Kasdan’s telling of it is the style and energy he brings to the project.”
Ian Freer in Empire thought the film was the “kind of picture that makes you want to play cowboys the moment it is over.” He said, “Whereas many of the westerns from the ‘70s try a revisionist take on the genre, Silverado offers a wholehearted embracing of western traditions.”
Visually, it is outstanding. As so often in more recent Westerns, the production design (Ida Ransom) is authentic in detail. They built the biggest ever Western town near Santa Fe for it. The photography is by John Bailey, an admirer of Georgia O’Keefe paintings. The film is shot in glorious winter New Mexico light, often with ultra-long shadows, and is stunning. There are wonderful pinkish South West landscapes. This movie glows.
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And to be fair to Heaven’s Gate (I do try) that was photographically outstanding too, perhaps Vilmos Zsigmond’s finest work. So what with Bruce Surtees’s Pale Rider shot up in Idaho, the 80s sure produced some magnificent Westerns to look at. With Heaven’s Gate, of course, that’s all there is. (You see, I told you I was fair).
The Bruce Broughton music in Silverado, justly Oscar-nominated, is also superb: classic, stirring, traditional, quite Star Wars-y in a way.
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The acting is super. The four protagonists, (left to right above) Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn and Kevin Costner, are proper Western heroes, tough, strong and decent. Supporting cast are also enjoyable: we might mention in particular John Cleese as the canny English sheriff, Rosanna Arquette as a tough farmer woman, Linda Hunt as the saloon keeper (she’s terrific) and especially Brian Dennehy as the corrupt sheriff of Silverado. He’s the smiling rogue, Robert Preston, Richard Boone and Brian Donlevy all rolled into one.
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One of the great tragedies of Silverado, nay, of the whole history of the Western, was the decision by Mr Kasdan, woe be unto him, to cut out the scene where Kevin Kline, having just shot a man who had stolen his hat (fair enough), kicks up the Stetson from the floor in a saloon with the toe of his boot and it lands on his head. Is that cool or what? Luckily you can see it in an out-take on the DVD. Majestic.
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The opening and closing shots are classics: a silent, dark cabin that explodes in noise and light, with Glenn walking out of a Fordian doorway (affectionately quoted) so that we see a whole panoramic New Mexico before us; and at the end of the movie a classic showdown with Kline, in Gary Cooper High Noon costume, in another reference to a classic Western, standing in the main street with a shining white church behind him and bad Dennehy, in frock coat, against
the backdrop of bleak desert.
the backdrop of bleak desert.
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There’s a Fordian dance which is shot up by raiders (exactly as in Pale Rider, being filmed at the same time). There’s a rancher/nester conflict theme, it’s got horses and gunfights and great saloons and fisticuffs, there’s a great derringer bit, there’s a stampede, hell, it’s even got tumbleweed. I love it.
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13 Responses
costner was genial.
costner was genial.
Moreover, there is a Derringer!
Jeff – I’ve been having a rip roaring time exploring your posts! I’ve loved Westerns since I was a kid, oddly enough starting with reruns of the Sky King TV show, then moving on to Death Valley Days and all the usual TV Western shows then just about any Western movie that showed up on TV. Thanks for reminding me about Silverado, a movie my wife and I simply didn’t have the chance tossed in theaters since our daughter had just been born when it was released. I tracked down a copy at our library and we had a grand time watching it last night! What fun – Brian Dennehy is definitely a classic villain, the rest of the cast does a bang up job, the movie looks gorgeous – I think I’ll need to buy myself a copy.
Glad you like the blog! I agree that SILVERADO is an all-round excellent Western and you could buy it because it’s one of those one can watch occasionally for the sheer pleasure of a ‘proper’ Western well done.
Brian Dennehy was truly a superb actor. If he was born 20 years earlier he would have been the first choice villain. I have always wondered why First Blood has never been remade as a western as it has all the elements to be a good one, Vietnam War background being replaced by Civil War. You are 100% right, he fils pretty well to this long lineage of actors such as Preston, Boone and Donlevy to whom we can add L.J. Cobb, Raymond Burr, Lyle Bettger and so forth.
Dennehy got his start in “Semi-Tough”, a regrettable Burt Reynolds movie about American football. Dennehy is a bulky, dimwitted lineman used for violent comic relief. It’s pretty clear he’s patterned after Alex Karras—or rather, Karras’ character Mongo from “Blazing Saddles”. Karras was a real NFL’er, and quite intelligent. He used to amuse his teammates in training camp with improvised nonsense a la Jonathan Winters.
‘Silverado’ is a Western I can watch often. I really like it and the DVD commentary with the Western historians is wonderful too.
SILVERADO is a Western-lover’s Western.
“Silverado delivered its mail Pony Express!
Moreso than every other melodrama, Westerns distinguish good guys from bad guys with aesthetics. The white hats and black hats originated here. That convention was soon supplanted by subtler clues who the good and bad were. The good guy dressed better—which is to say worse, generally. There’s no clearer indication of a snake-eyed villain than expensive clothes out of place among the hardscrabble rabble.
The TV Western heroes strove for some trademark accoutrement that marked them cooler than their villains. Roy Rogers’ horseflesh. Wild Bill Hickok’s backward-holstered pearl-handles. (Guy Madison drew them by twisting his wrists, rather than reaching across his body. Lightning fast!) The Range Rider’s fringe that might have clad a hula girl modestly.
“Silverado” had three heroes. (Sorry, but Danny Glover was Ernie Hudson from “Ghostbusters”.) And the trick Kasdan turned was to establish their cool, after which the issues of corruption in Silverado were entirely secondary. Each hero got his own showdown!
(I sort of latched on to Kevin Costner. I gravitate to sidekicks anyway. Darned if he didn’t have the best career of the lot, although Kline turned in some great comical characters and Glenn was a Mercury astronaut!
(Costner did a great thing on “Yellowstone”. He’s a rancher with situational ethics—much as the Rykers from “Shane”. I only saw the two-hour pilot. But in this show, Costner is wearing a white hat as he runs the operation with Cartwright sagacity, and a black hat when he’s throwing his weight around.)
Jeff has often make some comments about the villains are fancily dressed (and moustached) especially the saloon owners, town bosses, cattle barons and crooked bankers who are wearing a vest and sometimes a frog coat, an obvious sign of evil (Raymond Burr, Lyle Bettger, Ted de Corsia to name a few).
But their henchmen are rarely so well dressed on the contrary since they are closer to dusty trail hands riding horses, fistfighting in the dust or mud etc.
But the black hat /white hat is just a limited view of the genre whose scope is much wider and not as simple.
Almost from the beginning of Western, both styles have co-existed even with the good guys, with William Hart and Tom Mix.
Hopalong Cassidy or Zorro are dressed in Black. Jack Wilson/Palance is mostly dressed in dark colors in Shane.
As a young spectator, I was fascinated by Lee, played y a magnificent (!) Robert Vaughn, dressed sharply with black vest, tie and leather gloves. Chris is an an other Magnificent in black. Rogue, ruthless and rotten Joe Erin is also all dressed in black in Vera Cruz.
In Warlock, Clay Blaisedell /Henry Fonda is splendidly as a sharp, well-tailored city-style gunfighter and gambler etc. (Anthony Quinn is even more elegant).
So the border is pretty blurred.
As the old French saying goes, you can’t tell by looks alone… (literally, l’habit ne fait pas le moine aka cloth does not make the monk…)
Well, there you go. Also Maverick was pretty dandy—or just being a maverick. And Wyatt Earp in “The Life and Legend of…”. (This was a rare instance of TV going for authenticity. They still couldn’t bear to give Hugh O’Brian a mustache. TOO subversive.) I guess the character makes the clothes cool instead of vice versa.
We have a hockey team here who’s best player is a Russian named Kirill Kaprizov. On the verge of a Stanley Cup, the team declined to sign a slick passer who assisted on many Kaprizov goals. They had reasons, but fans were still upset. The coach pointed out, “I figure whoever plays with Kaprizov will collect a lot of assists.”
Mr. Arnold has no entry for “The Wild, Wild West”, I think because it’s a mongrel spy Western. But here’s as good a place as any to remark Robert Conrad’s bolero look, which is unique. There’s a cartoon sequence over the (terrific) theme. The Jim West character bears no resemblance to Conrad, and is dressed in standard Randolph Scott / Matt Dillon vest and tan jeans. The reason for that was that the part was intended for Rory Calhoun, who at this stage was too deep in the bottle to risk a series on.
I thought mostly of feature films, not TV.
Maverick is an excellent example of a gambler typical attire indeed. Jeff Corey’s Wild Bill Hickock in Little Big Man is quite something too. And not forgetting Dustin Hoffman himself when disguised as an operette gunslinger .
Jeff is talking of Wild Wild West (“It wasn’t my favorite, combining, as it did, an I Spy vibe with elements of The Man from Uncle and Jules Verney Victorian gadgets. But it was certainly popular”) and more in his article about the 1999 film, it was possibly listed in his essay about the TV westerns as well but I did not check.
Talking of Rory Calhoun, you just made me think of him in the River of No Return wearing his dark three-piece gambler’s suit complete with a waistcoat, tie and frock coat.
There are so many other examples