The Frisco Kid (Warner Brothers, 1979): Another View

Jousting with Jeff…  

The time has come, the walrus said… to publish our first post devoted to a dissent from one published by Jeff Arnold. Jeff was a superb historian and critic but all his fans have had various moments of occasional disagreement with him. Often these are the most interesting experiences to be had when perusing this site – thinking about how it is that someone who was so right so often could sometimes end up with a completely different opinion than oneself on a particular movie. In the case of The Frisco Kid, I come not exactly to praise the picture – for it’s very imperfect indeed. But nor to bury it – for methinks it has more going for it than you’d gather when reading Jeff’s review.

Before reading on, you might want to go check out that review:

The Frisco Kid

As you’ll see, it’s a brief post, in fact possibly the briefest Jeff ever wrote. And it makes his position crystal clear: he hates this movie. So much so that he doesn’t even bother with the close summary, analysis, and appraisal he normally allows even movies on which he’s not so keen. Instead, he gallops as swiftly as possible to his conclusion: “… just dreadful. Do not watch it, I implore you. It will leave you scarred.”  But interestingly, this film really seems to divide people, some of whom actually adore it. On IMDB, the user reviews are even more varied than usual: plenty of 10/10s, plenty of 1/10s and most points in-between.

So, I checked it out for myself and now it’s time to declare my hand: I’m one of the in-betweeners.

The Frisco Kid was the second-to-last film ever directed by Robert Aldrich, a major but rather puzzling talent in Hollywood genre movies from 1953 to 1983. (Puzzling because his films are so varied in nature and quality. We’ll be exploring this puzzle in some detail in a future post, an overview of Aldrich’s Westerns.) By the late 1970s, he was reportedly not in perfect health and was having difficulty getting good jobs due, at least in part, to having irritated studio bosses by his hard-nosed leadership of the Directors Guild of America, through which he forcefully negotiated better conditions for his fellow filmmakers. Apparently, he took on the direction of this film pretty much at the last minute, replacing Dick Richards (Western-wise, notable for directing The Culpepper Cattle Company, 1972) during pre-production. This on a project that had been bouncing around between various parties for several years.

Aldrich’s own last Western had been the superb Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and his last hit had been the prison / sports action movie The Longest Yard (1974). But his most recent film was the frankly execrable flop The Choirboys (1977), a borderline-offensive, violent, and profanity-laden cop ‘comedy’.  Now, at the end of the decade, he was trying his hand at a Western again – and, perhaps unwisely, another comedy. (He’d mixed the two genres before, with 1963’s 4 for Texas – and that one’s a total turkey.)

If nothing else, The Frisco Kid has a unique premise. Gene Wilder is a newly-trained Polish rabbi dispatched to Philadelphia to travel onward to San Francisco where he’s due to head a currently leaderless congregation and enter an arranged marriage. Enroute he’s robbed and left for dead then runs into and becomes trail pard with an amiable bank robber played by Harrison Ford.

This most peculiar movie is three films in one. First and most obviously, it’s a comic vehicle for Wilder, given full rein for a highly energetic star turn, steeped in the tradition of broad, Yiddish humour. It’s a performance some love and others hate. Second, it’s a classic odd couple comedy. And last, but not least,  it’s… a Western.

As they make their way west, our odd couple are catapulted into numerous genre situations, from bank robberies to bar fights and temporary Indian captivity, all leading to a final showdown in town – which, mind you, is handled a little differently than in most oaters.

The Frisco Kid is too long, too episodic, and its tone jumps about all over the place. Also, although Ford does his best, he’s miscast. He’s too young and is not convincing as a 19^th century character. Amazingly John Wayne is said to have been strongly considered for the role at some earlier point and did consider taking it. Of course, by the time the film was made he was too ill to have done it but it’s an interesting alternate reality to think about as you watch the actual movie. Ford later recollected that “every time… Robert Aldrich looked at me, he was thinking about how unhappy he was that he didn’t have John Wayne instead.” Meanwhile, Aldrich himself proves yet again that he’s no comedy director. He stages the visual gags with clunky timing, while otherwise pretty much leaving Wilder – for better or worse – to do his schtick.  A comedy that never really makes one laugh is a comedy labouring under a non-trivial disadvantage…

Not convincing

And yet… there are things to like in this movie and for which it should be defended. And those, specifically, are its ‘Western’ aspects, all of which Aldrich handles pretty well. He directs action sequences with the casual confidence of the old pro he now was, and he and DP Robert P. Hauser get a very pleasing lyrical quality out of the changing landscape settings. Possibly the highlight of the film is the Indian captivity sequence which switches from tense drama to a beguiling – and once again most unusual – peaceful resolution.

Close encounters of the Native American kind

Above all, darn it, there is something appealing about Wilder’s character and his performance. The rabbi is good-naturedly naïve but quietly stubborn and morally steadfast. There’s something engaging, too, about his evolving relationship with Ford (even if their getting to like and learn from one other is as predictable a plot development as the sun going down), and his journey not just from Pennsylvania to California but from boy to man (metaphorically speaking: he’s middle-aged at the start).  From innocent abroad to proper Westerner: a Mensch of the West, you might say! Really, these are all classic Western themes, just given a Jewish spin for the first time.

Appealing

So there we are: in this blogger’s opinion, we’re dealing with a curate’s egg rather than the disgraceful disaster written off by Jeff. An oddity of an oater that on many levels doesn’t work and yet, on some others, sort-of does – and that, taken as a whole, has enough fascinations and charms to keep one watching. Perhaps it would have been better played as a straight drama, but though it indeed brought this reviewer almost no laughs, it did elicit more than a few smiles, alongside some groans. Its slightly inexplicable sweet charm (not Robert Aldrich characteristics!) has stuck with me since viewing it and I’ll probably give it another go sometime, if not in a huge hurry.

Somewhere right now Jeff may be ruefully shaking his head in disapproval, but then again he was always happy for readers to cheerfully argue with him, remarking that the world would be a dull place if we all agreed on everything. We’d love to hear from readers below, whether you agree more with Jeff’s dismissal of The Frisco Kid or sympathise more with the above half-hearted defence of it. And by the way, we’d also welcome future ‘Another view’ pieces from members of the JAW community. If you fancy writing a post that takes respectful issue with any of this site’s published opinions, please get in touch at: jawestrideson@gmail.com

This post is part of the On the Spot blogathon, hosted by Rebecca at Taking Up Room.

Please visit and enjoy the blogathon’s articles on a diverse range of filmed entertainment!