“Westward the Women”

In a recent post I mentioned the 1951 William Wellman movie “Westward the Women,” a neglected classic which provides a tremendous, and very emotional, film experience.

What I didn’t mention is that it’s likely the best movie about the trek west, the crossing by wagon train of the American continent. I know of no movie which better depicts how arduous that journey was.

In this day of political correctness the settling of the American continent is at best scorned; at worst presented as a criminal event. Anything but! This vast country sat virtually empty, its few million inhabitants living at a subsistence level. The natives’ short lives were short and brutal. Crossing the frontier was one of the great feats of human history. I drove to California and back, and was amazed by the distances, impressed by how difficult the crossing of the continent by the pioneers truly was. This tremendous movie conveys some of that.

Film or Digital?

Word is that standard movie theaters are converting to digital, that within a year or two, new movies will be available and screened only in that format. This should increase the value of, and need for, repertory movie theaters which show classic movies on film, the way they were meant to be shown. Nothing matches the film experience. Film as a medium is subliminally warmer, clearer, and more colorful than the digital format. “El Cid” shown on film exemplifies this, which is why I still plan on presenting, someday!, this greatest of all movies the way it’s supposed to be viewed.

Great Movie Couples

One of the compelling aspects of "El Cid" is that the two leads, Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, in strength of personality are equally matched. A key aspect of the plot is that Chimene, daughter of a strong father, is looking for a strong mate. The contempt she shows the young king, for instance, is a sign that she holds men to an almost-impossible ideal. Indeed, in some ways she's the strongest character in the story, and is as strong a presence as Heston on the screen.
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What are the best movie couples? What makes a great on-screen pairing?

Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett and Scarlett in "Gone With the Wind" might be thought of. Theirs is an interesting relationship. Rhett is physically dominant, while Scarlett dominates Rhett-- and everyone else in the film-- in other ways, through her mind and her will. It's obvious that Rhett is looking for a daughter-- someone he can spoil-- as much as a wife, and in effect says this. This is in part attributable to the age difference. We have a fascinating coupling, who balance each other out, but it's not a combination of equals.

I've selected three movies, past and more recent, where the chemistry between the leads is dynamic . I'd argue, because their equals. They try, but neither person in each of the three pairings gets the upper hand.

1.) "WESTWARD THE WOMEN." 1951. A hugely underrated film about a wagon train taking potential brides west to California. After encountering Indians, floods, and other disasters, the women end up virtually taking over. You'll never see a more "feminist" film! If you haven't seen it, do so. A true classic.

The leads are Robert Taylor and Denise Darcel, he playing the cowboy hired to get the wagon train to its destination, she one of the more improper ladies along. They clash often-- including a fantastic riding scene-- but in the end. . . .

2.) "NORTH BY NORTHWEST." 1959. Top-shelf Hitchcock involving spies and, interestingly, another cross country journey. Cary Grant trying to rescue cold and edgy Eva Marie Saint is nothing so much as a man going after his mate.

3.) "OUT OF SIGHT." 1998. Based on a Elmore Leonard novel, this able film is a about a U.S. Marshal, Jennifer Lopez, tracking down an escaped convict in the person of George Clooney. More travel! What is it about sending your characters out into the world? There are several key moments between the two in the film. For my money, the best movie either of them has made. The sparks are palpable.

What Are the Great Movies?

The only way to judge movies is in a movie theater, before a huge screen, experiencing the work fully. I've gone to a lot of "revival" houses and seen many of the best movies this way, from "The Third Man" to "Godfather II."

What's the ideal movie experience? Not only should every element come together artistically, from dialogue to image to sound and score, the artwork should assault you on many levels, intellectually and emotionally. The greatest movies, like all great art, reach down into your very soul and shake it, so you stumble from the darkness of the movie house, the world of imagination, back into reality wondering if you'll ever recover from what you've just heard and seen.

A Pertinent Quote

Here's a quote from Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart, page 230.

"There is something to be said, surely, for Nietzsche's prophecies regarding the 'Last Men.' At least, when one considers our culture's devotion to acquisition, celebrity, distraction, and therapy, it is hard not to think that perhaps our vision as a people has narrowed to the smaller preoccupations and desires of individuals, . . . it is hard not to lament the loss of cultural creativity that seems an inevitable concomitant of this secular beatitude. When one looks, for instance, at the crepuscular wasteland of modern Europe-- with its aging millions milling around the glorious remnants of an artistic and architectural legacy that no modern people could hope to rival, acting out the hideously prolonged satyr play at the end of the tragic cycle of European history-- it is hard to supress a feeling of morbid despair. This was Nietzsche's greatest fear: the loss of transcendent aspiration that could coax mighty works of cultural imagination out of a people."

You Don't Beat Something with Nothing

Secular Western culture is spiritually bankrupt. It's an artistic dead end. It lacks meaning. The absence of meaning and truth is its point.

Western culture needs to return to its roots. I'm a Christian because this gives life meaning and purpose.

Changing the Culture

THE ONLY thing which will rescue America is to re-embrace the concept of America. This starts with renewing American culture—with promoting the idea of unique American culture which has been lost in a mad rush toward unthinking irrelevant Globalism which posits all cultures no matter how backward or barbaric as equal to the achievements of Western civilization. America is one of those achievements.

To do my part I’m working to re-introduce the concept of American literature. I’ve been doing this at another blog,

www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

(See the All-Time American Writer Tournament there.)

My next objective is to renew the American short story, which lost its way several decades ago when it left the vigorous stories of the past to fall into a morass of elitist solipsistic navel-gazing overcrafted literary junk.

My first shot? The new ebook, Ten Pop Stories, now on sale at Amazon’s Kindle Store, (www.amazon.com) and as a Nook Book at Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com). The ebook contains entertaining American fiction. It’s ridiculously affordable. Purchase your copy now!