Cowboy (1958)
This is a strange film, and strange films are always worth a look. It's a little slow--a good half hour could have been taken out here and there--but if you forget about what a cowboy roundup Western is supposed to be and just let this unfold, you'll be at least curious, maybe even sucked in.
The director, Delmar Daves, has a couple of distinctive, almost great films to his name, "Dark Passage"and "An Affair to Remember," but both of those are flawed by some awkward sense of timing, of playing out the cards quite right, and you can feel that here. But hey, Jack Lemmon as a cowboy? You bet--and it's not a comedy? Well, it is comic, for sure, a strange farce, and its exaggerations are worth the look, verging on the cusp of camp, or parody.
Brian Donlevy and lead man Glenn Ford are totally serious, though, and Ford especially (as the main character) gives the film depth. There are fistfights and bucking broncos and stern men drinking stern whiskey, and through it all there remains a slightly baffled Jack Lemmon. There are strange moments, like when one cowboy is rubbing whiskey and salt into Lemmon's behind, and another scene where they throw a rattlesnake around just for fun, a man dying as a result.
You'd think this slightly weird stuff would throw you out of the movie, but it has the effect of making the people more real, and the events more palpable. The second half of the movie becomes increasingly normal and serious.
So what holds it back? It goes partly back to the director, I think, and his editor, making the thing just a hair awkward at times. Throw in the good but routine music and photography, as well as a story that lacks finesse, and you get this odd and not quite satisfying affair.
This is a strange film, and strange films are always worth a look. It's a little slow--a good half hour could have been taken out here and there--but if you forget about what a cowboy roundup Western is supposed to be and just let this unfold, you'll be at least curious, maybe even sucked in.
The director, Delmar Daves, has a couple of distinctive, almost great films to his name, "Dark Passage"and "An Affair to Remember," but both of those are flawed by some awkward sense of timing, of playing out the cards quite right, and you can feel that here. But hey, Jack Lemmon as a cowboy? You bet--and it's not a comedy? Well, it is comic, for sure, a strange farce, and its exaggerations are worth the look, verging on the cusp of camp, or parody.
Brian Donlevy and lead man Glenn Ford are totally serious, though, and Ford especially (as the main character) gives the film depth. There are fistfights and bucking broncos and stern men drinking stern whiskey, and through it all there remains a slightly baffled Jack Lemmon. There are strange moments, like when one cowboy is rubbing whiskey and salt into Lemmon's behind, and another scene where they throw a rattlesnake around just for fun, a man dying as a result.
You'd think this slightly weird stuff would throw you out of the movie, but it has the effect of making the people more real, and the events more palpable. The second half of the movie becomes increasingly normal and serious.
So what holds it back? It goes partly back to the director, I think, and his editor, making the thing just a hair awkward at times. Throw in the good but routine music and photography, as well as a story that lacks finesse, and you get this odd and not quite satisfying affair.