MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE FAR COUNTRY (1954)

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Monday, January 26, 2009

THE FAR COUNTRY (1954)

This penultimate of eight collaborations between James Stewart & helmer Anthony Mann was their fourth Western. And if it pales next to their final work (THE MAN FROM LARAMIE/'55, Western #5), it’s still a strong film on its own terms, with particularly fine location shooting. Stewart, in atypically uningratiating mode, is a calculating loner who brings a herd of cattle up to Gold Rush territory for a big payoff. But the life-is-cheap/lawless frontier he finds along the way knocks a dent into the surface charm he’s long maintained as armor against real human contact. Stewart doesn’t have much rapport with his ambivalent leading lady Ruth Roman (who did?), but spars nicely with Walter Brennan, Corinne Calvert & J. C. Flippen, and against a convincingly amoral John McIntire. But the climax of the pic belongs entirely to Stewart’s longtime equine co-star, Pie, who proved a one-take wonder at taking direction.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Monday, January 26, 2009

THE FAR COUNTRY (1954)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE