MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: COWBOY (1958)

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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

COWBOY (1958)

Glenn Ford & helmer Delmer Daves returned to the West after 3:10 TO YUMA/’57 with this less original oater. The film gets off to a corny start with Ford whopping it up as a dynamic cattleman who’s just arrived in Chicago with a herd to sell. He loses his shirt at poker and is forced to take on a greenhorn as a partner, Jack Lemmon. You can guess the rest: Jack cowboys up, earns Glenn’s grudging respect, and after lots of bad food, bucking horses, Indian skirmishes, cantina fights and a lost senorita, a wary friendship emerges. Ford is plainly uncomfortable showing all that gusto in the opening act, but both he and the film improve once they leave the city. Then Ford relaxes, banking his fires and letting the pressure slowly build to a boil. As the tenderfoot, Lemmon reminds you what a natural he was on-screen before he accumulated so many actorish mannerisms. And while it’s nice to see Brian Donlevy, playing an ex-sheriff who’s grown tired of killing, he doesn’t get enough screen time to make an impression.

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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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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

COWBOY (1958)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE