Breakheart Pass (1975)

This western originated in a 1974 novel by Scots adventure and suspense writer Alistair MacLean (The Guns of Navarone). Set in 1870s Nevada, it takes place entirely on a train as it climbs the snow-covered slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The film might well have been called “Hell on Wheels,” as many on board do not make it to their destination alive. Charles Bronson, at the height of his career in tough-guy roles, has top billing, among a supporting cast of notables.

Plot. A medical relief train is on its way to a fort high in the mountains that has been reportedly stricken by an outbreak of diphtheria. Aboard the train are the governor of the territory (Richard Crenna), his girlfriend (Jill Ireland), a military officer (Ed Lauter), and a U.S. marshal (Ben Johnson), who is transporting a prisoner (Bronson). Two cars of the train are filled with cavalry.

We learn early on that a gang of thugs has overtaken command of the fort and is awaiting arrival of the train. The train itself is plagued with mysterious deaths and disappearances. The fireman falls from a high trestle and, climbing down to have a look at the body, Bronson determines that the fall was no accident. Then the cars carrying the troops derail and plunge over a cliff.

Whatever nefarious scheme is afoot becomes clearer as Bronson discovers that the medical supplies are in fact rifles and dynamite. And we gather that they are intended for a band of Indians waiting ahead at the Breakheart Pass of the film’s title. Several of the passengers and crew are acting strangely. Even the train’s cook seems to be in on the conspiracy.

The identities of the villains aboard the train and of Bronson himself are eventually revealed in the final scenes. Indians, the gang of thugs, and finally mounted cavalry converge on the stalled train, as bullets fly and dynamite explodes. In the final shot, Bronson stands with the locomotive, the snow-covered ground around him littered with bodies.

Mystery train. The film has the feel of an Agatha Christie mystery. The set up is much like one of her stories of murder in a country house, where all the suspects are under the same roof. There’s also her Murder on the Orient Express (1934), adapted to film in 1974. A difference is that Bronson’s character is part of the mystery. For a long time we don’t know who he is, and right to the end of the film we don’t know for sure what he’s up to.

The Old West illustrated

First Lt. Blueberry novel, 1965

Christoph Roos over at his excellent blog is an authority on book illustration, comics, graphic novels, and so on, with a special interest in the Old West. His self-named blog is subtitled “Phantastische Bilder Zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit” [Fantastic Pictures Between Dream and Reality]. Roos is a German-speaking artist and blogger, who lives in Switzerland.

Readers here may be surprised to discover the breadth and depth of work by European graphic artists devoted to Old West themes. In recent posts, Roos has featured Czech artist Zdenek Burian (1905-1981) who illustrated editions of western novels by the Irish-American writer Thomas Mayne Reid (1818-1883) and the German writer Karl May (1842-1912).

Zdenek Burian, Scalphunters, 1937

Zdenek Burian, Northern Star, 1936

Zdenek Burian, Friend of the Solar Gun, 1935

For a more recent example, a hugely popular western series was a French-Belgian production, “Lieutenant Blueberry,” which began in the 1960s and still has a following in Europe today (see Fort Navajo cover above). Roos has a page devoted to its artist, Jean Giraud. (For more information on this series, there is an extensive entry in English at Wikipedia.)

Artist: Jean Giraud

Roos is an illustrator himself and has posted samples of his own western comic sketches. Like other illustrators working in Europe, his style demonstrates the high drama in the way the Old West is imagined, in both the action and the landscape.

Sketch by Christoph Roos

Roos also discusses photo images from western movies, like his recent tribute to Robert Duvall with stills from several of his films. The best way to sample his blog (even if you don’t know German) is to scroll through posts using the label “western” [or click here]. At the end of the page, click on “Ältere posts” to get more pages.

Tweet

Image credits:

Christoph Roos’s blog

Coming up: Charles Bronson, Breakheart Pass (1975)

Glossary of frontier fiction: D(d.f. - ding)

Below is a list of mostly forgotten terms, people, and the occasional song, drawn from a reading offrontier fiction, 1880–1915. Each week a new list, progressing through the alphabet, “from A to Izzard.”

d. f. / dee-fool = damned fool. “Air you a-jumpin’ on us ’cause Marthy Thomas is a d.f.?” Nancy Mann Waddell Woodrow, The New Missioner.

dang my melt = literally, damn me; dang me (from melt = spleen). “Dang my melt if I can see how them wild-catters can keep on takin’ money from folks.” George W. Ogden, The Long Fight.

Daniel in the lions' den, 1890

Daniel come to judgment = someone who makes a wise judgment about something that has previously proven difficult to resolve (reference to the Old Testament prophet Daniel; the phrase first appears in Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice). “When it came to doing the Daniel-arrived-at-judgment act, he had Blackstone and all the other calf-bound antiques begging for mercy.” Hugh Pendexter, Tiberius Smith.

dark as Egypt = totally dark (maybe a reference to the plague of darkness cast on Egypt by Moses in Exodus 10:21). “Flatray counted four other cabins as dark as Egypt.” William MacLeod Raine, Brand Blotters.

Grace Darling, c1839

Darling, Grace = an English woman (1815-1842) who in 1838, along with her father, saved 13 people from the wreck of the SS Forfarshire. “As Grace Darling she smooths the fever-heated pillow of the Crimea.” Alfred Henry Lewis, Wolfville.

dasher = a plunger for agitating cream in a churn. “He took the dasher into his own hand and began a brave onslaught on the over-sour cream.” Dell Munger, The Wind Before the Dawn.

dasher = a board of wood or leather in the front of a carriage to keep out mud; a dashboard. “There was a swift lurch that sent him flying over the dasher.” Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads.

David Harum = fictional character in a popular novel of the same name, published 1898, about a sharply devious horse trader. “It was with many misgivings that I called out in a loud, breezy voice and David Harum manner; ‘Hello, Governor, how will you trade mules?’” Oscar Micheaux, The Conquest.

daystar = the morning star, the sun. “It was his day-star and his life, the one pleasure that brought no suffering with it.” Harry Leon Wilson, The Lions of the Lord.

Charles Sealsfield, The Cabin Book (1842)

1844 edition

Was the first western novel written in German? Many Americans know of Karl May (1842–1912), but even before him there’s the remarkable story of Charles Sealsfield, the pen name of an Austrian, Carl Anton Postl (1793–1864). After breaking his monastic vows, he traveled to America in 1822, and though he eventually settled in Switzerland in 1832, his career as a novelist began in the English language.

His first novel, Tokea, or The White Rose (1828) is set in Louisiana, its title character an Indian chief who rescues an orphaned white girl. It is a big-hearted historical novel with cameo appearances by Stonewall Jackson and the pirate Jean Lafitte. The novel was well received by American readers and was later published in London and translated to German as Der Legitime und der Republikaner in 1833.

Sealsfield seems to have fallen in love with the American frontier and continued writing in German a series of novels set in Texas, beginning with Das Kajuttenbuch, oder Nationale Charakteristiken, published in 1842. It was first translated by C. F. Mersch and published in New York as The Cabin Book, or Sketches of Life in Texas in 1844. That edition incorrectly identified the author as “Seatsfield.” Another translation was published in London as The Cabin Book, or National Characteristics in 1852, followed by an American edition in 1871.

Morse rescued

Plot. A group of mostly single Mississippi plantation owners gather in a modest house built by a former sea captain. An oddly built structure, it resembles a ship’s cabin, from which the novel gets its name. The men spend a long night in gentlemanly banter, drinking, and telling stories. A newcomer among them, Edward Morse, is a Marylander who has been on the Texas frontier. He tells of getting lost on the endless flat prairies along the Gulf coast and being rescued by a wild man described as a bear hunter.

The man, Bob Rock, is acting strangely and seems to be having a psychotic episode. He takes Morse with him to the local alcalde who has a large cotton plantation. There he confesses that he has killed a man and tells a story of shooting a traveler for his money belt and burying the body under a massive tree. He is overwhelmed with guilt and wants to pay for his crime.

The alcalde calls a jury of other plantation owners who hear his case, and over the alcalde’s objections, they determine he should be hanged. The alcalde argues that Texas needs men of Bob’s fierce nature to fight for independence from Mexico. But the other men do not share his opinion.

Silver Lode (1954)

McCarthyism hit full tide in 1954 with the Army-McCarthy hearings, and this western by veteran Hollywood director Allan Dwan tells a story that parallels those years of suspicion and public witch-hunts. The villain of the movie is even named McCarty.

Plot. In a frontier town in Nevada, Dan Ballard (John Payne) is about to marry his sweetheart Rose (Lizabeth Scott). In the short two years he’s lived there, he’s become a well-respected local rancher. The wedding is interrupted by the arrival of four men, led by Ned McCarty (Dan Duryea), with a warrant for his arrest. Seems he’s wanted for robbery and murder in California.

The town’s citizens stand by Payne, including the bride-to-be and an old flame, Dolly (Dolores Moran), who hangs out in the saloon. At first outspokenly supportive, the tide of opinion begins to turn against Payne, especially as the sheriff is shot by Duryea and Payne is discovered standing next to the body holding two pistols.

Payne flees, firing the pistols as he goes and casualties accumulate. Taking sanctuary in a church, he is followed by Duryea who traps him in the church’s bell tower. When it looks like it’s all over for Payne, Scott comes running from the telegraph office with a wire exonerating him, and a ricocheting bullet fired from Duryea’s gun puts an end to Duryea instead. The trailer shows the plot of the film in a nutshell:

Parallels. Duryea’s constant hectoring seems pretty obviously modeled on the rhetorical style of Joseph McCarthy himself. In its story of a man fighting outlaws single-handed on his wedding day, the plot of the film also has a lot in common with another movie, High Noon (1952). There’s even the hero’s attachment to two women, one his respectable young bride and the other a former lover. In this film, the two women actually conspire to keep the hero alive.

Loren D. Estleman, The Master Executioner

Published in 2001, this novel captures something of the sobering mood of that year. It’s about life and death and choices with unexpected consequences. Not really a story, it’s a character study of a young man emotionally marked by wartime atrocity. A Union soldier, still in his teens, he is witness to a clumsy and ghastly execution by hanging.

At war’s end, Oscar Stone is scarcely eighteen years old and the only surviving member of his family, his one brother dead and buried on the fields of Gettysburg. In need of stability and purpose, he resolves to marry and devote his life to a reliable trade. Temperament makes of him a man determined to not simply be good at what he does, but to become a master practitioner. That and pure circumstance lead him into a dark and singular profession. He becomes a hangman.

Plot. Oscar first apprentices to a carpenter, intending to take his skills to the West, where the building of new frontier towns would guarantee him a livelihood. He chooses a wife in the same way, a pretty girl who would be a boon companion and provide him with children. Against her family’s wishes, the newlyweds set out for Kansas.

Alas, Topeka is already well supplied with carpenters, and he gets a job no one else wants—building a gallows. The thoroughness of his work impresses the professional hangman, Fabian Rudd, hired to perform the execution. Before long Oscar has fallen under the man’s influence. Horrified, his wife leaves him.

Public hanging, 1862

Called to a job in Denver, he designs and supervises the construction of a gallows capable of hanging six men at once. The successful dispatch of six convicts wins headlines in newspapers around the country and swiftly builds his reputation. More compelling to him than the publicity is the realization that he has found his true calling.

He also discovers that there is a sudden demand for his talents, mostly in the West, where unlike the East there is little public outcry against capital punishment. Traveling by train and staying in the best hotels, he establishes a comfortable routine. We only sense that something is amiss when he begins drinking more and more regularly. Eventually, alcohol contributes to a bungled execution and produces a momentary crisis of conscience.

Meanwhile, he hires the Pinkertons to search for his missing wife, who has disappeared without a trace. All he knows is that she was last seen traveling with a small boy, who Oscar assumes is his son. After a decade, he has no more than a letter from her assuring him that any effort to find her will be fruitless.

Character. Estleman creates a wonderfully complex character in Oscar, who finds in himself the ability to be a methodical, coldly rational killer. He can do what he does by being emotionally detached from it, focusing instead on perfecting his skill.

Glossary of frontier fiction: C(cove – cymlin)

Below is a list of mostly forgotten terms, people, and the occasional song, drawn from a reading offrontier fiction, 1880–1915. Each week a new list, progressing through the alphabet, “from A to Izzard.”

cove = a fellow, chap. “He’s a lazy old cove, dad is.” Frederick Thickstun Clark, In the Valley of Havilah.

“Cowboy’s Lament” = title of a song, also known as “Streets of Laredo.” “They tried all the old favorites, the ‘Cow-boy’s Lament’ being chief among them.” Marie Manning, Judith of the Plains. Listen here.

cowrie = a marine mollusk having a smooth, glossy, domed shell with a long narrow opening, typically brightly patterned. “You’ve seen her wax flowers? Yes; and the shell table with ‘Bless our Home’ on it, in pink cowries?” Horace Annesley Vachell, Bunch Grass.

crab = to spoil, upset, ruin. “Moncrossen is afraid I will crab his bird’s-eye game—and I will, too, when the proper time comes.” James Hendryx, The Promise.

crack a bottle = have a drink. “He could play two deuces pat at bluff, / Could ‘crack a bottle,’ or ‘blow his stuff.’” William De Vere, Jim Marshall’s New Pianner.