Revisionist, socially conscious westerns from the 1960s tend
to show their age, and I was expecting to be disappointed by this one. But this
film holds up pretty well, even though it starts out with a couple strikes
against it.
While two of its central characters are Native Americans,
the leads in the cast are all white actors, including Katharine Ross who plays
a young Indian woman. You also expect the unfortunate events in Robert Blake’s
later life to affect his presence on screen. Actually, neither poses much of a
problem.
Plot. It is 1909;
the setting is Riverside County in the deserts east of Los Angeles. Blake plays
a Paiute Indian who kills the father of Ross’s character, when the man
interrupts a lovers’ tryst and is intent on shooting Blake. Robert Redford is
the local sheriff drawn unwillingly into the manhunt that follows. It is Indian
business so far as he’s concerned, and he eventually leaves the posse of white
men who are on Blake and Ross’s trail.
Though traveling on foot, the two fugitives manage to
outpace and outwit their pursuers. When Blake shoots all of the posse’s horses
and one of the men is gravely wounded, Redford rejoins the effort to find
Blake.
He discovers the body of Ross, who lies shot to death with a
pistol beside her, and it’s unclear whether her death was at the hand of Blake or a
suicide. Working alone, Redford finally finds Blake and kills him in what
appears to be self-defense. Soon he learns that Blake’s rifle was not loaded.
Joshua Tree National Park, 1917 |
Themes. So the movie
is something of a downer. Its message is about Indians caught between two
worlds, their traditional one and that of the white man. Blake dresses like a
cowhand, and could pass for one, but he’s an object of contempt because of his
race. A product of an Indian school, Ross is torn between her love for Blake
and her willingness to adapt to a white world.
Redford’s character is a man of uncertain identity himself.
He’s coolly intelligent and is able to second-guess the man the posse is
following, but he’s more involved in a stormy love affair he’s got going with
Susan Clark. She’s a well-educated doctor who works on the reservation. Problem
is, the only interest they have in common is sex. The rest of the time they
fight. We don’t much like either of them.
The point of the film seems to be that the Indians are
doomed, though the whites who dominate them are far from being more
intelligent, humane, or deserving. They are simply better armed and outnumber
them. One white character (Robert Lipton) has befriended Blake and pleads with
the others not to treat him like a criminal. But his is only one small voice.
Joshua Tree National Park, 1917 |
In a side-plot, President Taft makes a visit to Riverside,
where a special chair is prepared for him to sit on at the Mission Inn. There’s
a loony discussion among the men and Taft’s security detail about keeping him
from being shot like President McKinley eight years before.
The film followed the Kennedy assassination by only six
years. A contemporary audience would probably have understood the scene a little
differently, but even 40-some years later, the men seem simply self-serving and
callous. In fact, it’s a whirlwind visit, and we never get to meet Taft.
Performances. Robert
Redford is his handsome self, with that intelligent, sly smile that occasionally reveals a few teeth, and he looks good on a horse. It’s pleasant to see his
youthful face (he was only 33 at the time). Hard to tell how he was directed,
but there is an opaqueness sometimes in his performance that makes him seem
perplexed about the character he’s playing.
Blake had been in front of movie cameras since his boyhood,
as one of the Little Rascals. He fully inhabits his character as Willie Boy and
has a smoldering physicality in the early scenes that anticipates the rest of
the film, where he is often on the run. Ross, to her credit, plays her role
straight, and we forget her very different Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid, which was released in the
same year as this one.
Wrapping up. The
film was based on Harry Lawton’s book Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt
(1960). Lawton came across the story while working as a reporter for the
Riverside, California Press-Enterprise,
and spent three years doing research. He helped found the Malki Press, a publisher of books about Native
Americans in California. His book was adapted to the screen by the film’s
director, Abraham Polonsky.
The film benefits from being shot in the locale where the
events the story is based on actually took place. The references are to actual
locations: Whitewater, Banning, Twenty-Nine Palms, and the Morongo Reservation (site of a big, flashy casino now).
Film was shot in some of these places, as well as Joshua Tree National Park.
Much of the strength of the film is its color, wide-screen
cinematography, provided by Conrad Hall. His extensive Hollywood career
included In Cold Blood (1967), Cool
Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid (1969), and American
Beauty (1999). Prolific composer for film
and TV, Dave Grusin provides a contemporary soundtrack that is not “western”
but underscores the action subtly and without intrusion.
Tell Them Willie Boy is Here is currently available at netflix and amazon. For more of Tuesday’s
Overlooked Movies, click over to Todd Mason’s blog.
Source: imdb.com
Photo credits: United States Geological Survey
Coming up: G. Frank Lydston, Poker Jim, Gentleman (1906)
As I think over the many movies I've seen with Robert Redford, he ALWAYS presents an outwardly cool, semi-opaque character, even when he's supposedly a likable fellow. It's always a little off-putting, even when I like the movie. I think he would have done very well in an action film directed by Don Siegal. He doesn't have that kind of muscular physicality as Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood, but it would have been interesting to see him in that kind of role when he was younger.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Duane. It's been maybe too easy for him to trade on his looks. In later years, as he became a superstar, critics would complain that he typically played safe and didn't take chances as an actor and producer.
DeleteI caught a piece of this on cable the other day, and I did find Ross and Blake's imposture a bit distracting, but I agree they were doing well by the roles...though, perhaps more troubling than the assassination argument (I haven't seen that yet) in that assassination-laden decade (King and RFK just the year before, of course) is, to some extent, Blake in this kind of story, given how life's gone for him and his associates since...
ReplyDeleteTodd, to be honest, I didn't know what to make of that assassination-talk scene. I'm thinking it may have been meant to make the film's issues seem more contemporary for a 1960s audience.
DeleteYeah, liked this film, saw it a few years ago, and for some reason couldnt understand why Redford was even there? I always thought, and still do, some one else could have played that part.
ReplyDeleteBlake, to me seemed ok, but I liked him in his detective roles better.
Ross? Well you do need eye candy!
I think Redford was also cast more than a little for the "eye candy."
DeleteAnd eye candy is okay. Thinking back on his career, I find it pretty mediocre though. I loved THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR but not really because of him so much as the great script and Fay Dunaway. I think THE CANDIDATE might have been his best film as far as craft.
ReplyDeleteMaybe for me, Patti, it's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN; but again, the material was compelling. His work as a producer, e.g. A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, has merit.
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