„HANG 'EM HIGH“ (1968)

 

Dir.: Ted Post; with: Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens (vehiculated to the stardom), Pat Hingle, Ed Begley, Ben Johnson, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Charles McGraw, Russell Thorson, L.Q. Jones

 

* * *

The western comes home, no longer spaghetti and cannoli, but baked beans and black coffee with last drops of which man extinguishes the camp fire, and everything is filmed against blue screen on which the cheesy landcape and art designed resembling a camping and sporting goods store store were later projected (as a grumpy critic, namely Bosley Crowther from NY Times, said after premiere of John Ford's "The Searchers"). Yugoslavian country singer Zvonko Bogdan bought a property, a horse and a stable from the first big fee, and Eastwood with his friend producer of  "A Fistful of Dollars", "Good, Bad - Evil", etc. used that money and founded the Malpaso Productions company and worked hard in it so that everything was his way. He even rejected John Sturges as the director of this film and installed a friend. But it was worth it.

Although it is said in the description that this is a "revisionist" western, it's not, no siree. Firstly, where have you ever seen a revisionist western with Ed Begley? Secondly, the term is used wrongly. The classical western are in fact revisionist, since they are the ones who revise history: they show Indians with feathers growing fron their heads and cowboys as fancy models woth 2 or three guns, and in clean trousers. And they quench the thirst with whiskey which is suicidal at such temperature. No, this film doesn't revise anything, this is a saloon cowboy movie in front of a styropore foam backdrop panels, and the fact that there is philosophizing about justice only vaguely resembles Wedekind, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Chekhov, whoih American filmakers always had a soft spot for. The mythical European spleen was always charming for the people on the other side of the pond. And yes, you still can smell the oregano all the time.

Did anyone else notice in the thirty-something minute, after the arrest of the blacksmith, a member of the lynch mob, he was a John Wayne impersonator (scarf around his neck, brick-colored shirt, baggy pants, smile of Yugoslaian politician Vojislav Šešelj) was walking under the roof on the streets of the Coulisse Film City?  It  can almost seem as awas almost a revenge for Wayne's criticism of the film "High Plains Drifter" from 1973. Or, if you don't believe in time travel, then anger over this joke was brewing in Wayne so much that it erupted like a geyser only in 1973 on the occasion of  "non-American film about the Wild West" as he put it in his accusation letter.

„Unforgiven“ + „Sudden Impact“ + unfilmed sequel of "Incident at Ox-Bow /that is sequel: what would happen next/" --> have you noticed the pattern? For Eastwood, too, it can be said that he has been shooting one and the same film all his life. He adored himself, he filmed the idolized tableau of himself, he was in every frame, he kissed blond skinny girls (his type of beauty), and the villainhe  was only in one movie, the one that Wayne spat on.

Nop, not a revisionism, the film opens with an incredibly dirty velvet shirt, that's how dirty the bums are when sometimes enter the city streets and everyone holds their noses. (Later there is a discontinuity, when that same shirt is unjustifiably much cleaner.) Eastwood is Jebbediah Jeremiah Jeremiah for short Jed Cooper, a former sheriff who has sent himself into early retirement wanting a quiet life. But, by mistake, he is accused of stealing cattle, for which the death penalty follows (all of us comic book readers and Cinematheque visitors know this: stealing horses and cattle is a no-no; but until the movie with Nicholson, we naively believed that you were safe if you swam across the Rio Grande; they also say that Ratko and Radovan lived in a similar delusion because they missed that movie).

Captain Wilson - "Bonanza Face", Ed Begley, or as I say: "Lorme Green for the Rich" - leads the lynching campaign. They hang Cooper and leave, but the mysterious and self-deprecating Sheriff Bliss (Ben Johnson and his role was such unused gold for eventual spin-offs!) appears, cuts the rope and arrests the half-dead Eastwood again and takes him to a new trial in a wooden horse-driven cage (which we later saw again in Tarantino's „Django“).

And here a slapstick western could be continued in two or three directions, perhaps also comical. but then the screenplay invention of Leonard Freeman enters the scene, whose character of judge Adam Fenton, the hanging judge, interpreted by Pat Hingle, turns the film into the terrain of Mitteleuropa, Dürrenmatt, Dostoyevskiy and Wedekind, and I can easily imagine Lars von Trier making a cowboy „Dogville“ as a kinde of film palimpsest... Hingle looked like a young Nick Nolte at the time. In the scene where he the still half-dead Cooper to the brothel to "cheer him up" and reward him, Hingle scratches his leg. This suggests that he probably has syphilis. So far, the judge has already delivered a good set of pocket philosophical tirades on the subject of ethics, law and the purposefulness of human actions, so we can consider him Satan in a judge's toga, a master of sophistry and ethical juggling. In the same scene, just a little earlier, when the mysteriously bathed Cooper (Eastwood, let me remind you) wakes up with a smile in clean sheets in a room with plush wallpaper and while the "friend of the day" (who by the way looks like a young Olja Grastić) pours him coffee from a kettle, we see the coffee drip down the lid and fall onto the blanket, we see delicious American cornmeal buns with baking powder and baking soda and that metal container for milk and a cigarette ashtray from our hotels from sixties...

In this film, only the gang gathered around "Captain" Wilson behaves somewhat cowboyish, revisionist or not, while everyone else throws wise onlliners as in tragic MittelEuropean operettas or dramas. Inger Stevens, king-size Jennifer Aniston, well, Inger summarizes the content of the film „Unforgiven“ while sitting on a blanket during a picnic, sums it up to a rather confused Eastwood, who does not realize that he is being offered material for an Oscar (because he will read the mentioned novel only after 7 years!), he justa had a crash on her and she also devours him with her eyes – look at the screenshot!

Dennis Hopper played "The Prophet" dressed as a beggar from nowadays America, and the Captain's crew consisted of young Richard Gere lookalike (Loomis), Aca Kubura, Mihajlo Ramač (Jenkins), Labud Nikačević (Blackfoot), and a blindfolded Zablaćanski (Rhino). (All mentioned people are contemporary Serbian actors. Internal joke for myself.)

If it weren't for that feeling of the television scenography (I kept waiting for Ljuba Tadić as Socrates to appear) and the spoting goods  storelook, I might have taken philosophizing about justice and ethics more seriously. But, that would probably burden the film, since the main character gave up the cardinal solution that would lead to tragedy, that is, to a cowboyish apophatic theology. Cooper, is it because he is weak or because he is in love (Judge Fenton tells him: "Ah, you have solved your problem, now you have fallen in love and you are going to deal with the garden, and let the state be managed and run by others!" and thus questions the conformity of liberals and today's escapism of the middle-class intellectual to the limits), or because he is just an opportunist – but he stays in the game, he does not oppose the devil's prosecutor/judge, because then the Wild West would be then left to Captain Wilson and their henchmen.

The film would have suffered and would have been less propulsive as a story if it had ventured to go deeper into this issue, and – most importantly – it would not have earned so much money, and the production company would have failed one hundred percent. But the film is not revisionist, let's be clear, it is more of an art western with a Middleuropean flavor. If I were as snarky as famous Yugoslavian critic Milutin Čolić, I would also say that the film has a morally dirty ending (as he said for Jim McBrides rameke of „Breathless“). If instead of the Americans (let Eastwood stay), we were watching highly synchronized Italians, we would have laughed more, but we would also have believed the film's premise more.

The use of sweating is fascinating. Ed Begley, as "Captain" Wilson, is sweating like a pig right from the start. His fear at the end, when Cooper comes to his house to gun him down and the only two remaining companions who didn't leave him, grows exponentially, his eyes are more and more swollen and beads of sweat on his face and his cheeks take the size of golf balls, it's a horror like when Christopher Lee died of fear in one scene of the horror series when he saw Lucifer himself (he also played Lucifer himself in one of Robert Shearer's films and there he bought the soul of none other than Sammy Davis Jr.). In the end, the captain hanged himself out of great horror.

Also the sweat on the face of Madows (Russell Thorson) during the speech on the scaffold before the hanging of 6 culprits is striking. Bob Steele, as Jenkins, the only positive in the gang that lynched Cooper, is the image of a person who can redeem himself, really tormented by strong guilt. For a moment, I believed that he too would perish in the frenzy of revenge, as the last member of the pursuit that chased Chato (Bronson); in „Chato's Land“ by Micahel WInner, but no, he was pardoned, which was more a manipulation of the satanic judge/prosecutor in the desire to keep the efficient but hesitant marshal than an act of justice. Because he was pardoned with a piece of paper, not, for example, tchetnik Nikola Kalabić...

In the scene of the six-fold hanging, the filmmakers obviously enjoyed the humor with that "'cold beer, 'cold beer, popcorn!'" shouted the salesman, which was taken from "I Married a Witch" by René Clair, while humble and blood thirsty old grannies licked their lips in eager expectation of execution, but at least they did not yell like at the gig of Tom Jones. Both writer Freeman and producer/star Eastwood found the measure.

I feel like I have to start every post with a disclaimer that I am the not the default cook in my household because my cooking skills are beginner 😅. I got the chili recipe from this group. It was pretty bland but I also had to use regular tomato sauce, not hot tomato sauce because the kids were going to eat it.

An article I read on the difference of pancake and griddle cake said that griddle cakes are good to eat with chili (which is why I paired it together). I did enjoy having a bite that included a bit of griddle cake and chili. My son ate it like a pancake so I tried it that way too and I think I like this more than a pancake because of the lack of added sugar in the griddle cake. Sometimes regular pancake with syrup is just a lot of sugar for me.

Jack Palance plays the overwhelming villain Jack Wilson in Shane.

Before I start, I 100% recommend watching “A Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” before watching this. It’s called the “Dollars” trilogy, but the only connection is Sergio Leone directing, Ennio Morricone composing the music, and a few actors (namely Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef, and Gian Maria Volonté) appearing in two or more of them.

I’ve never been a big fan of westerns. I’d seen “Tombstone,” and “Unforgiven.” I’d also seen a couple of Kevin Costner westerns, but I was never a fan of the genre.

Growing up, my grandfather was a huge Clint Eastwood fan. He was born in the 1910’s. So he saw a ton of early cinema. But I specifically remember him always talking about Clint Eastwood as his favorite. In fact, he took me to see Unforgiven when I was like, six years old. LOL

So, after listening to my favorite podcast. I was inspired to watch the “Dollars” trilogy. They did a primer on the history of “Spaghetti Westerns,” then an episode on “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

It inspired me to watch the trilogy for the first time this week.

TGTBATU wound up being in my top 25 movies of all time.

I laughed a lot more than I expected. I cheered and clapped, and I cried a few times. I felt a connection with my grandfather that I haven’t felt since he was alive.

It’s the story of Blondie (Eastwood “The Good”), Angel Eyes (Van Cleef “The Bad”), and Tuco (Wallach “The Ugly”). They’re all after a fortune in gold in the Wild West. They have to contend with both Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, and each other in a Civil War torn hellscape to collect riches beyond their wildest imaginations.

Check it out!