1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,741 --> 00:00:23,740 DAVID THORBURN: What I'd like to do very quickly 9 00:00:23,740 --> 00:00:27,160 is give you a brief account-- much 10 00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:36,490 to skeletal and simplified-- of this conversational drama-- 11 00:00:36,490 --> 00:00:38,980 the way in which the Western film becomes 12 00:00:38,980 --> 00:00:42,360 a screen on which American values are projected, 13 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:44,800 and on which American values are tested, 14 00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:48,410 and in which we see American values or assumptions 15 00:00:48,410 --> 00:00:51,060 undergoing certain kinds of transformation-- 16 00:00:51,060 --> 00:00:53,100 certain kinds of change. 17 00:00:53,100 --> 00:00:55,360 I don't expect you to remember these titles or all 18 00:00:55,360 --> 00:00:57,443 of these titles although the ones I talk about you 19 00:00:57,443 --> 00:00:59,870 might think about. 20 00:00:59,870 --> 00:01:02,800 And this is very far from a complete list of films. 21 00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:05,060 It's just a list of highlights. 22 00:01:05,060 --> 00:01:06,650 But I want to give you a sense of, 23 00:01:06,650 --> 00:01:10,610 first-- that the Western film is at the center of movies 24 00:01:10,610 --> 00:01:13,330 at every phase of the history of the medium. 25 00:01:13,330 --> 00:01:15,710 And as we've noted, one might argue 26 00:01:15,710 --> 00:01:18,210 that one of the very first films-- some people have called 27 00:01:18,210 --> 00:01:20,060 it the first narrative film although that's 28 00:01:20,060 --> 00:01:22,340 a slight exaggeration-- but one of the most 29 00:01:22,340 --> 00:01:25,770 fundamental founding documents in the history of movies 30 00:01:25,770 --> 00:01:27,620 is, of course, a Western. 31 00:01:27,620 --> 00:01:31,630 If not its first story-- film-- one of the earliest narrative 32 00:01:31,630 --> 00:01:33,520 films was a Western. 33 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:36,450 And we might note, in fact, that Western, The Great Train 34 00:01:36,450 --> 00:01:39,240 Robbery, was also based itself, not 35 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:43,840 on-- although it has mythologized and fictionized-- 36 00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:52,300 The Great Train Robbery is based on a historical actuality-- 37 00:01:52,300 --> 00:01:55,150 on a robbery that was very widely covered 38 00:01:55,150 --> 00:01:59,020 in the press about which dime novels were written 39 00:01:59,020 --> 00:02:01,410 and which became a site of many films-- 40 00:02:01,410 --> 00:02:03,370 the first one The Great Train Robbery. 41 00:02:03,370 --> 00:02:05,620 A more recent one that you may have 42 00:02:05,620 --> 00:02:07,570 heard of if you haven't actually seen it-- 43 00:02:07,570 --> 00:02:12,060 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which tells the same story. 44 00:02:12,060 --> 00:02:13,446 It's based on the same gang. 45 00:02:13,446 --> 00:02:15,070 It doesn't tell exactly the same story, 46 00:02:15,070 --> 00:02:16,800 but it's based on the same gang that 47 00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:22,150 was said to have committed the great train robbery. 48 00:02:22,150 --> 00:02:24,360 And that calls our attention to another factor-- 49 00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:26,600 another aspect-- of this-- what we might call 50 00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:29,870 the story of the mythological aspect of American cinema, 51 00:02:29,870 --> 00:02:32,480 and especially of the Western, because it calls our attention 52 00:02:32,480 --> 00:02:35,260 to the fact that the same events may be narrated again, 53 00:02:35,260 --> 00:02:36,170 and again, and again. 54 00:02:36,170 --> 00:02:39,060 One of the points about myth-- about collective stories-- 55 00:02:39,060 --> 00:02:40,965 is they're literally told repeatedly. 56 00:02:40,965 --> 00:02:42,840 One way to think about the Western-- say, OK. 57 00:02:42,840 --> 00:02:45,890 There are variations but, basically, it's the same story. 58 00:02:45,890 --> 00:02:48,100 Of course, that's a tremendous simplification 59 00:02:48,100 --> 00:02:50,580 because it's thematic, and moral implications 60 00:02:50,580 --> 00:02:52,710 can change radically-- but, basically, 61 00:02:52,710 --> 00:02:55,060 the same set of characters, the same setting, 62 00:02:55,060 --> 00:02:58,760 the same materials told over and over again, obsessively. 63 00:02:58,760 --> 00:03:00,680 Why would a society do this? 64 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:03,130 What is driven-- what drives us to do this? 65 00:03:03,130 --> 00:03:07,810 Well, one answer is there are pleasures in familiarity. 66 00:03:07,810 --> 00:03:10,620 One of the deepest lessons of the history of literature 67 00:03:10,620 --> 00:03:13,050 is that the romantic and modernest idea 68 00:03:13,050 --> 00:03:17,687 of the artist as a unique individual creating art ab 69 00:03:17,687 --> 00:03:21,170 novo-- sui generis-- with no connections to the past 70 00:03:21,170 --> 00:03:25,730 is a fantasy and a delusion-- a particular outgrowth 71 00:03:25,730 --> 00:03:27,540 of the romantic and modern period. 72 00:03:27,540 --> 00:03:31,100 But that throughout history and throughout most cultures, art, 73 00:03:31,100 --> 00:03:33,640 and especially storytelling, has been 74 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:38,590 much more like the activities of these popular formats in which 75 00:03:38,590 --> 00:03:40,890 the same kinds of stories are repeated again 76 00:03:40,890 --> 00:03:44,940 and again with variations. 77 00:03:44,940 --> 00:03:50,100 And one could say that one of the profoundest resemblances 78 00:03:50,100 --> 00:03:53,200 between Shakespeare's time and our own 79 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:56,840 is the dominance of genre forms in a popular theatrical 80 00:03:56,840 --> 00:03:57,670 environment. 81 00:03:57,670 --> 00:03:59,970 In Shakespeare's day, it was the popular theater 82 00:03:59,970 --> 00:04:04,120 that had a similar effect of trying to define in some sense 83 00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:06,350 our notion of national identity. 84 00:04:06,350 --> 00:04:10,950 And that's why I quoted the Renaissance scholar 85 00:04:10,950 --> 00:04:14,450 this afternoon who called Shakespeare's theater 86 00:04:14,450 --> 00:04:15,790 "the theater of a nation." 87 00:04:15,790 --> 00:04:18,079 He was trying to make the same kind of argument 88 00:04:18,079 --> 00:04:21,050 about the importance of the centrality 89 00:04:21,050 --> 00:04:22,880 of the public theater in Shakespeare's day 90 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:28,480 that I'm making about the movies in the United States 91 00:04:28,480 --> 00:04:30,320 in the 20th century. 92 00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:32,380 So The Great Train Robbery is a kind 93 00:04:32,380 --> 00:04:35,230 of originating text both for film itself 94 00:04:35,230 --> 00:04:37,280 and for the genre of the Western. 95 00:04:37,280 --> 00:04:39,620 Griffith's The Battle of Elderbush Gulch 96 00:04:39,620 --> 00:04:42,040 was one of the first longer films. 97 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:45,800 I think it was a half an hour or 45 minutes long. 98 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:49,760 It was a much longer creation than earlier films, 99 00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:52,900 and it was one of the first major examples 100 00:04:52,900 --> 00:04:56,590 of large crowds of people-- mounted 101 00:04:56,590 --> 00:04:58,150 people-- engaged in battle. 102 00:04:58,150 --> 00:05:01,060 And that was one of the most astonishing things. 103 00:05:01,060 --> 00:05:03,070 It was a tremendously influential film. 104 00:05:03,070 --> 00:05:06,120 It dramatized battles between cowboys and Indians 105 00:05:06,120 --> 00:05:12,090 in a way that showed the power of the medium of film 106 00:05:12,090 --> 00:05:13,780 at a very early stage. 107 00:05:13,780 --> 00:05:16,870 In 1914, the first movie dramatization 108 00:05:16,870 --> 00:05:19,530 of that novel by Owen Wister that I mentioned earlier-- that 109 00:05:19,530 --> 00:05:24,075 was also one of the founding texts in the Western genre. 110 00:05:26,967 --> 00:05:28,800 I've mentioned a couple of other films here. 111 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:31,410 One of them-- one of John Ford's earliest films 112 00:05:31,410 --> 00:05:34,050 to demonstrate that-- I've got two Ford films 113 00:05:34,050 --> 00:05:36,630 listed there to try to give you a sense of his importance 114 00:05:36,630 --> 00:05:38,970 in the silent era. 115 00:05:38,970 --> 00:05:41,370 I list The Covered Wagon as a way 116 00:05:41,370 --> 00:05:44,700 of showing you that the genre of the pioneer story 117 00:05:44,700 --> 00:05:47,460 was already present in the silent era. 118 00:05:47,460 --> 00:05:51,060 I list The Iron Horse by Ford as a way of reminding you 119 00:05:51,060 --> 00:05:53,750 of how central Ford is but also a way of reminding you 120 00:05:53,750 --> 00:05:58,550 that that story of the laying of the railroad-- 121 00:05:58,550 --> 00:06:02,690 the Intercontinental Railroad-- one of the central sub 122 00:06:02,690 --> 00:06:05,160 stories-- recurring stories in the Western 123 00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:06,840 begins in the silent era. 124 00:06:06,840 --> 00:06:08,780 And I mentioned the Keaton partly 125 00:06:08,780 --> 00:06:12,760 to show you that the genre had become so widespread that it 126 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:16,550 was now so fully-fledged-- so fully recognizable-- 127 00:06:16,550 --> 00:06:19,050 even in the silent era that Keaton 128 00:06:19,050 --> 00:06:24,230 was able to make a comic parody of Westerns called Go West. 129 00:06:24,230 --> 00:06:29,350 With the advent of sound, the first decade 130 00:06:29,350 --> 00:06:32,680 of the Western movie is, from an artistic standpoint, 131 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:34,160 not very distinguished. 132 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:37,060 Can you guess why one primary reason is? 133 00:06:37,060 --> 00:06:41,590 If you look, I say singing cowboys-- because it was sound. 134 00:06:41,590 --> 00:06:43,180 The very first thing said, oh, well. 135 00:06:43,180 --> 00:06:44,950 We're so enamored of sound. 136 00:06:44,950 --> 00:06:47,210 The novelty of sound is so remarkable. 137 00:06:47,210 --> 00:06:48,650 The first thing we'll do is we'll 138 00:06:48,650 --> 00:06:51,300 introduce cowboys who sing. 139 00:06:51,300 --> 00:06:54,200 And there were primitive stories that they told, 140 00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:58,245 but the stories were relatively superficial. 141 00:06:58,245 --> 00:07:01,140 I mentioned In Old Arizona, the first sound 142 00:07:01,140 --> 00:07:05,350 Western, in part because what was amazing about that film, 143 00:07:05,350 --> 00:07:07,860 especially to audiences, were literally the sounds-- 144 00:07:07,860 --> 00:07:12,920 the crackling of the fire, the creaking of the saddles. 145 00:07:12,920 --> 00:07:16,670 The noises of the West were fascinating to people. 146 00:07:16,670 --> 00:07:18,570 So the '30s, from an artistic standpoint, 147 00:07:18,570 --> 00:07:20,500 were not a very interesting one in terms 148 00:07:20,500 --> 00:07:23,681 of the Western's development. 149 00:07:23,681 --> 00:07:26,510 Some scholars have argued that the silent Western 150 00:07:26,510 --> 00:07:31,140 was more interesting than the Western of the '30s. 151 00:07:31,140 --> 00:07:33,870 But they're worth mentioning because they were very popular, 152 00:07:33,870 --> 00:07:36,790 and many Westerns in the '30s were identified 153 00:07:36,790 --> 00:07:38,160 as what were called B-films. 154 00:07:38,160 --> 00:07:41,790 That is to say, as you may know the-- I 155 00:07:41,790 --> 00:07:44,710 wish I had had time in this course 156 00:07:44,710 --> 00:07:48,770 to spend some energy talking about what might be called 157 00:07:48,770 --> 00:07:54,310 the movie house Culture-- how incredibly the whole society 158 00:07:54,310 --> 00:07:57,440 after about 1930 or in the early '30s 159 00:07:57,440 --> 00:08:00,860 was permeated by the movies-- how every major city had 160 00:08:00,860 --> 00:08:05,170 dozens-- maybe even more than that-- of movie houses 161 00:08:05,170 --> 00:08:09,640 showing films that-- many levels of films-- 162 00:08:09,640 --> 00:08:12,630 recent films and many older films as well. 163 00:08:12,630 --> 00:08:15,150 And as I think I mentioned in an earlier class, 164 00:08:15,150 --> 00:08:18,900 it was possible to go to third and forth-run movie 165 00:08:18,900 --> 00:08:21,360 houses showing movies that were several years old 166 00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:23,480 and to pay something like a quarter in the morning 167 00:08:23,480 --> 00:08:25,560 and go in and watch five or six movies. 168 00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:28,625 And I did this as a child in the late '40s in Brooklyn, 169 00:08:28,625 --> 00:08:31,000 New York where I would go into a theater and come out-- I 170 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:32,416 would go in in the bright morning. 171 00:08:32,416 --> 00:08:33,960 I would come out-- it would be dark. 172 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:35,690 They were lousy movies, but I was a kid. 173 00:08:35,690 --> 00:08:37,190 I didn't know any better, and it was 174 00:08:37,190 --> 00:08:40,226 an astonishing kind of culture. 175 00:08:40,226 --> 00:08:42,559 I should also mention, I call it the movie house culture 176 00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:44,130 because, of course-- again, I haven't had time 177 00:08:44,130 --> 00:08:44,850 to develop this. 178 00:08:44,850 --> 00:08:49,880 But if you google "movie houses," what will immediately 179 00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:52,200 appear are a series of magnificent photographs 180 00:08:52,200 --> 00:08:56,340 or images of movie palaces. 181 00:08:56,340 --> 00:08:58,000 You could even google "movie palaces" 182 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,810 and find the same answer-- that now mostly fallen into disuse 183 00:09:01,810 --> 00:09:04,590 or destroyed that were all over the country-- 184 00:09:04,590 --> 00:09:06,580 very exotic and remarkable. 185 00:09:06,580 --> 00:09:09,160 Even the physical structures of these theaters 186 00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:11,520 were exotic and exciting. 187 00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:13,680 These exhibition spaces were themselves 188 00:09:13,680 --> 00:09:17,590 meant to excite you and take you into another world. 189 00:09:17,590 --> 00:09:20,570 And partly because of that, what they always offered 190 00:09:20,570 --> 00:09:24,000 was a really robust ticket of offerings. 191 00:09:24,000 --> 00:09:26,390 You didn't just go to the movies and watch one movie. 192 00:09:26,390 --> 00:09:28,490 You saw at least a double feature. 193 00:09:28,490 --> 00:09:29,950 The second feature was often what 194 00:09:29,950 --> 00:09:34,190 was called a B-movie-- a second rate movie-- lower budget. 195 00:09:34,190 --> 00:09:35,630 Many of them were Westerns. 196 00:09:35,630 --> 00:09:37,790 One reason for that was because the accouterments 197 00:09:37,790 --> 00:09:40,162 of the Western are so interchangeable. 198 00:09:40,162 --> 00:09:41,620 As I mentioned in an earlier class, 199 00:09:41,620 --> 00:09:44,500 one of the things they could do was use stock footage 200 00:09:44,500 --> 00:09:46,660 to put these Westerns together very quickly. 201 00:09:46,660 --> 00:09:48,110 So they could have a stampede that 202 00:09:48,110 --> 00:09:50,230 might have appeared in many different movies 203 00:09:50,230 --> 00:09:52,920 but will do the job in this B Western and so forth. 204 00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:55,360 And they could use the same props, the same town, 205 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:59,360 the same horses, and the same costumes, and so forth. 206 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:01,890 So for a lot of the '30s, the Western movie 207 00:10:01,890 --> 00:10:10,560 was a kind of back-up-- a second banana to the primary film. 208 00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:12,830 In addition, there began to develop, especially 209 00:10:12,830 --> 00:10:15,030 on Saturday-- in this movie house culture, 210 00:10:15,030 --> 00:10:17,030 Saturday mornings were especially for children-- 211 00:10:17,030 --> 00:10:18,152 even Saturday afternoons. 212 00:10:18,152 --> 00:10:20,360 They began to develop what they called matinees which 213 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:23,550 were intentionally devoted toward trying 214 00:10:23,550 --> 00:10:26,330 to get younger people-- children-- into the theaters. 215 00:10:26,330 --> 00:10:29,960 And they had a series of sort of B or C Westerns some of which 216 00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:33,560 were serials and would continue from one Saturday to the next. 217 00:10:33,560 --> 00:10:36,900 I want to mention my favorite childhood Western hero 218 00:10:36,900 --> 00:10:38,590 whom I still remember. 219 00:10:38,590 --> 00:10:41,060 And I remember I loved this character when 220 00:10:41,060 --> 00:10:42,780 I was seven and eight years old and would 221 00:10:42,780 --> 00:10:46,590 go to the movies on Saturdays and see-- sometimes the serials 222 00:10:46,590 --> 00:10:48,620 would last several weeks. 223 00:10:48,620 --> 00:10:51,110 Part of it was to try to get the kids to come back and get 224 00:10:51,110 --> 00:10:54,206 their parents to pay for them to come back every Saturday. 225 00:10:54,206 --> 00:10:56,080 So they would always end with a cliffhanger-- 226 00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:57,950 with a moment of great tension-- and you 227 00:10:57,950 --> 00:11:01,520 wonder whether the hero and heroin would 228 00:11:01,520 --> 00:11:03,910 survive into the next week. 229 00:11:03,910 --> 00:11:05,970 And there were a whole series of such films. 230 00:11:05,970 --> 00:11:08,440 My favorite such film was a film where 231 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:10,810 a series of adventures starring a character 232 00:11:10,810 --> 00:11:14,480 named Lash LaRue-- can you guess what Lash LaRue's weapon 233 00:11:14,480 --> 00:11:15,490 of choice was? 234 00:11:15,490 --> 00:11:16,400 AUDIENCE: A whip. 235 00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:18,280 DAVID THORBURN: Yes, the whip-- a bullwhip. 236 00:11:18,280 --> 00:11:19,504 He never carried a gun. 237 00:11:19,504 --> 00:11:21,920 But he had this long bullwhip, and he would take this whip 238 00:11:21,920 --> 00:11:22,300 and he'd go-- 239 00:11:22,300 --> 00:11:22,870 [CRACK] 240 00:11:22,870 --> 00:11:23,460 --like that. 241 00:11:23,460 --> 00:11:25,962 And it would snake out across, and it would flip a gun right 242 00:11:25,962 --> 00:11:26,920 out of a person's hand. 243 00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:27,260 Or he could go-- 244 00:11:27,260 --> 00:11:27,760 [CRACK] 245 00:11:27,760 --> 00:11:30,370 --like this, and a little tiny spot of blood 246 00:11:30,370 --> 00:11:32,450 would appear on a person's nose. 247 00:11:32,450 --> 00:11:35,100 It was a unbelievably, ridiculous fantasy. 248 00:11:35,100 --> 00:11:39,950 And the lash made a tremendous beautiful crack 249 00:11:39,950 --> 00:11:42,140 when he brought it back. 250 00:11:42,140 --> 00:11:45,440 He was obviously a figure of childhood fantasy, 251 00:11:45,440 --> 00:11:48,010 but it was a tremendously, memorable film. 252 00:11:48,010 --> 00:11:52,390 And, again, there was no pretensions 253 00:11:52,390 --> 00:11:55,960 toward psychological seriousness or even thematic density 254 00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:59,890 in these Westerns, but they permeated the culture. 255 00:11:59,890 --> 00:12:01,920 They were part of the experience of childhood. 256 00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:03,630 So children in the society would grow up 257 00:12:03,630 --> 00:12:05,770 watching these children's versions of Westerns, 258 00:12:05,770 --> 00:12:08,260 and then they would graduate to the more adult Westerns. 259 00:12:08,260 --> 00:12:11,770 I don't want to call it a form of brainwashing because that's 260 00:12:11,770 --> 00:12:14,200 much too negative a way of describing 261 00:12:14,200 --> 00:12:17,480 the way in which these story forms shape our understandings 262 00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:18,980 or help to shape our understandings. 263 00:12:18,980 --> 00:12:22,624 And I don't mean that human beings are completely 264 00:12:22,624 --> 00:12:25,040 programmable creatures-- that they go and look at a movie, 265 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:27,810 and they become robots following what the movie said. 266 00:12:27,810 --> 00:12:31,040 But what I am saying is that the way these kinds of stories 267 00:12:31,040 --> 00:12:35,050 permeated the society helped to shape Americans 268 00:12:35,050 --> 00:12:39,100 understanding of their natures-- of what the social fabric was 269 00:12:39,100 --> 00:12:42,310 like, of what masculinity was, of what femininity was, 270 00:12:42,310 --> 00:12:45,470 of what families were, of what the relations among the races 271 00:12:45,470 --> 00:12:48,000 were, of what American history was, 272 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,770 about what the founding story of America is, 273 00:12:50,770 --> 00:12:53,940 about what the central organizing values 274 00:12:53,940 --> 00:12:54,790 of our culture are. 275 00:12:54,790 --> 00:12:57,990 All of those things are dramatized either explicitly 276 00:12:57,990 --> 00:13:00,380 or implicitly in movies. 277 00:13:00,380 --> 00:13:02,320 And because the movies were so central 278 00:13:02,320 --> 00:13:04,030 through the 20th century, they were 279 00:13:04,030 --> 00:13:06,470 one of the central ways in which the belief 280 00:13:06,470 --> 00:13:09,150 system-- the values-- of American society 281 00:13:09,150 --> 00:13:13,960 were promulgated, dramatized, rehearsed, 282 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:18,770 and in some ways altered and changed. 283 00:13:18,770 --> 00:13:20,570 The classical age of the Western film 284 00:13:20,570 --> 00:13:23,764 is often said to be the period of the 1940s, 285 00:13:23,764 --> 00:13:25,180 and this is really the moment when 286 00:13:25,180 --> 00:13:28,600 the Western as an artistic form begins to come into its own. 287 00:13:28,600 --> 00:13:32,210 Although, it also still carries ideological or thematic baggage 288 00:13:32,210 --> 00:13:34,279 we might not want to embrace or celebrate. 289 00:13:34,279 --> 00:13:36,070 So remember, it's an ambivalent thing here. 290 00:13:36,070 --> 00:13:39,280 I'm asking you to respect the artistry of these films, 291 00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:42,180 but I'm also asking you to do something mature and grown-up 292 00:13:42,180 --> 00:13:44,870 which is be skeptical about the meanings that 293 00:13:44,870 --> 00:13:50,120 are embodied in what are sometimes very artful movies. 294 00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:51,590 And we call it the classical age, 295 00:13:51,590 --> 00:13:54,830 in part, because a certain kind of much more 296 00:13:54,830 --> 00:13:58,230 ambitious intellectually powerful 297 00:13:58,230 --> 00:14:01,530 and artistically organized Western begins to appear, 298 00:14:01,530 --> 00:14:04,950 dominated-- but not completely-- by the great director John 299 00:14:04,950 --> 00:14:07,310 Ford-- one of whose masterpieces you're 300 00:14:07,310 --> 00:14:09,600 going to see in a few minutes. 301 00:14:09,600 --> 00:14:14,450 The age probably begins in 1939-- the same year 302 00:14:14,450 --> 00:14:16,810 that the integrated musical begins 303 00:14:16,810 --> 00:14:17,960 with-- what was the film? 304 00:14:17,960 --> 00:14:19,370 We mentioned it last week. 305 00:14:19,370 --> 00:14:22,230 The Wizard of Oz in which color is 306 00:14:22,230 --> 00:14:23,480 introduced for the first time. 307 00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:26,680 Well, here the genre of the Western comes into its own, 308 00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:29,310 really, roughly in the same year in a film that 309 00:14:29,310 --> 00:14:33,850 stars John Wayne, who was one of the iconic stars 310 00:14:33,850 --> 00:14:38,720 of the American Western, and directed by John Ford-- 311 00:14:38,720 --> 00:14:41,430 his favorite director-- a director who did other things 312 00:14:41,430 --> 00:14:47,740 but who was noted, especially, for his remarkable Westerns. 313 00:14:47,740 --> 00:14:50,020 Wayne had had a career in the movies 314 00:14:50,020 --> 00:14:52,700 10 years before that, but in Stagecoach, for the first time, 315 00:14:52,700 --> 00:14:54,295 he became a major star. 316 00:14:54,295 --> 00:14:56,820 The film made him a star. 317 00:14:56,820 --> 00:14:58,650 And Stagecoach is an interesting film 318 00:14:58,650 --> 00:15:01,960 because it articulates or formulates 319 00:15:01,960 --> 00:15:04,890 one of the great sub genres within the category 320 00:15:04,890 --> 00:15:05,690 of the Western. 321 00:15:05,690 --> 00:15:08,760 And this is-- I don't know exactly what to call it. 322 00:15:08,760 --> 00:15:11,250 It's a story in which you have a group of unlike people 323 00:15:11,250 --> 00:15:13,530 who are traveling, usually by stagecoach 324 00:15:13,530 --> 00:15:17,980 or in some other-- sometimes it can be by train-- who are beset 325 00:15:17,980 --> 00:15:20,565 unexpectedly by some kind of danger-- usually 326 00:15:20,565 --> 00:15:22,910 an attack by Indians. 327 00:15:22,910 --> 00:15:25,024 And then the uneasy community that 328 00:15:25,024 --> 00:15:26,440 is forced upon them when they have 329 00:15:26,440 --> 00:15:30,410 to defend themselves reveals various aspects of human nature 330 00:15:30,410 --> 00:15:31,800 and of human society. 331 00:15:31,800 --> 00:15:34,870 And the film Stagecoach is a classic instance 332 00:15:34,870 --> 00:15:37,550 of that in which the John Wayne character gets 333 00:15:37,550 --> 00:15:43,980 on the stagecoach as it's making a journey 334 00:15:43,980 --> 00:15:47,800 across a bleak Western landscape through Indian territory. 335 00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:49,770 And he's a, kind of, ambiguous figure 336 00:15:49,770 --> 00:15:53,770 in this film-- the Wayne character-- perhaps an outlaw. 337 00:15:53,770 --> 00:15:55,195 And the respectable people who are 338 00:15:55,195 --> 00:15:58,140 in the stagecoach-- a banker-- a character who's 339 00:15:58,140 --> 00:16:00,490 actually embezzling money and is trying to get away 340 00:16:00,490 --> 00:16:01,440 although no one knows. 341 00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:02,790 He hasn't revealed it at the time. 342 00:16:02,790 --> 00:16:04,456 It comes out in the course of the film-- 343 00:16:04,456 --> 00:16:06,275 and a series of other sort of characters 344 00:16:06,275 --> 00:16:07,650 with interesting backgrounds that 345 00:16:07,650 --> 00:16:11,460 emerge when the catastrophe descends upon them. 346 00:16:11,460 --> 00:16:13,890 And, of course, what happens is the ambiguity of the Wayne 347 00:16:13,890 --> 00:16:16,630 character-- the fact that he has a kind of connection 348 00:16:16,630 --> 00:16:20,814 to lawlessness turns out to be one of the great virtues 349 00:16:20,814 --> 00:16:22,230 that he has because, of course, he 350 00:16:22,230 --> 00:16:25,400 becomes the primary defender of the group when they 351 00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:29,650 are beset by savage Indians. 352 00:16:29,650 --> 00:16:31,984 And then I've listed-- again, let me remind you. 353 00:16:31,984 --> 00:16:34,150 Again, I've just picked-- these are just highlights. 354 00:16:34,150 --> 00:16:37,440 Remember what we said. 355 00:16:37,440 --> 00:16:42,820 Nearly 30% of all films made during the studio era 356 00:16:42,820 --> 00:16:45,760 were Western movies, and these are among the highlights. 357 00:16:45,760 --> 00:16:49,020 From the titles you can see the recurring sub 358 00:16:49,020 --> 00:16:51,030 genres that occur. 359 00:16:51,030 --> 00:16:54,700 Billy the Kid in 1941-- the film directed by David Miller-- 360 00:16:54,700 --> 00:16:56,610 this preoccupation with outlaws. 361 00:16:56,610 --> 00:16:58,670 There are a number of films about Billy the Kid, 362 00:16:58,670 --> 00:17:01,130 a number of films about Jesse James, 363 00:17:01,130 --> 00:17:06,419 and about the gun fight at the O.K. Corral. 364 00:17:08,940 --> 00:17:13,460 The 1946 film My Darling Clementine-- Ford's famous film 365 00:17:13,460 --> 00:17:17,400 starring Henry Fonda-- is one of six movies made about the gun 366 00:17:17,400 --> 00:17:18,869 fight at the O.K. Corral. 367 00:17:18,869 --> 00:17:20,667 And think of what that says to us. 368 00:17:20,667 --> 00:17:21,500 What does a myth do? 369 00:17:21,500 --> 00:17:24,060 It tells the same story again, and again, and again. 370 00:17:24,060 --> 00:17:26,490 Each of those six films is in many ways 371 00:17:26,490 --> 00:17:29,020 different from-- in significant ways, 372 00:17:29,020 --> 00:17:31,524 each film is different from the other film 373 00:17:31,524 --> 00:17:33,440 even though the basic information, or at least 374 00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:35,700 the basic situation, is the same. 375 00:17:35,700 --> 00:17:38,350 And, in fact, in some versions of the film-- 376 00:17:38,350 --> 00:17:40,140 in some versions of that account-- 377 00:17:40,140 --> 00:17:42,850 the account of the O.K. Corral-- Wyatt Earp 378 00:17:42,850 --> 00:17:47,240 and the Earp brothers fight against the Clanton brothers. 379 00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:49,560 In the classic versions-- in the version 380 00:17:49,560 --> 00:17:53,330 My Darling Clementine in 1946 by Ford, the Earps are heroes. 381 00:17:53,330 --> 00:17:55,320 And Wyatt Earp is a great American-- 382 00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:59,220 is a noble American hero who defends a town against anarchy 383 00:17:59,220 --> 00:17:59,910 and evil. 384 00:17:59,910 --> 00:18:01,530 The Clantons are entirely evil. 385 00:18:01,530 --> 00:18:04,640 But in later revisionist versions of the same story, 386 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:09,830 Earp and his brothers are seen as arrogant officials who 387 00:18:09,830 --> 00:18:12,580 are trying to control gambling and prostitution 388 00:18:12,580 --> 00:18:14,480 in the town of Tombstone. 389 00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:17,390 And the Clantons are not seen as noble 390 00:18:17,390 --> 00:18:19,890 but are seen, essentially, as rivals 391 00:18:19,890 --> 00:18:23,990 of the Earps-- not necessarily as inferior, evil characters. 392 00:18:23,990 --> 00:18:25,590 And such a perspective, of course, 393 00:18:25,590 --> 00:18:27,620 profoundly changes our understanding 394 00:18:27,620 --> 00:18:30,030 of what the gun fight at the O.K. Corral 395 00:18:30,030 --> 00:18:35,130 represented-- interesting and deeply revealing 396 00:18:35,130 --> 00:18:37,270 that so many Westerns have been repeated. 397 00:18:37,270 --> 00:18:40,090 I mean, the same story told again and again. 398 00:18:40,090 --> 00:18:43,890 And so the fact that the gunfighter at the O.K. Corral 399 00:18:43,890 --> 00:18:47,270 was repeated at least six times in feature length films-- there 400 00:18:47,270 --> 00:18:50,230 were also television versions of the O.K. Corral event, 401 00:18:50,230 --> 00:18:54,840 adding to the number-- is a dramatic example 402 00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:59,210 of what we might call this mythological function 403 00:18:59,210 --> 00:19:01,900 or this forum function-- this discourse space 404 00:19:01,900 --> 00:19:07,190 function that genre forms in general and the Western movie, 405 00:19:07,190 --> 00:19:08,920 in particular, have. 406 00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:11,950 I've already mentioned Red River in my earlier discourse 407 00:19:11,950 --> 00:19:13,210 about Howard Hawks. 408 00:19:13,210 --> 00:19:15,870 And I want to just remind you that that great director 409 00:19:15,870 --> 00:19:18,560 of screwball comedy was also one of the great directors 410 00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:21,700 of masculine adventure films including what 411 00:19:21,700 --> 00:19:24,200 many people think is one of the great Westerns of all time-- 412 00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:25,010 Red River. 413 00:19:25,010 --> 00:19:27,220 And Red River is an interesting sub genre as well. 414 00:19:27,220 --> 00:19:28,860 It's a cattle drive Western. 415 00:19:28,860 --> 00:19:30,920 Many Westerns are about cattle drive, 416 00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:34,490 but this one also adds a very interesting complexity 417 00:19:34,490 --> 00:19:36,620 because there's a kind of oedipal drama 418 00:19:36,620 --> 00:19:40,500 and acted out between the John Wayne figure-- recurring 419 00:19:40,500 --> 00:19:43,110 figure in so many Westerns-- and a younger man played 420 00:19:43,110 --> 00:19:47,284 by the great actor Montgomery Clift who plays a surrogate son 421 00:19:47,284 --> 00:19:48,450 to the John Wayne character. 422 00:19:48,450 --> 00:19:50,110 And, of course, conflict develops 423 00:19:50,110 --> 00:19:55,120 and the rivalry between father and son 424 00:19:55,120 --> 00:20:01,310 is a fundamental subplot in that remarkable Western. 425 00:20:01,310 --> 00:20:04,310 One other thing I should say about the '40s period-- I 426 00:20:04,310 --> 00:20:06,720 call it the classical age primarily for this reason-- 427 00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:08,110 I sort of didn't name this. 428 00:20:08,110 --> 00:20:10,790 Forgive me for not mentioning this earlier. 429 00:20:10,790 --> 00:20:12,660 Again, we're talking about the period 430 00:20:12,660 --> 00:20:15,290 just before, during, and after the Second World War. 431 00:20:15,290 --> 00:20:19,230 The United States feels itself to be beleaguered. 432 00:20:19,230 --> 00:20:21,510 The world is beleaguered in a way. 433 00:20:21,510 --> 00:20:24,270 That outer reality also helps to explain 434 00:20:24,270 --> 00:20:27,230 why the Western of the 1940s would be, 435 00:20:27,230 --> 00:20:32,330 essentially, a celebration of American power, 436 00:20:32,330 --> 00:20:34,370 a celebration of American empire, 437 00:20:34,370 --> 00:20:36,625 a celebration of American know-how 438 00:20:36,625 --> 00:20:40,230 and competence in the wilderness because, by analogy, 439 00:20:40,230 --> 00:20:42,660 the Western is a story of American success-- 440 00:20:42,660 --> 00:20:45,520 of American conquest. 441 00:20:45,520 --> 00:20:47,860 One might think of it as a story that American 442 00:20:47,860 --> 00:20:50,860 needed to tell itself during the period. 443 00:20:50,860 --> 00:20:52,600 So the war-- the Second World War 444 00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:55,570 is a great reinforcement to the way in which-- 445 00:20:55,570 --> 00:20:59,370 in the classical age of the American Western, 446 00:20:59,370 --> 00:21:02,500 the Western film is basically telling an heroic story, 447 00:21:02,500 --> 00:21:05,025 is celebrating the conquest of the West, 448 00:21:05,025 --> 00:21:07,540 and is seeing the white man's settlement of the West 449 00:21:07,540 --> 00:21:12,070 in relatively unambiguously, admirable terms, celebrating 450 00:21:12,070 --> 00:21:16,240 the courage, and the resilience, and the physical prowess 451 00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:20,230 of the pioneers and the great, noble gun fighters 452 00:21:20,230 --> 00:21:22,100 who tamed the West for us. 453 00:21:22,100 --> 00:21:26,460 But by the 1950s, this confidence has begun to wane. 454 00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:28,290 Part of it is, look-- the war has been over 455 00:21:28,290 --> 00:21:31,040 for a significant time. 456 00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:36,860 American society is in a peacetime boom 457 00:21:36,860 --> 00:21:39,430 which is going to build through the '50s. 458 00:21:39,430 --> 00:21:42,310 And it's also a period in which a certain kind of-- this 459 00:21:42,310 --> 00:21:44,520 was, of course, the period of my childhood. 460 00:21:44,520 --> 00:21:46,070 I was 10 years old in 1950. 461 00:21:46,070 --> 00:21:47,600 And I remember it vividly. 462 00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:49,380 In fact, saw some of the films that 463 00:21:49,380 --> 00:21:52,120 are listed here in the theaters for the first time. 464 00:21:52,120 --> 00:21:55,370 So I mention that to you just to remind you that, in fact, what 465 00:21:55,370 --> 00:21:57,620 we're talking about is not ancient history at all 466 00:21:57,620 --> 00:21:59,630 because I actually experienced some of the films 467 00:21:59,630 --> 00:22:02,200 on this list in my own actual lifetime 468 00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:04,750 when they were originally shown in the theaters. 469 00:22:04,750 --> 00:22:08,170 And although I am infinitely old compared to you guys, 470 00:22:08,170 --> 00:22:11,390 I'm still a vigorous, functioning human being. 471 00:22:11,390 --> 00:22:14,430 So within my lifetime's memory, many of these films 472 00:22:14,430 --> 00:22:16,190 were contemporary. 473 00:22:16,190 --> 00:22:18,150 And it's important to realize how close we 474 00:22:18,150 --> 00:22:22,730 are, in fact, to these times. 475 00:22:22,730 --> 00:22:25,120 But one of things that begin to appear in the 1950s 476 00:22:25,120 --> 00:22:29,655 was a kind of skepticism about the social arrangements 477 00:22:29,655 --> 00:22:30,280 in the society. 478 00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:32,150 At first they were very modest and mild. 479 00:22:32,150 --> 00:22:34,280 There was in the 1950s, for example, 480 00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:37,604 what came to be called a generation gap in which older 481 00:22:37,604 --> 00:22:39,270 and younger-- in which there was thought 482 00:22:39,270 --> 00:22:42,090 to be a distance between older and younger people. 483 00:22:42,090 --> 00:22:47,170 And there was a great concern in the 1950s for alienated youth 484 00:22:47,170 --> 00:22:52,690 and juvenile delinquency which was a great catch phrase. 485 00:22:52,690 --> 00:22:55,650 And some of the films of the 1950s dramatized that. 486 00:22:55,650 --> 00:22:57,880 For example, the film The Left-Handed Gun 487 00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:02,050 in 1958 starring Paul Newman-- directed by Arthur Penn-- 488 00:23:02,050 --> 00:23:05,290 is a story really about-- it's a Billy the Kid story. 489 00:23:05,290 --> 00:23:08,790 Newman plays a Billy the Kid type character, 490 00:23:08,790 --> 00:23:09,970 but he plays a young boy. 491 00:23:09,970 --> 00:23:13,690 He plays, really, a post adolescent. 492 00:23:13,690 --> 00:23:16,010 And you can feel that what's partly being dramatized 493 00:23:16,010 --> 00:23:18,900 there are teenage angst. 494 00:23:18,900 --> 00:23:22,410 There are-- and what also begins-- 495 00:23:22,410 --> 00:23:26,900 in 1952, the film High Noon-- a fragment of which I will show 496 00:23:26,900 --> 00:23:29,410 in next week's lecture when we talk about McCabe and Mrs. 497 00:23:29,410 --> 00:23:33,400 Miller to do a contrast with a classical Western 498 00:23:33,400 --> 00:23:40,300 and a post-classical Western-- that film introduces 499 00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:42,620 certain kinds of contemporary political concerns. 500 00:23:42,620 --> 00:23:46,220 Many people see High Noon as a parable about the McCarthy 501 00:23:46,220 --> 00:23:49,110 era-- Senator Joseph McCarthy and the fear 502 00:23:49,110 --> 00:23:51,410 of-- the paranoia about communism 503 00:23:51,410 --> 00:23:53,250 and the anti-communist hysteria of 504 00:23:53,250 --> 00:23:57,180 the late '40s and early 1950s when the Cold War was just 505 00:23:57,180 --> 00:23:59,220 getting powerfully started. 506 00:23:59,220 --> 00:24:02,440 And High Noon is a kind of parable about a good man who 507 00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:05,720 turns to-- a sheriff played by Gary Cooper-- 508 00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:09,110 one of the great iconic heroes of masculinity 509 00:24:09,110 --> 00:24:12,170 of the classical Hollywood era along with John Wayne. 510 00:24:12,170 --> 00:24:16,632 And Cooper plays a sheriff who has brought peace to the town. 511 00:24:16,632 --> 00:24:18,090 He's been a sheriff for many years. 512 00:24:18,090 --> 00:24:21,440 And on his wedding day, he's marrying a Quaker-- a Quaker 513 00:24:21,440 --> 00:24:21,940 woman. 514 00:24:21,940 --> 00:24:25,010 He's giving up his gun because a Quaker woman, played 515 00:24:25,010 --> 00:24:28,480 by Grace Kelly-- you'll remember her from the Hitchcock film 516 00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:30,810 although here she plays a Western heroin. 517 00:24:30,810 --> 00:24:33,970 She's a Quaker, and he's putting down his gun to join his wife. 518 00:24:33,970 --> 00:24:37,000 And on his wedding day a man that he sent to jail 519 00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,739 is coming back by the noonday train to take his revenge. 520 00:24:41,739 --> 00:24:44,280 So the Sheriff spends the early part of the film going around 521 00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:46,380 to the townspeople-- a town that owes 522 00:24:46,380 --> 00:24:49,480 its life to this great, heroic sheriff saying, help me. 523 00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,480 I'm going to be attacked by Frank Miller and his gang. 524 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:53,590 No one will help him. 525 00:24:53,590 --> 00:24:55,280 He's left on his own. 526 00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,090 He has to stand by himself because the town is 527 00:24:58,090 --> 00:24:59,200 too cowardly. 528 00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:02,630 And it's a parable of the cowardice 529 00:25:02,630 --> 00:25:05,640 of people who deserted-- it's in some sense a, 530 00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:07,270 kind of, left wing argument. 531 00:25:07,270 --> 00:25:08,890 It's a parable about the cowardice 532 00:25:08,890 --> 00:25:11,820 of people who wouldn't stand up for folks who were attacked 533 00:25:11,820 --> 00:25:15,380 by Senator McCarthy and other anti-communists 534 00:25:15,380 --> 00:25:18,150 for being disloyal. 535 00:25:18,150 --> 00:25:20,350 So certain kinds of political meanings 536 00:25:20,350 --> 00:25:24,030 begin to-- skeptical political meanings begin to creep in. 537 00:25:24,030 --> 00:25:28,010 And the society that's dramatized in High Noon 538 00:25:28,010 --> 00:25:31,780 is hardly an admirable society. 539 00:25:31,780 --> 00:25:36,180 The Western culture may have created a town, 540 00:25:36,180 --> 00:25:38,280 and the town has a church. 541 00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,780 And they have a meeting in the church in the film. 542 00:25:41,780 --> 00:25:45,740 He goes-- it's a Sunday, and you can hear the church bells. 543 00:25:45,740 --> 00:25:47,900 And he goes to the church, and he asks for help 544 00:25:47,900 --> 00:25:49,310 from the congregation. 545 00:25:49,310 --> 00:25:51,640 And they won't do it. 546 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:53,770 They're too cowardly. 547 00:25:53,770 --> 00:25:57,000 And so it's a parable about cowardice, 548 00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:03,020 and about political dysfunction, and about communal disloyalty. 549 00:26:03,020 --> 00:26:11,400 Also, already by the 1950s, before the Hollywood era 550 00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:16,320 has completely concluded or been obliterated-- 551 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,340 Hollywood dominance is still significant in the 1950s-- 552 00:26:20,340 --> 00:26:22,140 the Western has begun to change. 553 00:26:22,140 --> 00:26:24,510 It's begun to reflect social changes as well 554 00:26:24,510 --> 00:26:26,740 as thematic or ideological changes that 555 00:26:26,740 --> 00:26:30,320 have to do with the way the society is altering 556 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:31,900 after the Second World War. 557 00:26:31,900 --> 00:26:34,460 And a number of the films that I've listed there 558 00:26:34,460 --> 00:26:37,410 do that kind of thing. 559 00:26:37,410 --> 00:26:40,780 And one can also see in this listing of so-called adult 560 00:26:40,780 --> 00:26:44,310 Westerns a greater emphasis on psychological themes-- 561 00:26:44,310 --> 00:26:47,870 on the conflict between individuals. 562 00:26:47,870 --> 00:26:51,230 One very powerful and interesting instance 563 00:26:51,230 --> 00:26:54,790 of that is a film in 1967 directed by Martin Ritt, 564 00:26:54,790 --> 00:26:57,600 starring the great Paul Newman, in which Newman 565 00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:02,420 plays a half white, half Spanish, 566 00:27:02,420 --> 00:27:04,200 or half Indian character. 567 00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,800 I think he's an Indian-- a Native American. 568 00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:11,290 And it's a parable about racism. 569 00:27:11,290 --> 00:27:13,450 The Newman character is angry at both the white 570 00:27:13,450 --> 00:27:16,295 and the Native American society. 571 00:27:16,295 --> 00:27:17,530 He doesn't fit in any place. 572 00:27:17,530 --> 00:27:20,700 But it's especially a parable about his exclusion, 573 00:27:20,700 --> 00:27:24,620 about the Paul Newman character's exclusion 574 00:27:24,620 --> 00:27:28,980 from white society, and about the power of racism. 575 00:27:28,980 --> 00:27:33,106 By the time we get to the end of the 1960s, 576 00:27:33,106 --> 00:27:34,480 we're beginning to get films that 577 00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:39,880 have a kind of violence quotient that's different, and bloodier, 578 00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,070 and more disturbing than the violence we 579 00:27:42,070 --> 00:27:43,900 saw during the classical age. 580 00:27:43,900 --> 00:27:46,180 And we especially associate this form of violence 581 00:27:46,180 --> 00:27:50,670 with the director Sam Peckinpah whose film in 1969, 582 00:27:50,670 --> 00:27:52,940 The Wild Bunch, takes a number of actors 583 00:27:52,940 --> 00:27:55,950 who had been stars in classic Westerns 584 00:27:55,950 --> 00:28:00,170 and brings them back in a Western that is much darker 585 00:28:00,170 --> 00:28:03,480 and shows these older men as-- first of all, 586 00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:04,545 their age is emphasized. 587 00:28:04,545 --> 00:28:05,920 They're sort of doddering around. 588 00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:06,990 They're my age. 589 00:28:06,990 --> 00:28:09,520 They're in their late 60s-- early 70s, 590 00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:11,700 and they don't seem as vigorous as they should be, 591 00:28:11,700 --> 00:28:12,437 for one thing. 592 00:28:12,437 --> 00:28:14,020 I think there are even scenes in which 593 00:28:14,020 --> 00:28:17,520 their nearsightedness of one of the characters is dramatized. 594 00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:20,180 But their age and trembliness is only a part 595 00:28:20,180 --> 00:28:22,710 of their unheroic dimensions. 596 00:28:22,710 --> 00:28:27,560 And we can see that the film, although it celebrates 597 00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,430 these heroes in a certain way-- the celebration is cankered. 598 00:28:31,430 --> 00:28:33,780 It's damaged. 599 00:28:33,780 --> 00:28:35,830 It's a damaged kind of celebration. 600 00:28:35,830 --> 00:28:38,141 There's a sense that these men are past their prime, 601 00:28:38,141 --> 00:28:39,640 that they're sleeping with women who 602 00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,300 are far too young with them, and there's something kind 603 00:28:42,300 --> 00:28:43,570 of disgusting about that. 604 00:28:43,570 --> 00:28:48,900 We see that one of the actors-- an older 605 00:28:48,900 --> 00:28:53,490 figure-- Robert Ryan-- a very gifted actor who 606 00:28:53,490 --> 00:28:56,110 was in many, many Westerns and other films 607 00:28:56,110 --> 00:28:59,070 in the classical age of Hollywood-- 608 00:28:59,070 --> 00:29:02,920 plays an agent and very effective gunfighter. 609 00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,870 There's a terrible scene in a brothel where he's-- she's not 610 00:29:05,870 --> 00:29:09,670 a teenager, but there's a woman surely 30 years younger than he 611 00:29:09,670 --> 00:29:11,080 who becomes his bedmate. 612 00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:14,469 And there's something sour about the scene intended, I think, 613 00:29:14,469 --> 00:29:15,135 by the director. 614 00:29:15,135 --> 00:29:16,480 I mean, you can feel it. 615 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,440 It's as if the Western values have 616 00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:22,940 begun to congeal and sicken even before we get to the-- what 617 00:29:22,940 --> 00:29:24,520 I'm calling the-- anti-Western. 618 00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,200 And, of course, in the late '60s there also 619 00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:29,640 begins to emerge the phenomenon I talked about 620 00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,730 earlier this afternoon-- how the Italians start 621 00:29:32,730 --> 00:29:35,980 making Westerns-- putting them in Italian 622 00:29:35,980 --> 00:29:38,390 and they find locations in Europe 623 00:29:38,390 --> 00:29:41,850 that replicate American deserts and so forth. 624 00:29:41,850 --> 00:29:44,180 And the Italian Westerns, especially those 625 00:29:44,180 --> 00:29:47,460 that are associated with Sergio Leone, 626 00:29:47,460 --> 00:29:52,140 have a dark, existential, almost nihilistic flavor. 627 00:29:52,140 --> 00:29:55,560 And one of the things that Leone did that was very subversive. 628 00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:58,700 He took characters-- American actors-- 629 00:29:58,700 --> 00:30:01,830 who were associated with great, heroic, idealistic roles 630 00:30:01,830 --> 00:30:04,850 in American Westerns of the '40s and '50s, 631 00:30:04,850 --> 00:30:07,310 and he put them into Westerns in which they played 632 00:30:07,310 --> 00:30:11,780 evil villains-- murderers criminals who 633 00:30:11,780 --> 00:30:14,880 had no compassion or pity for any of their victims. 634 00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:17,310 And there's something shocking about seeing noble Henry 635 00:30:17,310 --> 00:30:21,100 Fonda who played young Abe Lincoln in John Ford's movie 636 00:30:21,100 --> 00:30:27,730 and played so many wonderful, heroic figures including 637 00:30:27,730 --> 00:30:33,350 Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine suddenly turned 638 00:30:33,350 --> 00:30:36,430 into a stone killer. 639 00:30:36,430 --> 00:30:39,280 And that kind of reversal anticipates 640 00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,700 what happens in the 1970s. 641 00:30:42,700 --> 00:30:44,940 And, of course, what happens in the '70s-- partly, 642 00:30:44,940 --> 00:30:47,550 again, a consequence of transformations 643 00:30:47,550 --> 00:30:49,080 in American society. 644 00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:50,970 I'll talk a bit about the cultural history 645 00:30:50,970 --> 00:30:54,590 of the '70s next week when I talk about film in the '70s 646 00:30:54,590 --> 00:30:55,720 in a systematic way. 647 00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:57,470 But suffice it to say for now, that 648 00:30:57,470 --> 00:30:59,910 what goes on there is a series of Westerns 649 00:30:59,910 --> 00:31:02,940 begin to appear that are permeated 650 00:31:02,940 --> 00:31:07,820 by the anti-establishment values of the counterculture-- that 651 00:31:07,820 --> 00:31:10,450 are permeated by the anti-war movement-- 652 00:31:10,450 --> 00:31:14,280 because the era of the Vietnam War-- of tremendous fissures 653 00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:16,320 in American society. 654 00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:18,156 I'll talk more about this next week, 655 00:31:18,156 --> 00:31:19,530 so I don't want to repeat myself. 656 00:31:19,530 --> 00:31:21,710 So it's a period in which American culture 657 00:31:21,710 --> 00:31:25,230 is-- it's conflicted and divided in a horrific way. 658 00:31:25,230 --> 00:31:28,210 And the Westerns will begin to reflect that. 659 00:31:28,210 --> 00:31:30,430 And, in fact, the old heroic enterprise 660 00:31:30,430 --> 00:31:34,010 of the classic Westerns of the 1940s and early '50s 661 00:31:34,010 --> 00:31:36,520 is suddenly transformed in a series 662 00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,830 of anti-Westerns or dissenting Westerns. 663 00:31:39,830 --> 00:31:42,160 In 1970, Ralph Nelson makes a film 664 00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:47,170 called Soldier Blue in which the American cavalry, the heroes 665 00:31:47,170 --> 00:31:50,130 of so many films including a trilogy of films 666 00:31:50,130 --> 00:31:52,640 by John Ford made in the late '40s 667 00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:56,750 called the Cavalry Trilogy in which-- John Wayne is 668 00:31:56,750 --> 00:31:58,090 in one of those films. 669 00:31:58,090 --> 00:32:00,520 At least one of those films celebrates 670 00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:06,680 the American-- the blue-suited cavalry of the Western era. 671 00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:12,090 In Ralph Nelson's film, the American soldiers 672 00:32:12,090 --> 00:32:13,900 are the enemy. 673 00:32:13,900 --> 00:32:16,910 It's almost-- and they commit atrocities 674 00:32:16,910 --> 00:32:19,580 that some scholars have associated with the My Lai 675 00:32:19,580 --> 00:32:21,590 atrocities in Vietnam. 676 00:32:21,590 --> 00:32:23,840 And so the Western has become a screen 677 00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,170 on which America's anxieties about the Vietnam War 678 00:32:27,170 --> 00:32:28,250 have been projected. 679 00:32:28,250 --> 00:32:30,510 Why would the Western work so well for this? 680 00:32:30,510 --> 00:32:32,160 One answer is what I've been saying 681 00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:33,920 all along about the power of genre 682 00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:35,100 and the power of repetition. 683 00:32:35,100 --> 00:32:37,130 Look, if a thing is repeated again, and again, 684 00:32:37,130 --> 00:32:38,540 and again, it looks familiar. 685 00:32:38,540 --> 00:32:40,040 When it's so familiar, what happens? 686 00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:42,780 It licenses something disturbing. 687 00:32:42,780 --> 00:32:46,650 Because the genre seems on the surface 688 00:32:46,650 --> 00:32:49,730 to contain so many familiar, reassuring elements, 689 00:32:49,730 --> 00:32:51,590 those very elements of reassurance 690 00:32:51,590 --> 00:32:55,160 enable the exploration of disturbing, or uncertain, 691 00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:57,630 or problematic materials. 692 00:32:57,630 --> 00:32:59,460 And that's one of the-- and, of course, 693 00:32:59,460 --> 00:33:03,570 because any one of these films would have nothing 694 00:33:03,570 --> 00:33:05,340 like the power they actually have 695 00:33:05,340 --> 00:33:07,970 if they existed individually. 696 00:33:07,970 --> 00:33:10,910 But it's because they're part of this long conversation that 697 00:33:10,910 --> 00:33:14,010 goes back to the earliest days of movies 698 00:33:14,010 --> 00:33:16,230 that they have the power that they have. 699 00:33:16,230 --> 00:33:19,550 In 1971, the film starring Dustin Hoffman, Little Big Man, 700 00:33:19,550 --> 00:33:21,190 is another such film in which it's 701 00:33:21,190 --> 00:33:23,840 the Indians-- the Native Americans-- who are the heroes. 702 00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:25,340 And the little, big man of the title 703 00:33:25,340 --> 00:33:26,600 is played by Dustin Hoffman. 704 00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:30,720 He's a Native American who has survived Indian massacres 705 00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,140 and lives to tell the story. 706 00:33:33,140 --> 00:33:35,440 And, of course, in 1971-- the film 707 00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,270 you'll see next week that will embody these principles-- 708 00:33:38,270 --> 00:33:42,510 Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. 709 00:33:42,510 --> 00:33:44,020 The Western doesn't disappear. 710 00:33:44,020 --> 00:33:47,440 It doesn't completely die, but it falls away 711 00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:49,720 as time continues in part, I think, 712 00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,710 because our increasingly urbanized society 713 00:33:52,710 --> 00:33:55,830 after the 1950s became less and less amenable. 714 00:33:55,830 --> 00:34:02,184 The Western became less and less credible or valuable. 715 00:34:02,184 --> 00:34:04,100 It became harder and harder for most Americans 716 00:34:04,100 --> 00:34:06,170 to identify with aspects of the Western. 717 00:34:06,170 --> 00:34:06,920 That's one reason. 718 00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:10,409 And other genres begin to take over, especially the science 719 00:34:10,409 --> 00:34:11,118 fiction genre. 720 00:34:11,118 --> 00:34:12,909 And one of the things you might think about 721 00:34:12,909 --> 00:34:15,909 if you think about the rise of science fiction 722 00:34:15,909 --> 00:34:19,104 from the '50s and '60s, and then especially from the '70s 723 00:34:19,104 --> 00:34:21,520 and beyond, and especially the rise of the science fiction 724 00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:24,659 film is you can begin to see a hybridization going on 725 00:34:24,659 --> 00:34:26,739 in which many of the features of the Western 726 00:34:26,739 --> 00:34:30,170 are superimposed on a science fiction format. 727 00:34:30,170 --> 00:34:33,500 And, man, I'm sure you can think of many such examples 728 00:34:33,500 --> 00:34:36,219 of science fiction films they borrow from 729 00:34:36,219 --> 00:34:42,070 and utilize Western conventions. 730 00:34:42,070 --> 00:34:44,750 So that's one feature-- that certain kinds of hybridization 731 00:34:44,750 --> 00:34:46,540 in which some of the features of a Western 732 00:34:46,540 --> 00:34:49,400 begin to appear in other genres. 733 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:51,840 But, of course, the Western-- because of the resonance 734 00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,590 of the form, it continues to be a space 735 00:34:54,590 --> 00:34:57,090 in which gifted directors are able to make statements 736 00:34:57,090 --> 00:34:59,170 about the nature of American society. 737 00:34:59,170 --> 00:35:03,045 And exactly, again, because of the familiarity of it 738 00:35:03,045 --> 00:35:07,730 and because of the long history of the themes and discourses 739 00:35:07,730 --> 00:35:10,080 we associate with the Western, every new Western 740 00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:12,650 is always implicitly in a conversation 741 00:35:12,650 --> 00:35:13,770 with its ancestors. 742 00:35:13,770 --> 00:35:17,240 And we have in the 1990s a series of interesting films. 743 00:35:17,240 --> 00:35:20,580 Some of you may have seen them-- Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, 744 00:35:20,580 --> 00:35:23,330 Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, 745 00:35:23,330 --> 00:35:26,490 two more versions of the Wyatt Earp story-- 746 00:35:26,490 --> 00:35:30,310 Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. 747 00:35:30,310 --> 00:35:36,270 Just a couple of titles from more recent times-- in 2007, 748 00:35:36,270 --> 00:35:41,460 3:10 to Yuma-- a remake of an earlier film that I 749 00:35:41,460 --> 00:35:43,770 listed earlier-- a 1957 film. 750 00:35:43,770 --> 00:35:45,560 If you compare those two films, you 751 00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:49,860 can see how much more violent, how much more anarchic, 752 00:35:49,860 --> 00:35:52,820 how much less idealizing and romanticizing the Western 753 00:35:52,820 --> 00:35:54,350 has become. 754 00:35:54,350 --> 00:35:57,280 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford-- 755 00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,270 a wonderful title which replicates 756 00:35:59,270 --> 00:36:03,540 exactly the title of one of those dime novels 757 00:36:03,540 --> 00:36:05,500 appeared in 2007. 758 00:36:05,500 --> 00:36:07,530 And let me mention two astonishingly 759 00:36:07,530 --> 00:36:10,060 rich and interesting examples from television. 760 00:36:10,060 --> 00:36:12,940 Television by the '80s and '90s is already 761 00:36:12,940 --> 00:36:14,800 a rival to the movies-- has really 762 00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:17,780 replaced the movies in many ways in terms of complexity 763 00:36:17,780 --> 00:36:20,970 and richness as well as having replaced the movies somewhat 764 00:36:20,970 --> 00:36:24,100 earlier as our consensus form-- as our central form. 765 00:36:24,100 --> 00:36:30,130 But two films, especially-- one, the well-known miniseries 766 00:36:30,130 --> 00:36:33,360 Lonesome Dove made from the Larry McMurtry novel-- 767 00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,730 one of the best television-- one of the best Westerns 768 00:36:35,730 --> 00:36:39,460 ever made-- a wonderful multipart story 769 00:36:39,460 --> 00:36:42,100 utilizing the serial nature of television 770 00:36:42,100 --> 00:36:45,320 to tell a Western with an expansiveness that the movie 771 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,750 screen can allow but that the conditions of exhibition 772 00:36:48,750 --> 00:36:50,539 in the movies do not allow. 773 00:36:50,539 --> 00:36:51,830 You can't go back to the movie. 774 00:36:51,830 --> 00:36:54,780 You can't watch a movie for six hours or eight hours. 775 00:36:54,780 --> 00:36:57,180 And it's much less convenient to go once a week 776 00:36:57,180 --> 00:37:00,880 for two hours for seven or eight weeks to see the same story. 777 00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:02,520 Television's a perfect environment 778 00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:04,370 for that in that sense. 779 00:37:04,370 --> 00:37:07,520 The reduced visual scale of television 780 00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,870 is what keeps the television from being really as 781 00:37:10,870 --> 00:37:13,790 powerful a medium for the Western as the movies are. 782 00:37:13,790 --> 00:37:16,420 But still, great Westerns are made. 783 00:37:16,420 --> 00:37:18,010 And the greatest of all television 784 00:37:18,010 --> 00:37:20,720 Westerns-- one of the great Westerns-- one of the greatest 785 00:37:20,720 --> 00:37:24,310 Westerns ever made-- is the ongoing series-- David Milch's 786 00:37:24,310 --> 00:37:25,860 great series, Deadwood, that appeared 787 00:37:25,860 --> 00:37:30,140 on HBO from 2004 to 2006 was abruptly 788 00:37:30,140 --> 00:37:32,540 cut-off by the HBO bosses. 789 00:37:32,540 --> 00:37:35,720 In my view, it's the equivalent in the history of television 790 00:37:35,720 --> 00:37:40,940 to the story of what happened to the Last Laugh, in which 791 00:37:40,940 --> 00:37:43,380 the producers damaged a work of art. 792 00:37:43,380 --> 00:37:45,230 But even in its damaged form, Deadwood 793 00:37:45,230 --> 00:37:48,250 is one of the most remarkable Westerns ever made. 794 00:37:48,250 --> 00:37:53,430 And it is deeply, deeply, deeply anarchic, dissenting, 795 00:37:53,430 --> 00:37:56,840 skeptical about human values and about motives. 796 00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:59,340 It's the opposite of an idealizing Western. 797 00:37:59,340 --> 00:38:03,950 It sees the West as emerging-- and Western society 798 00:38:03,950 --> 00:38:09,210 as emerging from human greed, from entrepreneuring violence 799 00:38:09,210 --> 00:38:11,975 and viciousness, from fear. 800 00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:17,230 From a historical and intellectual standpoint, 801 00:38:17,230 --> 00:38:19,220 it's a far more persuasive understanding 802 00:38:19,220 --> 00:38:24,000 of how history evolves, I think, than earlier idealizing forms-- 803 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:26,950 a deeply disturbing and powerful text. 804 00:38:26,950 --> 00:38:30,266 So the Western remains even in its vestigial condition-- 805 00:38:30,266 --> 00:38:31,390 even though it's now faded. 806 00:38:31,390 --> 00:38:33,550 It's no longer as central a format 807 00:38:33,550 --> 00:38:36,380 for an urbanized and technologized society. 808 00:38:36,380 --> 00:38:39,110 Remember, the United States before the Second World War 809 00:38:39,110 --> 00:38:41,570 was mostly a rural society. 810 00:38:41,570 --> 00:38:45,400 We only became a suburban and a fully urban society 811 00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:46,970 after the Second World War. 812 00:38:46,970 --> 00:38:49,935 And the growth of the suburbs is the great event, 813 00:38:49,935 --> 00:38:51,310 of course, after the Second World 814 00:38:51,310 --> 00:38:56,100 War-- so that more and more of the population 815 00:38:56,100 --> 00:39:00,190 found rural spaces alien, and didn't grow up in big spaces, 816 00:39:00,190 --> 00:39:02,660 and couldn't identify in the same way 817 00:39:02,660 --> 00:39:03,730 with the Western story. 818 00:39:03,730 --> 00:39:06,020 And the conditions of experience-- the conditions 819 00:39:06,020 --> 00:39:08,560 of life in the United States-- underwent a transformation 820 00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:14,745 that made the Western much more of a traditional-- 821 00:39:14,745 --> 00:39:18,370 a vestigial voice-- a vestigial form than a central one. 822 00:39:18,370 --> 00:39:23,890 And we can trace the progress of that-- of the Western genre's 823 00:39:23,890 --> 00:39:26,540 movement-- from the center to the more marginal 824 00:39:26,540 --> 00:39:29,850 or peripheral parts of the society in this history 825 00:39:29,850 --> 00:39:31,870 that I've briefly shown you. 826 00:39:31,870 --> 00:39:34,165 I have a few things to say about John Ford. 827 00:39:34,165 --> 00:39:35,280 Can you put him up? 828 00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:37,440 I won't spend a lot of time on this, 829 00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:43,400 but I want to mention some things about him. 830 00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:48,470 This is a list of some of his significant films. 831 00:39:48,470 --> 00:39:50,520 Not all that I've listed here are Westerns, 832 00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:53,440 but you can see a number of them are. 833 00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,210 He begins in the silent era. 834 00:39:55,210 --> 00:39:57,810 He continues robustly through the sound era-- 835 00:39:57,810 --> 00:39:59,880 one of the great directors of the sound era. 836 00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:06,850 And you can see a film like Young Mr. Lincoln is not 837 00:40:06,850 --> 00:40:08,780 quite a Western. 838 00:40:08,780 --> 00:40:11,610 Drums Along the Mohawk-- half a Western-- but he 839 00:40:11,610 --> 00:40:13,770 made other films that were not Westerns. 840 00:40:13,770 --> 00:40:15,920 But the Western was his signature form. 841 00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:17,640 He was a very unpretentious man. 842 00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:19,980 And when he was introduced to people he often said, 843 00:40:19,980 --> 00:40:21,280 hello, I'm John Ford. 844 00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:23,420 I direct Westerns. 845 00:40:23,420 --> 00:40:24,250 I make Westerns. 846 00:40:24,250 --> 00:40:26,230 He didn't say, I'm a film director. 847 00:40:26,230 --> 00:40:27,825 He didn't say, I'm a cineaste. 848 00:40:27,825 --> 00:40:31,590 He didn't say, I'm an artist in the movies. 849 00:40:31,590 --> 00:40:33,540 He said, I make Westerns. 850 00:40:33,540 --> 00:40:41,420 And I like the unpretentious of that quality in him. 851 00:40:41,420 --> 00:40:45,540 He was the 13th child of Irish immigrants-- born in Maine. 852 00:40:45,540 --> 00:40:47,490 His father was a saloon owner. 853 00:40:47,490 --> 00:40:51,100 And at the age of 18, in 1913 after high school, 854 00:40:51,100 --> 00:40:55,000 he followed his brother Jack to Hollywood 855 00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,920 where his brother was a writer and a director. 856 00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,060 He began to work in his brothers films 857 00:41:00,060 --> 00:41:03,000 as a prop man, and a stunt man, and a bit actor. 858 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:07,500 He played a Ku Klux Klansman in The Birth of a Nation. 859 00:41:07,500 --> 00:41:10,400 So he's a man who's the first-- why 860 00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:12,190 is Birth of a Nation important? 861 00:41:12,190 --> 00:41:14,680 The first feature-length film in the United States-- D.W. 862 00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:16,410 Griffith. 863 00:41:16,410 --> 00:41:22,000 And it shows Ford's connection to the history-- centrality 864 00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,430 to the history of the American film. 865 00:41:24,430 --> 00:41:28,190 And he directed his first film in 1917 866 00:41:28,190 --> 00:41:30,910 which was a bank robbery Western. 867 00:41:30,910 --> 00:41:33,990 And in that year he directed his first feature-- 868 00:41:33,990 --> 00:41:38,020 the film I listed earlier on our little history 869 00:41:38,020 --> 00:41:40,230 of the Western, Straight Shooting. 870 00:41:40,230 --> 00:41:47,670 And then a series of films through his career-- 30 871 00:41:47,670 --> 00:41:52,410 silent films by 1921 nearly all of which have been lost. 872 00:41:52,410 --> 00:41:55,130 So he was a very prolific director in the silent era. 873 00:41:55,130 --> 00:41:58,050 And, finally, at the end of his career 874 00:41:58,050 --> 00:42:00,570 he had directed more than 100 films-- 875 00:42:00,570 --> 00:42:05,990 over 60 sound features, 14 Westerns of which at least five 876 00:42:05,990 --> 00:42:10,250 to seven are among the greatest Westerns ever made. 877 00:42:10,250 --> 00:42:13,040 I won't single out any particular films here 878 00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:17,240 except to indicate that by the time we get to the late '50s-- 879 00:42:17,240 --> 00:42:20,240 to The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Cheyenne 880 00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:23,500 Autumn, Seven Women-- a new kind of skepticism 881 00:42:23,500 --> 00:42:27,800 has entered into the idealizing and heroic tendencies that 882 00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:32,000 were characteristic of Ford's work in his earlier Westerns. 883 00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,580 And one of the reasons that the film you're 884 00:42:35,580 --> 00:42:37,120 going to see tonight is so central 885 00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:41,630 is that it may be Ford's most profoundly ambivalent Western-- 886 00:42:41,630 --> 00:42:46,120 the Western in which his impulse to celebrate 887 00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,450 the heroic qualities of these pioneers 888 00:42:48,450 --> 00:42:53,040 and the resilience and survival qualities that 889 00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:57,160 were required to survive in these environments 890 00:42:57,160 --> 00:42:58,840 are very central. 891 00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,300 But he's begun to recognize-- begun 892 00:43:01,300 --> 00:43:03,680 to acknowledge-- what his earlier films had not 893 00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:07,480 acknowledged-- the moral complexities of the idea 894 00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:09,350 that the whites should come and take land 895 00:43:09,350 --> 00:43:11,500 away from the Indians. 896 00:43:11,500 --> 00:43:13,900 He's become to realize that the settlement of the West 897 00:43:13,900 --> 00:43:18,620 is not an unambiguous, triumphal story but a more complex 898 00:43:18,620 --> 00:43:20,690 and morally ambiguous tale. 899 00:43:20,690 --> 00:43:24,270 And that moral ambiguity is at the heart of the film 900 00:43:24,270 --> 00:43:26,760 you're going to see tonight-- The Searchers. 901 00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,210 It has a damaged hero as you'll recognize. 902 00:43:29,210 --> 00:43:31,326 It's probably John Wayne's greatest role. 903 00:43:31,326 --> 00:43:32,700 John Wayne-- he plays a character 904 00:43:32,700 --> 00:43:34,130 named Ethan in the film. 905 00:43:34,130 --> 00:43:36,110 And it's interesting-- maybe Wayne didn't fully 906 00:43:36,110 --> 00:43:40,170 understand how ambivalently the central character is 907 00:43:40,170 --> 00:43:43,420 treated because he named his firstborn son Ethan. 908 00:43:43,420 --> 00:43:45,280 It's a strange thing because the Ethan 909 00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:47,470 that John Wayne plays here is not really 910 00:43:47,470 --> 00:43:48,800 an attractive person. 911 00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,900 He has qualities that we admire and that John Ford surely 912 00:43:52,900 --> 00:43:54,740 admires. 913 00:43:54,740 --> 00:43:56,460 He's tremendously good with a gun. 914 00:43:56,460 --> 00:43:59,490 He's deeply knowledgeable about how to survive in the West. 915 00:43:59,490 --> 00:44:02,560 He knows a tremendous amount about the Native Americans. 916 00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:06,240 He can ride a horse like a rodeo rider. 917 00:44:06,240 --> 00:44:10,060 He's brave beyond belief, but he's also, as we discover, 918 00:44:10,060 --> 00:44:11,191 a racist. 919 00:44:11,191 --> 00:44:13,065 There's a danger all the way through the film 920 00:44:13,065 --> 00:44:17,400 that he may murder the young girl he's trying to find. 921 00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:19,196 He's searching for a young girl. 922 00:44:19,196 --> 00:44:20,570 There's some question all the way 923 00:44:20,570 --> 00:44:22,440 through the film on what his motive is-- whether he wants 924 00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:24,680 to find her to kill her or whether he wants 925 00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:26,190 to find her to rescue her. 926 00:44:26,190 --> 00:44:27,750 Why does he want to kill her? 927 00:44:27,750 --> 00:44:29,305 Part of his damage-- the implication 928 00:44:29,305 --> 00:44:31,430 of the early part of the film is that he-- not just 929 00:44:31,430 --> 00:44:32,820 the implication-- the fact is he-- 930 00:44:32,820 --> 00:44:34,195 in the early part of the film, we 931 00:44:34,195 --> 00:44:38,220 discover that he fought on the Confederate side of the war, 932 00:44:38,220 --> 00:44:39,820 so he's coming home a loser. 933 00:44:39,820 --> 00:44:42,570 And there's an implication very early, as you'll see, 934 00:44:42,570 --> 00:44:44,380 that he committed various kinds of crime-- 935 00:44:44,380 --> 00:44:45,960 that he rode with outlaws. 936 00:44:50,706 --> 00:44:54,780 And that some of the loot that he has taken from the war 937 00:44:54,780 --> 00:45:00,740 may be ill-gained-- that he's a bitter and unhappy war veteran 938 00:45:00,740 --> 00:45:02,550 who feels that his side lost. 939 00:45:02,550 --> 00:45:06,380 So he enters the film bitter-- as an embittered and damaged 940 00:45:06,380 --> 00:45:07,020 person. 941 00:45:07,020 --> 00:45:09,150 As the film continues, we recognize 942 00:45:09,150 --> 00:45:12,030 that, in fact, this family he's returned to-- his brother's 943 00:45:12,030 --> 00:45:15,990 family and his brother's wife and his nieces and nephews-- 944 00:45:15,990 --> 00:45:18,740 there's a complexity there because of the looks that he 945 00:45:18,740 --> 00:45:20,890 exchanges with his brother's wife. 946 00:45:20,890 --> 00:45:24,430 You realize, not that they've ever had an affair or anything, 947 00:45:24,430 --> 00:45:26,260 but they had loved each other first 948 00:45:26,260 --> 00:45:29,122 and that the wife maybe still loves the John Wayne character 949 00:45:29,122 --> 00:45:30,580 even though she'll never act on it. 950 00:45:30,580 --> 00:45:33,030 Watch how that happens because not a word of dialogue 951 00:45:33,030 --> 00:45:36,890 is spoken, but Ford dramatizes this almost heavy-handedly. 952 00:45:36,890 --> 00:45:41,482 It's not all ambiguous even though the character playing 953 00:45:41,482 --> 00:45:43,690 John Wayne's brother is completely oblivious to this, 954 00:45:43,690 --> 00:45:45,280 but the audience knows this. 955 00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:48,320 So he's an embittered, damaged-- a partial figure even 956 00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:49,400 from the beginning. 957 00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:51,790 And then as the story goes on, we 958 00:45:51,790 --> 00:45:55,440 discover other qualities in him that make us nervous. 959 00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:57,410 I said, for example, that he may be a racist. 960 00:45:57,410 --> 00:46:00,100 And we don't know whether he'll kill or save 961 00:46:00,100 --> 00:46:03,010 the person he's after. 962 00:46:03,010 --> 00:46:05,490 The film involves an Indian attack 963 00:46:05,490 --> 00:46:08,820 in which the John Wayne character's niece 964 00:46:08,820 --> 00:46:10,140 is taken by Indians. 965 00:46:10,140 --> 00:46:12,470 And most of the film is the John Wayne character 966 00:46:12,470 --> 00:46:16,040 and his sidekick's attempt to recover 967 00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:19,690 the stolen woman-- his niece. 968 00:46:19,690 --> 00:46:22,270 She's stolen as a child, but it takes many years 969 00:46:22,270 --> 00:46:23,560 before they recover her. 970 00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:25,810 And by the time they recover her, she's a young woman. 971 00:46:25,810 --> 00:46:28,160 And she's been the wife of an Indian brave-- 972 00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,610 a character named Scar who was really, ultimately, 973 00:46:31,610 --> 00:46:35,430 a kind of double of the hero in certain ways 974 00:46:35,430 --> 00:46:40,420 as we come to recognize when we look closely at the film. 975 00:46:40,420 --> 00:46:48,970 And his search for this girl is ambiguous to us 976 00:46:48,970 --> 00:46:52,180 because he's so against-- he hates Indian so much. 977 00:46:52,180 --> 00:46:55,920 It's a form of-- remember when the film is taking place-- 978 00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:57,280 during the civil rights era. 979 00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,110 So we can read John Wayne's hatred of Indians 980 00:47:01,110 --> 00:47:06,080 as a form of the racism-- the anti-African American 981 00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,725 prejudice-- that is being dramatized-- 982 00:47:08,725 --> 00:47:11,640 that is being fought over in the civil rights 983 00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,670 movement in the United States in the '50s and 1960s. 984 00:47:14,670 --> 00:47:17,010 So it's a kind of metaphor for what's happening there. 985 00:47:17,010 --> 00:47:20,292 And we're not sure whether the John Wayne character 986 00:47:20,292 --> 00:47:22,000 is actually going to save her or kill her 987 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,110 when he finds her because she's been polluted by her connection 988 00:47:25,110 --> 00:47:27,210 to an Indian. 989 00:47:27,210 --> 00:47:31,700 And this theme-- it's not hidden because the John Wayne 990 00:47:31,700 --> 00:47:35,060 character's sidekick is really worried about this and even 991 00:47:35,060 --> 00:47:36,940 accuses him of this at some point. 992 00:47:36,940 --> 00:47:39,440 So he's a damaged and ambiguous character. 993 00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:41,290 There are things about him we admire, 994 00:47:41,290 --> 00:47:43,260 but there are things about him that disturb us. 995 00:47:43,260 --> 00:47:45,260 And at the very end of the film in what 996 00:47:45,260 --> 00:47:49,780 is one of the most famous images in John Ford's work, 997 00:47:49,780 --> 00:47:52,640 we get a shot of John Wayne from the back. 998 00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:54,830 He's been excluded from the community in a way. 999 00:47:54,830 --> 00:47:56,070 We see him from the back. 1000 00:47:56,070 --> 00:47:57,290 He's standing like this. 1001 00:47:57,290 --> 00:48:00,260 We see him through an aperture through a doorway. 1002 00:48:00,260 --> 00:48:03,460 And he grabs his-- he makes this kind of a gesture-- 1003 00:48:03,460 --> 00:48:06,490 a gesture of vulnerability in which we-- and he's standing 1004 00:48:06,490 --> 00:48:07,720 isolated and alone. 1005 00:48:07,720 --> 00:48:11,440 There's a sense in which he's still-- this extraordinary hero 1006 00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:12,847 has been, in some sense, excluded 1007 00:48:12,847 --> 00:48:14,430 from the very community that he helped 1008 00:48:14,430 --> 00:48:18,420 create, in part, because he doesn't 1009 00:48:18,420 --> 00:48:19,750 deserve to be part of it. 1010 00:48:19,750 --> 00:48:20,530 He's damaged. 1011 00:48:20,530 --> 00:48:21,750 He's imperfect. 1012 00:48:21,750 --> 00:48:26,720 But also because of the natural-- the mythic logic 1013 00:48:26,720 --> 00:48:29,350 of the Western in which the savior figure is so 1014 00:48:29,350 --> 00:48:31,680 tainted by the savagery he saved us 1015 00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,115 from that he can't be included in the community 1016 00:48:34,115 --> 00:48:35,550 that he helped to create. 1017 00:48:35,550 --> 00:48:38,900 So it's a very clear example of this Western pattern, 1018 00:48:38,900 --> 00:48:41,230 but it's morally complicated because it 1019 00:48:41,230 --> 00:48:44,300 comes at such a late stage and because, by this time, 1020 00:48:44,300 --> 00:48:46,320 Ford himself has begun to reflect 1021 00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:49,830 on the implications of the much more simplistic stories 1022 00:48:49,830 --> 00:48:52,520 he had told earlier in his career. 1023 00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:55,600 The setting of the film is important to talk about 1024 00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:57,600 because it is filmed in a place that 1025 00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,160 came to be called John Wayne's own special theater-- 1026 00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:04,430 his own stage set-- Monument Valley in Arizona. 1027 00:49:04,430 --> 00:49:06,480 Other directors have worked in that place, 1028 00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:09,960 but it always feels as if they're plagiarizing John Ford. 1029 00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,540 He made at least nine films in Monument Valley. 1030 00:49:14,540 --> 00:49:17,310 And you'll see the power of that space-- 1031 00:49:17,310 --> 00:49:19,760 the looming rock formations-- the sense you 1032 00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:22,780 have all the way through the film that the human habitations 1033 00:49:22,780 --> 00:49:27,840 are minimal structures that could be blown away in a second 1034 00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:32,500 and that are dwarfed in comparison to the rock 1035 00:49:32,500 --> 00:49:38,540 formations and the grandeur of the gigantic natural phenomena 1036 00:49:38,540 --> 00:49:39,730 that we see around us. 1037 00:49:39,730 --> 00:49:42,990 The human being seems small, and the human habitations 1038 00:49:42,990 --> 00:49:46,600 seem marginal and far from permanent 1039 00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:49,760 in this world of grandeur-- of what 1040 00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:52,090 we might call inhuman grandeur. 1041 00:49:52,090 --> 00:49:53,700 So the setting's important. 1042 00:49:53,700 --> 00:49:55,810 The plot-- very important to realize 1043 00:49:55,810 --> 00:49:59,310 that it embodies two separate, important kinds of stories. 1044 00:49:59,310 --> 00:50:02,070 The first-- the founding story-- what I've talked about earlier 1045 00:50:02,070 --> 00:50:02,620 today. 1046 00:50:02,620 --> 00:50:06,700 The idea that this is how a culture is founded. 1047 00:50:06,700 --> 00:50:09,970 You create a society against warring elements, 1048 00:50:09,970 --> 00:50:14,150 rescue it from the wilderness, and from savage-- 1049 00:50:14,150 --> 00:50:18,590 not just savage nature but from savage antagonists-- 1050 00:50:18,590 --> 00:50:21,180 the American Indians who don't want to give up their land 1051 00:50:21,180 --> 00:50:25,040 and who are-- until we get to this film-- in John Ford's 1052 00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:28,390 films mostly-- had been figured as anarchic figures 1053 00:50:28,390 --> 00:50:29,140 of pure evil. 1054 00:50:29,140 --> 00:50:30,690 They hadn't been humanized. 1055 00:50:30,690 --> 00:50:33,200 They've been seen as part of nature. 1056 00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:34,460 In this film, not so. 1057 00:50:34,460 --> 00:50:35,890 There's a sympathy for the Indians 1058 00:50:35,890 --> 00:50:39,010 that enters this film that helps to explain its complexity 1059 00:50:39,010 --> 00:50:40,230 and its richness. 1060 00:50:40,230 --> 00:50:42,780 The second great story is the captive's tale-- one 1061 00:50:42,780 --> 00:50:45,680 of the central and earliest forms of American narrative. 1062 00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,130 The captives tale that is told here is based on a true story. 1063 00:50:49,130 --> 00:50:52,270 A woman named Cynthia Ann Parker was abducted at the age of nine 1064 00:50:52,270 --> 00:50:56,900 by Comanches in Texas in 1836. 1065 00:50:56,900 --> 00:50:59,520 A novel was written about that event 1066 00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:03,940 by Alan Le May much after the event. 1067 00:51:03,940 --> 00:51:06,900 And Ford's film is based on the novel. 1068 00:51:06,900 --> 00:51:08,850 One of the ironies is that the real Cynthia 1069 00:51:08,850 --> 00:51:15,960 Ann chose her Comanche husband over her Anglo relatives 1070 00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:17,610 when she was rescued. 1071 00:51:17,610 --> 00:51:21,740 She didn't want to leave unlike the novel 1072 00:51:21,740 --> 00:51:24,180 and unlike what happens in the film. 1073 00:51:24,180 --> 00:51:26,570 And I mention this, in part, to remind you 1074 00:51:26,570 --> 00:51:30,200 of the romanticizing tendencies of the American Western. 1075 00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:32,780 But still, captives' tales-- stories 1076 00:51:32,780 --> 00:51:35,480 of white people, especially white women, 1077 00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:37,930 captured by Indians and raised by Indians 1078 00:51:37,930 --> 00:51:42,750 were a staple of the popular cultures 1079 00:51:42,750 --> 00:51:45,160 from long before the history of movies. 1080 00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:47,150 And this movie, like other movies, 1081 00:51:47,150 --> 00:51:49,997 dramatizes a version of that captive's tale. 1082 00:51:49,997 --> 00:51:52,330 The structure of the film is worth calling attention to, 1083 00:51:52,330 --> 00:51:53,930 in part, because it's ambiguous. 1084 00:51:53,930 --> 00:51:57,370 One way to organize the plot-- I mean, 1085 00:51:57,370 --> 00:52:00,591 the structure of the film-- is to recognize 1086 00:52:00,591 --> 00:52:03,090 that there are seven moments in the film that we might think 1087 00:52:03,090 --> 00:52:05,420 of as chapters or bookmarks. 1088 00:52:05,420 --> 00:52:07,420 And if you watch for these moments-- 1089 00:52:07,420 --> 00:52:10,517 it's also a structurally significant device. 1090 00:52:10,517 --> 00:52:12,100 If you watch for these moments, you'll 1091 00:52:12,100 --> 00:52:14,600 be able to follow the-- you'll recognize that the film is 1092 00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:18,640 progressing because its timeframe is intentionally 1093 00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:21,420 ambiguous for reasons I'll hint at in a moment. 1094 00:52:21,420 --> 00:52:24,230 And these seven moments all involve a similar kind of shot. 1095 00:52:24,230 --> 00:52:28,060 The camera looks through a doorway or an opening 1096 00:52:28,060 --> 00:52:31,220 out into a rectangle of receding light. 1097 00:52:31,220 --> 00:52:33,690 The very opening of the film has one such shot. 1098 00:52:33,690 --> 00:52:36,340 And at seven different moments in the film, 1099 00:52:36,340 --> 00:52:39,420 we see a shot from inside an interior space-- 1100 00:52:39,420 --> 00:52:42,430 from a dark interior space-- and we look out through a doorway. 1101 00:52:42,430 --> 00:52:45,430 You might ask yourself why in a film that celebrates 1102 00:52:45,430 --> 00:52:48,480 and that dramatizes the immense expansiveness 1103 00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:51,850 of the Western environment, Ford would give us 1104 00:52:51,850 --> 00:52:56,360 images-- such self-conscious obvious images-- 1105 00:52:56,360 --> 00:52:58,310 that, first of all, refer to each other 1106 00:52:58,310 --> 00:53:01,390 so you think about when they occur in the film. 1107 00:53:01,390 --> 00:53:03,350 But why he would so intentionally 1108 00:53:03,350 --> 00:53:05,700 restrict the visual range of what's available-- 1109 00:53:05,700 --> 00:53:07,650 make you feel confinement. 1110 00:53:07,650 --> 00:53:08,545 Why does he do that? 1111 00:53:08,545 --> 00:53:11,440 One possible-- and I might leave this for your section 1112 00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,160 but think about why he does it. 1113 00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:16,270 One effect is surely to make you even more aware 1114 00:53:16,270 --> 00:53:18,460 of how expansive the outside is because you 1115 00:53:18,460 --> 00:53:20,250 are in the outside for a lot of the time. 1116 00:53:20,250 --> 00:53:22,330 By confining your vision in this way, 1117 00:53:22,330 --> 00:53:25,680 it's a reminder of how much bigness is out there. 1118 00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:28,240 But there are other reasons, as well, 1119 00:53:28,240 --> 00:53:31,440 for why the perspective would be restricted 1120 00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:33,270 to these aperture shots. 1121 00:53:33,270 --> 00:53:35,570 In any case, there are seven of them through the film, 1122 00:53:35,570 --> 00:53:37,970 and they mark the progress of the film. 1123 00:53:37,970 --> 00:53:39,890 The reason that the film is so hard to follow 1124 00:53:39,890 --> 00:53:43,730 is, in part, that the timeframe is weird. 1125 00:53:43,730 --> 00:53:45,950 And I'll come to that in a second. 1126 00:53:45,950 --> 00:53:47,600 There is one turning point in the film 1127 00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:49,933 that I want to mention to you that you should watch for. 1128 00:53:49,933 --> 00:53:52,400 It's a moral turning point or a psychologically important 1129 00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:54,760 turning point because it's a moment in the film where 1130 00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:56,520 the sympathy of the viewer is shifted-- 1131 00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:59,560 is radically transformed. 1132 00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:03,090 It occurs about midway through the film 1133 00:54:03,090 --> 00:54:06,620 where the John Wayne character and his sidekick, Martin 1134 00:54:06,620 --> 00:54:13,400 Pawley, come riding down a-- not quite a mountain 1135 00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:16,814 but a promontory through heavy snow. 1136 00:54:16,814 --> 00:54:18,980 The weather in the film is interesting and powerful. 1137 00:54:18,980 --> 00:54:21,240 That's one of the ways you can feel time passing. 1138 00:54:21,240 --> 00:54:23,030 Their winters and summers go by. 1139 00:54:23,030 --> 00:54:25,230 You can feel the seasons passing. 1140 00:54:25,230 --> 00:54:27,209 But you're not clear how much time goes by. 1141 00:54:27,209 --> 00:54:29,000 By the end of the film, you know many years 1142 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:30,374 has gone by-- at least 10 years-- 1143 00:54:30,374 --> 00:54:34,170 because the young girl who was stolen away in the beginning 1144 00:54:34,170 --> 00:54:37,790 is a young woman at the end of the film-- the adult played 1145 00:54:37,790 --> 00:54:47,100 by the actress Natalie Wood-- a very successful and important 1146 00:54:47,100 --> 00:54:49,645 actress of the '50s and '60s. 1147 00:54:53,940 --> 00:54:55,470 So she's a grown woman by the end, 1148 00:54:55,470 --> 00:54:58,300 so we know that a significant amount of time has gone by. 1149 00:54:58,300 --> 00:54:59,730 But it isn't clear as the story's 1150 00:54:59,730 --> 00:55:02,390 going on exactly how much time has gone by, 1151 00:55:02,390 --> 00:55:04,830 and that ambiguity's important. 1152 00:55:04,830 --> 00:55:07,290 The turning point occurs as they're coming down this hill. 1153 00:55:07,290 --> 00:55:10,654 The horses are almost up to their shoulders in snow. 1154 00:55:10,654 --> 00:55:12,820 And they come riding down this hill into a village-- 1155 00:55:12,820 --> 00:55:15,150 an Indian village-- a Native American village. 1156 00:55:15,150 --> 00:55:16,570 And it's a Native American village 1157 00:55:16,570 --> 00:55:18,180 that's in smoking ruins. 1158 00:55:18,180 --> 00:55:21,030 It has been decimated by American cavalry. 1159 00:55:21,030 --> 00:55:22,570 And they go into one of the teepees, 1160 00:55:22,570 --> 00:55:25,270 and they find-- dead in the teepee-- 1161 00:55:25,270 --> 00:55:28,630 a Native American woman-- a squaw named Look 1162 00:55:28,630 --> 00:55:29,830 who had been following them. 1163 00:55:29,830 --> 00:55:31,260 And we've gotten to know her. 1164 00:55:31,260 --> 00:55:32,650 And the Martin Pawley character-- 1165 00:55:32,650 --> 00:55:36,670 the secondary character-- the sidekick-- 1166 00:55:36,670 --> 00:55:38,280 says to the John Wayne character, 1167 00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:39,780 why did they have to kill Look? 1168 00:55:39,780 --> 00:55:41,330 She didn't do anything. 1169 00:55:41,330 --> 00:55:44,570 And it's a moment in which the butchery of the white soldiers 1170 00:55:44,570 --> 00:55:48,130 is dramatized in which your sympathy turns entirely 1171 00:55:48,130 --> 00:55:51,410 away from the official American government 1172 00:55:51,410 --> 00:55:53,560 account of the West towards something else. 1173 00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:56,580 And in the very next scene, something amazing happens. 1174 00:55:56,580 --> 00:55:58,580 It's easy to miss because it happens so quickly, 1175 00:55:58,580 --> 00:56:00,570 but it's very important, morally, to the film. 1176 00:56:00,570 --> 00:56:03,700 We have a scene in which we see three Indian chieftains 1177 00:56:03,700 --> 00:56:08,880 standing in-- they're captives-- standing in blankets looking on 1178 00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:11,970 as another group of Native Americans-- Indians-- 1179 00:56:11,970 --> 00:56:15,330 are being, essentially, herded into a compound-- 1180 00:56:15,330 --> 00:56:17,430 into a hospital-type building. 1181 00:56:17,430 --> 00:56:21,550 And they're being herded as if they're cattle, or sheep, 1182 00:56:21,550 --> 00:56:23,310 or not fully human. 1183 00:56:23,310 --> 00:56:26,820 And you can see-- there's no dialogue, 1184 00:56:26,820 --> 00:56:32,440 but you can see the sadness and the unhappiness 1185 00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:36,362 and the regret in the eyes of these sturdy chiefs 1186 00:56:36,362 --> 00:56:37,320 as they look upon that. 1187 00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:39,160 And what happens in that moment is 1188 00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:41,940 that the film's perspective has become 1189 00:56:41,940 --> 00:56:43,610 that of the Native Americans. 1190 00:56:43,610 --> 00:56:46,390 And the audience's perspective has become that as well. 1191 00:56:46,390 --> 00:56:49,154 And so the effect of these moments 1192 00:56:49,154 --> 00:56:51,570 coupled with many other things in the film-- some of which 1193 00:56:51,570 --> 00:56:52,986 I've mentioned, some of which I've 1194 00:56:52,986 --> 00:56:58,180 not-- about the ambiguity of the John Wayne character's nature, 1195 00:56:58,180 --> 00:56:59,300 come together here. 1196 00:56:59,300 --> 00:57:01,840 And this is a moment in which something 1197 00:57:01,840 --> 00:57:05,020 of the complexity of the Western story 1198 00:57:05,020 --> 00:57:07,650 is being acknowledged by the text. 1199 00:57:07,650 --> 00:57:10,550 No longer are we getting a kind of simple celebration 1200 00:57:10,550 --> 00:57:12,090 of these Western values. 1201 00:57:12,090 --> 00:57:14,840 Something much more ambiguous and morally complex 1202 00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:15,910 is happening here. 1203 00:57:15,910 --> 00:57:18,210 A critique of those values is being 1204 00:57:18,210 --> 00:57:21,597 embedded in this apparently classic Western. 1205 00:57:21,597 --> 00:57:23,930 And it's one of the reasons it's such a remarkable film. 1206 00:57:23,930 --> 00:57:24,730 I'll conclude now. 1207 00:57:24,730 --> 00:57:26,460 I apologize for running over. 1208 00:57:26,460 --> 00:57:30,240 The title itself clarifies some of the ambiguity of the movie. 1209 00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:32,450 What are they searching for? 1210 00:57:32,450 --> 00:57:35,050 I said before that the timeframe of the film is confusing, 1211 00:57:35,050 --> 00:57:36,190 and it's not just that. 1212 00:57:36,190 --> 00:57:39,690 Even the setting of the film-- the Monument Valley setting-- 1213 00:57:39,690 --> 00:57:41,930 comes to seem almost like a lunar landscape 1214 00:57:41,930 --> 00:57:44,300 before we're finished with the film. 1215 00:57:44,300 --> 00:57:47,200 There's a sense that the quest goes on forever-- 1216 00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:49,860 that they begin to lose a sense of why they're doing it. 1217 00:57:49,860 --> 00:57:51,774 After all, so much time has gone by. 1218 00:57:51,774 --> 00:57:53,940 She's lived with the Native Americans all this time. 1219 00:57:53,940 --> 00:57:56,880 What's the point of the rescue even-- we might think. 1220 00:58:00,180 --> 00:58:03,940 The fact that the quest has gone on for such a long time, 1221 00:58:03,940 --> 00:58:05,700 but it becomes more and more unclear 1222 00:58:05,700 --> 00:58:09,240 why the search is going on-- what the purpose of the search 1223 00:58:09,240 --> 00:58:09,740 is. 1224 00:58:09,740 --> 00:58:12,200 There's a kind of ambiguity in it 1225 00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:18,370 that is deeply disturbing and deeply troubling. 1226 00:58:18,370 --> 00:58:24,480 And, of course, the sense we have at the end of the film 1227 00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:27,860 that the search-- it is concluded, but almost 1228 00:58:27,860 --> 00:58:29,490 until the very end we're not sure 1229 00:58:29,490 --> 00:58:34,230 whether the John Wayne character is going to save or murder 1230 00:58:34,230 --> 00:58:35,740 the object of his quest. 1231 00:58:35,740 --> 00:58:38,030 And there's also the sense that even after he's done, 1232 00:58:38,030 --> 00:58:40,780 what has been gained? 1233 00:58:40,780 --> 00:58:44,180 So there's a deep ambiguity at the end of the movie 1234 00:58:44,180 --> 00:58:47,970 as there is a deep ambiguity surrounding the alleged heroism 1235 00:58:47,970 --> 00:58:50,510 of the John Wayne character. 1236 00:58:50,510 --> 00:58:53,410 So one of the reasons I emphasize these ambiguities 1237 00:58:53,410 --> 00:58:56,740 and complexities is as a way of stressing the fact 1238 00:58:56,740 --> 00:58:59,560 that even before we get to the era of what I'll 1239 00:58:59,560 --> 00:59:02,690 call the anti-Western or the dissenting Western, 1240 00:59:02,690 --> 00:59:05,780 the classic Western itself has reached a level of complexity 1241 00:59:05,780 --> 00:59:07,780 and maturity, embodied especially 1242 00:59:07,780 --> 00:59:09,990 in this film and others that we might cite 1243 00:59:09,990 --> 00:59:13,030 from the 1960s, in which a kind of self-consciousness 1244 00:59:13,030 --> 00:59:16,980 about the assumptions that lie behind and animate 1245 00:59:16,980 --> 00:59:20,460 this central American form have already come to the surface 1246 00:59:20,460 --> 00:59:23,750 and are being confronted by our best directors 1247 00:59:23,750 --> 00:59:26,010 in our best films. 1248 00:59:26,010 --> 00:59:27,560 Goodnight.