An analysis of Western
films discloses the use of a number of specific types of scenic
elements that tend to recur frequently in such movies. The order in
which these scenic elements occurs may differ, and not all may be
present in a film, although, typically, many, if not all, do tend to
appear. In addition, each scenic element can be shown by itself or in
combination with another (for example, an offer of a bounty may be
accepted or rejected, earned or lost). Scenic elements that occur in
all the movies analyzed below are indicated by bold font.
In Tombstone (1993),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Despicable
deed: An action, usually criminal, that is beyond the pale, even for
outlaws
Relocation
Reunion
Health
problem
Character
flaw
Stake:
A source of income, often temporary
Murder
Arrest
Law
enforcement
Gunfight
Ambush
Retaliation
Refuge:
a place of safety
Challenge
Substitution:
the replacement of an expected or intended character or object with
an unexpected replacement
Showdown
Vendetta:
protracted revenge against several parties
Marriage
In
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
(1966), these scenic elements occur in this order:
Interrogation:
formal or informal, legal or otherwise
Murder
Surrender
to authorities: of oneself or one's prisoner
Rescue
Abandonment
Revenge
Duplicity:
often as a means of double-dealing or double-crossing
Reunion
Capture
Escape
Sabotage
Intelligence:
information gained through personal observation, primary sources, or
secondary sources
Robbery
Rescue
In
The War Wagon (1967),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Relocation
Revenge
Intelligence
Hiring
of expert(s)
Robbery
Rescue
Offer
of bounty
Drunkenness
Negotiation
Intervention
Diversion
Theft
Forced
detour
Division
of forces
Drunkenness
Ambush
Murder
Crash
In
True Grit (1969),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Murder
Robbery
Hiring
of expert(s)
Pursuit
Tracking
of fugitive(s)
Partnership
Attempted
abandonment
Discovery:
information gained through a character's own action, rather than
those of another party or from a primary or secondary source
Capture
Interrogation
Defiance
Attempted
ambush
Feint
Gunfight
Death:
loss of life due to a natural cause or a justified killing, as
opposed to murder
Escape
Pursuit
Wounding
Kidnapping
Ultimatum
Attack
Injury
Snakebite
Commandeering of
civilian vehicle
Payment
Promise
Wager
As
this partial analysis of the recurring types of scenic elements
common to Western films shows, such movies frequently use the same
scenic elements, despite the dramatic details of their plots. A
writer who is interested in writing a Western novel or screenplay can
use these same scenic elements to construct a plot based on a
structure that has stood the test of time.
Sometimes, the
stories of the actors behind the figures of the Old West—at least,
as they are portrayed in Hollywood Westerns—are as interesting as
those of the cowboys, gunfighters, outlaws, and sheriffs themselves.
A case in
point: character actor Chill Wills, who was known as much for his
gravely voice and his gruff demeanor as he was for his rugged
appearance.
He starred in
many Westerns, alongside some of the most famous leading men of the
genre, including John Wayne, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor,
Gene Autry, and Robert Preston.
It was after his role as Bee Keeper in the
1960 film The Alamo,
starring John Wayne, that Wills got into trouble. Bee Keeper was the
sidekick of Davy Crockett (John Wayne). According to Cynthia Brideson
and Sara Brideson, authors of the highly
recommendedAlso
Starring Forty Biographical Essays on the Greatest Character Actors
of Hollywood's Golden Era, 130-1965,
Wills's role won him “his first Oscar nomination,” and he wanted
the award badly enough to hire a publicity agent to conduct a
campaign for him.
His
agent, W. S. Wocjiechowicz, conceived the idea of blanketing
“Hollywood trade papers” with an ad containing the copy, “We of
The Alamocast are
praying harder—than the real Texans prayed for their lives in The
Alamo—for Chill Wills to win the Oscar.”
Wayne,
who had great respect for the real men of the West, was offended. Not
only did he deny that “any of the cast had condoned” Wills's
slick campaign, but he also “condemned” it.
The Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Science also found the campaign offensive. As
a result, the Academy forbade any future such campaigns by stars who
were nominated for the award.
Wills
didn't win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Instead, he lost to Peter
Ustinov, who won for his part as Lentulus Batiatus, the owner of the
gladiator school in Spartacus.
To get a true idea of the
complexity of the American West, as it is suggested by the posters
that promote John Wayne's many Western films, it's necessary to
analyze many of these advertisements. In this post, however, only one
is considered, so, admittedly, only the surface has been scratched
here.
The point of this post is
to identify some of the elements that Hollywood filmmakers
considered, at the time of the poster's appearance, to be of
sufficient interest to the genre's fans that they could be used to
persuade them to part with the price of the movie's admission.
McLintock, released
in 1963, stars John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Patrick Wayne, Stefanie
Powers, Jack Kruschen, Chill Wills, Jerry Van Dyke, and Yvonne De
Carlo. Three women in a Western are two (or, in many cases, even
three) more than usual; consequently, their presence suggests that
this film focuses on the relationships between men and women of the
Old West more than many other such films.
Despite the presence of
Patrick Wayne, Jack Kruschen, Chill Wills, and Jerry Van Dyke,
there's really only one male character of importance in the motion
picture: Wayne's character, George Washington (“G. W.”)
McLintock. As the movie's poster
makes clear by focusing on him and O'Hara, the flick is
primarily about his
relationship to her.
Wayne
is shown as huge, his portrait taking up the upper two-thirds of the
poster's space. He appears to be laughing, except that he looks more
pained than merry (but, then, Wayne often
looks pained, on screen and in posters). The fact that the film is a
comedy suggests that he is, in fact, laughing.
Beneath
his image, the movie's title, “McLintock!,” appears, complete
with exclamation point.
Beneath
the title, three pictures, looking much like snapshots, are featured,
the middle one of which slightly overlaps the one before and the one
after it. Comprising a sort of triptych, these smaller images seem to
be the soil, so to speak, out of which the comparatively gigantic
head and shoulders of McLintock arises, as if his being is rooted in
the activities the “snapshots” depict. The order of the smaller
images also suggest a beginning, a middle, and an end, and all of
them suggest violence of a sort.
The
first picture shows two men engaged in a fistfight, while a third
lies on the ground, apparently recovering from a blow.
The
second shows a man pursuing a woman dressed only in her underwear; he
holds part of her torn dress; she, the rest of it. One of the
buildings behind the couple is the McLintock Hotel. Probably to
maintain an element of suspense, neither of the two figures (or those
of the fighting men) are identifiable as members of the cast and, in
fact, look like any of the actors, so viewers can't tell whether the
fighters include Wayne or the couple consists of him and O'Hara.
The
third of the smaller pictures shows another brawl, in which one man,
shown in the foreground, knocks his opponent down, while, in the
background behind them, a third man holds a fourth, while a fifth
falls to the ground. Most of the men, of course, wear six-shooters,
holstered on their hips.
The
poster seems to indicate that McLintock is a man of violence, a
fighter and (by today's understanding) a perpetrator of domestic
violence. A businessman, probably of some social and economic
standing in town, he's outwardly respectful, but he's certainly no
saint. Like his business rivals, physical combatants, and his own
wife, others are subject to his will; a dominant personality he's
able and willing to impose his will on men and women alike. Somehow
(perhaps because the bigger image of him is laughing), he appears to
be likable.
With
some speculation, based on the poster's imagery, these notions are
about all a viewer can discern concerning the movie's likely plot.
Filmmakers were betting that these inferences would be enough to lure
fans of Westerns in general and of Wayne in particular into theaters
in 1963.
By
consulting a summary
of the movie, we can see whether the implications suggested by the
movie's poster (or the interpretation of it, at least, that's offered
in this post) are close to the content that the film actually
delivers, are far afield, or are somewhere between these polar
possibilities.
The
movie, we find, is based “loosely” on William Shakespeare's
comedy The
Taming of the Shrew. G. W.
is more financially successful than his name on the hotel, as shown
on the poster, suggests, and he's not primarily a hotel owner; he's a
rancher, a cattleman, and a mine operator as well.
His
wife Katherine (O'Hara) has left him, to live back east, after
suspecting he's committed adultery. His daughter Becky (Powers), a
college student, lives with him. In Katherine's absence, G. W.'s
hired a homesteader, the beautiful widow Louise Warren (De Carlo),
whose adult son Devlin (“Dev”) (Wayne's son Patrick) lives in
McLintock's house with her.
All
is cleared up between G. W. and Kathleen, after G. W. spanks her with
a coal scuttle, a technique he picked up from his daughter's fiance,
Dev, who earlier delivered the same punishment to Becky, using the
same instrument, whereupon the quarreling younger couple became
engaged.
The
poster is vague about the fistfights it depicts, but, it seems, they
reference the brawls that occur in the movie. The man pursuing the
woman in the central picture at the bottom of the poster is G. W.;
the woman he pursues, his wife (although their identification is,
perhaps intentionally, left unclear in the poster).
Wayne,
who developed the script, included the spanking scenes to indicate
his own aversion to domestic violence. However, according to O'Hara,
Wayne “really spanked me! My bottom was black and blue for weeks!”
Although
the poster seems purposely vague about the motives of the characters
and the particular details of the situations in which they are
depicted, again, probably to preserve suspense, it does a fair job of
hinting at the nature of the film and its general theme.
Fans
of the Western who enjoy action and adventure that includes sex
(symbolized on the poster by O'Hara's half-dressed state) and
violence (suggested on the poster by the pictures of fisticuffs) and
features a manly, if familiar, star as protagonist were likely to
fork over the price of admission to enjoy McLintock,
the filmmakers apparently believed, since this poster was released to
promote the film.
The
persistence of these ubiquitous dramatic (and narrative) elements,
which have become more and more explicit and pervasive in Westerns,
as in other genres of film, suggests that today's audience remains at
least as interested in these elements of the genre as was the same
genre's audience in 1963.
Western
movies tend to do well at the box office, especially when their
leading character is a star of the magnitude of John Wayne or Clint
Eastwood.
How
much do posters and lobby cards designed to promote these films help
sell tickets? The answer is anybody's guess, but, apparently, even in
the digital age, Hollywood believes that there is magic in such
advertisements. Movie posters and lobby cards have long been staples
of the promotion of movies of all genres, Westerns included. They
remain so today.
Like
movie posters that promote other genres, those that advertise Western
films can pinpoint some of the features of such fare that
screenwriters have found appeal to viewers. The same features, one
might suppose, would also appeal to readers of Western novels.
Let's
take a look at a Western movie poster, with an eye toward what,
specifically, they advertise that's central to this genre.
The
poster for Pale Rider,
featuring Clint Eastwood, shows
a
lone gunman fanning his Colt
a
lone gunman who is dressed well by the standards of his time
seven
men standing in a line
a
block of buildings typical of Western towns
a
caption, in small letters, at the heart of the sun-like circle to
the right of Eastwood's head
the
colors yellow, orange, red-orange, and reddish-brown
What
can we infer from the images, design, colors, and text?
Typically,
the Western hero is a solitary figure who's good with a gun and who
is willing to risk his life to defend himself, another person, or his
own values. He tends to be larger than life. The poster focuses on
Eastwood's character, a lone gunman who is shown as a giant among
men; the seven other figures shown in the poster are not only
literally beneath him, but they are tiny in comparison, and, while he
is shown in full color, they are little more than shadows. Next to
him, the other men are insignificant, more like pesky gnats than
worthy foes.
Not
only is the lone gunman bigger than anyone else, but he is also
central: he is shown near the center of the poster's focus. Thanks to
his size, his facial features are easily discernible; he has an
identity; he is an individual, a person with character. His weathered
appearance, leathery skin, and sharp features mark him as an
independent, hard-bitten man who's been around and knows the score.
In his eyes, we see steely determination; his bared teeth show
aggression. He is focused, intent, one with his gun. A man on a
mission, he stands and delivers. These are the qualities of
personality, the poster suggests, that are important to the audience
for this actor's films. Moviegoers (or readers) who enjoy Westerns
want a man who, even alone, will take a stand, risk his own life, and
combat forces which would defy or destroy the principles he holds
dear.
The
lone gunman dresses better than many of his day, which suggests that
he enjoys financial success. He may make his living by his gun. He
may, in other words, be a gunfighter or a mercenary. (Those familiar
with the “spaghetti Westerns” in which Eastwood starred will
know, of course, that, in Pale Rider,
he plays a bounty hunter).
The
sun behind him isn't a halo exactly, or, if it is, it doesn't fit him
precisely, but the effect is similar; the concentric circles of the
high desert sun frame him closely enough to suggest that there may be
more to him than meets the eye, even if he himself is not altogether
holy.
The
poster's colors are bright and vibrant, but the sun's brilliant
yellow, by degrees, merges with the brown of the hero's coat and the
sky, the element of air merging with the element of earth. Perhaps
the lone gunman is a demigod, the Wild West's version of Hercules.
Western fans want their heroes to be Heroes, to be writ large, to be
of nearly supernatural dimensions.
The
fact that the movie is set in the West is presented almost as an
afterthought. The stretch of low buildings with false fronts and the
line of small figures in Western garb are more like quick sketches
that suggest, rather than depict, the setting. It is clear that the
film is not so much about the West itself as it is about this one
individual, the lone gunman who stands out.
White
adds touches of sunlight to the brim of the gunman's hat (which is
not a Stetson; this man is a gunman, but he's no cowboy). White also
highlights his left cheek, the top of his shirt, the cuffs of his
shirt sleeves, and the handle and the cylinder of his second gun, the
Colt stuffed in his gun belt, a phallus not quite hidden and ready to
hand, doubling his manhood.
In
the yellow circle of the sun, the poster's caption, in small letters,
whispers part of a verse in the book of Revelations: “. . . and
hell followed with him,” suggesting the consequences of the Pale
Rider's visit and connecting him to a figure of the Biblical
apocalypse: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name
that sat on him was Death, andHellfollowedwithhim.”
If there was any doubt as to the lone gunman's identity, the caption
spells it out: the Pale Rider is, in fact, Death personified.
Without
seeing the movie itself, these suggestions are all the poster's
viewer has by which to decide whether to see the film. According to
Box
Office Mojo,
Pale
Rider
grossed over $41 million, a fourth of this amount during its opening.
Although other factors contributed to the film's success, it seems
that potential viewers liked what the poster showed them. If they
were attracted by the themes, the type of hero, and the character
traits suggested by this poster, it's likely that they would be drawn
to similar themes, heroes, and character traits in Western novels as
well.
