What's in a Movie Poster? Western Images, Themes, Qualities, Characters, and Values

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 

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, and Hell followed with him.” 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.

 

Clint Eastwood's Supernatural Westerns

Copyright 2014 by Gary L. Pullman

Although it's not unusual for Western movies (and books) to express religious themes, such dramas and narratives rarely have supernatural elements. Two exceptions to the “rule” are Clint Eastwood's films High Plains Drifter (1973) and Pale Rider (1985).

In the former picture, certain of the protagonist's characteristics and abilities suggest that there may be more to him than is first apparent, and the movie provides a clue or two as to the possible nature of the stranger.

First, as James L. Neibaur points out in his chapter “High Plains Drifter” in The Clint Eastwood Westerns, the “stranger” whom Eastwood plays “is mysterious, he is controlling, he is all-knowing, and he is powerful” (104).

Second, Sarah Belding, the wife of hotel operator Lewis Belding, tells the stranger that the town's previous sheriff, Jim Duncan, was buried in an unmarked grave, adding “the dead don't rest without a marker” (104).

Third, in a dream it is revealed to the stranger that the town's leaders conspired to have the sheriff beaten to death by three brothers with whips, before allowing the murderers to be arrested. Having been released from prison, the killers are now on their way back to the town, Lago, to avenge themselves on the town.

Fourth, after painting the town red and renaming Lago “Hell,” the stranger abandons the townspeople, just as the killers return. In his absence, many of the citizens are killed, and the town itself is burned to the ground. It is only then that the stranger returns and kills one of the murderers, Dan Carlin, using a whip, which he then throws into the saloon, “alerting the two surviving brothers,” whom he kills (104).

Fifth, as the stranger rides out of Hell, Mordecai, a dwarf whom the stranger had named mayor and sheriff of Lago, is in the town's cemetery, carving a marker for a grave. “I never knew your name,” Mordecai says. “Yes, you do,” the stranger replies. The marker Mordecai carves bears the name Marshal Jim Duncan; it is for the sheriff's once-unmarked grave. Presumably, now that his grave is marked, the stranger will be able to “rest.”

As Neibuar observes, There has been some discussion as to the identity of the stranger”:

The script originally indicated that the stranger was the marshal's brother . . . and the scenes alluding to this [identity] were filmed, but Eastwood had them excised. In the film, the stranger is more a ghostly figure, perhaps a reincarnation of Duncan, based on the final lines between him and Mordecai and the supernatural air of the story” (107-108).

The New York Times's 1973 review of the film also suggests that the movie is intended to have a supernatural angle:

High Plains Drifter, with Eastwood as director as well as star, is part ghost story, part revenge Western . . . . It exalts and delights in a kind of pitiless Old Testament wrath . . . Eastwood's characterization of The Stranger [is that of a figure] who settles God's score with Lago . . . (108).

The fact that Eastwood, the director, cut the scenes that represents the stranger as the sheriff's brother and the clues that the character is a ghostly or reincarnated avenger, seem clearly to suggest that Eastwood himself wants the movie to be understood as having a supernatural theme.

Twelve years later, Eastwood would make another Western with a supernatural slant, Pale Rider (1985). Like the ghostly stranger in High Plains Drifter, The Preacher of Pale Rider “is mysterious, he is controlling, he is all-knowing, and he is powerful,” or, as Neibaur describes him, “he seems to have a mysterious, mystical quality, able to evade people in a gunfight by seeming to disappear. He comes from nowhere; he leaves when the job is done” (149).

The Preacher's association with Christianity is made plain by his arrival, just as fourteen-year-old Megan Wheeler is praying that God will send someone to deliver her mother, herself, and the other gold prospectors from the gunmen who just stormed through and destroyed their camp, killing her dog.

When she sees The Preacher riding into the ruins of the prospectors' camp, Megan believes that he is the answer to her prayer, and, indeed, he rides a pale horse, just like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, of whom she has just read in the book of Revelation: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

In discussing The Preacher, the Chicago Tribune's editorial writer, Stephen Chapman points out that he is not Christ the Savior, but the Jesus “who brought not peace but a sword, the one of Revelation who raises the righteous into heaven and casts the wicked into the depths” (149).

The Preacher's supernatural origin is also suggested by the feats he accomplishes single-handedly, exploits that the men among the prospectors are unable to accomplish collectively. He fights off several men, defeating them with no other weapon than an axe handle; he defeats a Goliath-size adversary with the same sledgehammer he uses to cleave a boulder in half with a single blow; he outguns a group of gunfighters notorious for their skills with a pistol; when he departs, he leaves behind him a courageous and united community who, before his arrival, were divided and afraid.

As Neibaur suggests, Eastwood underscores the supernatural dynamics of Pale Rider by ensuring that it shares similarities with his other supernatural film, High Plains Drifter:

The setup [of Pale Rider] has immediate similarities to High Plains Drifter (1973) upon the Eastwood character's entrance. In that film [High Plains Drifter], he enters a very quiet town. In Pale Rider, he arrives as the town has quieted down from a most recent attack. Among the first things the stranger does in High Plains Drifter is respond with stoicism to men confronting him in a saloon, later shooting them down when they physically accost him in a barber shop soon afterward. In Pale Rider, the stranger comes to the rescue of a man being attacked by a group of others, effectively beating them down. . . . The man he rescues, Hull Barrett . . . the leader of the miners, invites the stranger to his house for dinner. He appears wearing a clerical collar and is thereafter referred to as The Preacher. These initial scenes establish the character's abilities as well as a mystery about his backstory (148).

The scenes also establish a link between the two supernatural films and their supernatural heroes. However, the older movie invokes reincarnation to explain Sheriff Jim Duncan's return from the dead, while the later film invokes the Bible, solidly grounding Pale Rider's supernatural aspects in the Christian vision of death and judgment.

In High Plains Drifter, the stranger creates Hell; in Pale Rider, he is death, delivering the wicked to judgment, for, although Chapman sees Eastwood's Preacher as Jesus, the movie itself offers several clues that suggest a different identity for The Preacher: the film's very title, which is an allusion to Revelation 6:8, the Bible verse that equates the “pale rider” to Death, the apocalyptic horseman who ushers in hell, and the nature of The Preacher as a supernatural figure delivered by God in answer to Megan's prayer clearly indicate that he is Death personified, not Jesus.

Whereas the stranger in High Plains Drifter abandons “sinners” to hell, The Preacher in Pale Rider kills the wicked and appears to leave their eternal fate to the judgment of God.

Supernatural Westerns are so unusual that their existence—and their raison d'être—seem to beg explanation. Despite the mystical undertones of High Plains Drifter and the Christian overtones of Pale Rider, it's likely that neither film is an expression of religious faith on the part of Eastwood himself, who told movie critic Gene Siskel that he is an atheist. However, Eastwood also admitted that he does “feel spiritual things,” declaring that “if I stand on the side of the Grand Canyon and look down, it moves me in some way.” He's also a devoted practitioner of Transcendental Meditation.

Eastwood's own take on his supernatural Westerns is that both are allegories. High Plains Drifter, he says, is “just an allegory . . . a speculation on what happens when they go ahead and kill the sheriff and somebody comes back and calls the town's conscience to bear. There's always retribution for your deeds” (The Clint Eastwood Westerns, 105). Likewise, Eastwood explains, “Pale Rider is kind of allegorical, more in the High Plains Drifter mode: like that, though he isn't a reincarnation or anything, but he does ride a pale horse like the four horsemen of the apocalypse . . . It's a classic story of the big guys against the little guys . . . (The Clint Eastwood Westerns, 149).

For Eastwood, perhaps each of his supernatural movies is “just an allegory,” but, of course, the creator of a work of art doesn't determine its meaning, except for himself. Any interpretation that is supported by the details of the story itself is both reasonable and possible, and there seems more internal evidence in Pale Rider for a Christian interpretation than for an atheistic or a secular one.

After all, the movie deliberately alludes to Christian beliefs, to a specific Biblical account of apocalypse and judgment, and to a supernatural order of existence that transcends the ordinary world of the Wild West in which the movie is set.

Western culture is suffused with the traditions of the Christian faith; allegories which include supernatural characters and events, especially when they are informed by specifically Christian doctrine and tradition, can certainly be reckoned to possess and to communicate Christian themes.

Bane Messenger, the protagonist of my own series, An Adventure of the Old West, has a name of religious significance as well. Bane (the nickname by which Banan goes) derives from the Old English word bana, meaning “killer, slayer, murderer, a worker of death”; the Late Latin word angelus means “messenger.” Putting them together, Bane Messenger can be read as meaning Angel of Death, which, the books of the series, Good With a Gun, The Valley of the Shadow, and Blood Mountain, suggest, as does the short story “Bane Messenger, Bounty Hunter,” a prequel that introduces the series, is how Bane regards himself.

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His skill with a gun, like his indomitable will, his steely nerve, and his love for justice, equip him as an instrument of divine righteousness and wrath. It's his mission, he believes, to use the “gifts” he's received to ensure that justice triumphs and the innocent are protected from “the worst sort of men,” those, as a bounty hunter, he tracks down to kill or, as a lawman, risks his life to stop. Believing himself on a mission sanctioned by his Creator, Bane puts his own fate in the hands of God every time he draws his gun, putting his life in mortal danger in order to bring desperate killers to justice, dead or alive.