Shane

Shane (George Stevens, 1953) George Stevens came back from World War II a changed man...and a changed director. As documented in Mark Harris' book "Five Came Back" and its subsequent documentary, Stevens had started his career a director of comedies, but, after the war, he became a different film-maker. His service in the Second World War was in the combat motion picture unit from 1944 to 1946, where he documented the landing at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris and the uncovering of the horrors at the Dachau concentration camp, where he stated that he realized his function deepened from simple documentarian to collecting evidence of the greatest atrocities of the century. His footage was crucial in the post-war Nazi trials, but, he found no solace in the role he played. As he wrote to his first wife in 1945 "if it hadn't been for your letters . . . there would have been nothing to think cheerfully about, because you know that I find much [of] this difficult to believe in fundamentally."

 

Coming back from the war, he co-founded Liberty Films with fellow Army Signal Corpsmen Frank Capra and William Wyler, but made no films for the fledgling production house and the company folded. He would not make another film until I Remember Mama (1948), a film that bore some resemblance to his own upbringing in America. Then, 1951's A Place in the Sun, a dark tale of a man's duplicity and fall from grace, won him an Academy Award for Best Director. 

 

His follow-up film was far-afield from the subject matter that was associated with Stevens both pre-war and post-war—a Western that sharply demarcated right and wrong, almost naively making a world where good wins out over bad, without the complications and hollow justifications of an adult sensibility, Shane. 

In the Jackson Hole Valley of the Grand Tetons, the family Starrett are homesteading in a wild area still trod by deer and elk. In fact, in one miraculous shot an elk frames an approaching stranger between its antlers. When Joe jr. (Brandon De Wilde), out stalking deer with his bullet-less rifle, spots the stranger coming onto their land, he alerts his Pa (Van Heflin), who is still trying to get rid of a stump he's been hacking away at for months. He and wife Marian (Jean Arthur) have been homesteading in Jackson Hole for some time, but he is frequently being sabotaged by cattle baron Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer), who claims the land as his for grazing rights and has made it a campaign to rid the valley of "squatters," by having his men (including Ben Johnson and John Dierkes) run roughshod over Starrett's and the other homesteaders' properties).

So, Joe Sr. isn't altogether welcoming, seeing a stranger enter his property. He tells the buckskin wearing newcomer (Alan Ladd), who is suspiciously vague about what he's dong there, to vamoose.

As bad luck would have it, before Shane can reach the fence, Ryker and his goons show up with news. It seems Ryker is going to be providing beef for the nearby reservation and he needs Starrett's land for them to graze. Joe refuses and things start to get testy, until, finally, Ryker starts making threats.

At which point, the stranger re-enters the scene and introduces himself as "a friend of Starrett's" and seeing how he's armed, too, Ryker backs off with a final warning to clear out or the Rykers will clear them out themselves. The stranger's intervention casts him in a different light to Starrett, and introductions are made.

The stranger's name is "Shane." Just "Shane." No indication if that's christian or surname. And, for his stance on behalf of Starrett's family he's invited to stay the night and have a meal, which he compliments as "an elegant dinner." Then, without any prompting, he goes out and works on cutting out that stump as a thanks. Starrett goes out to help and between the two of them, they're able to clear the stump at night-fall, a task that the homesteader had been working on weeks. Starrett asks if Shane wants to work there, as he most certainly seems to want to help.

So, who is Shane? He doesn't say where he came from, and as to where he's going? "Heading North—one place or 'nother. Some place I haven't been." Some place he isn't known is what he means. That would seem to be a contradiction as he's quiet. Polite. Keeps his counsel. Knows his place even if he doesn't have a place. He's rootless...in a community trying to establish them. He feels comfortable there, despite that, but never so comfortable that he can't be snapped out of it at the first sign of trouble. He doesn't make trouble, but he's seen enough to know trouble will almost certainly come to him as it seems to have come to him in the past.

He's twitchy. When little Joey pumps his unloaded rifle, Shane whips around, ready to draw down on him. He's haunted, probably because of his skill with a gun and having had to use it. And he's ridden into a situation where trouble could come from across the fence, ready to tear that fence down if it's in the way. Ryker is one of those breed of men who fought hard to establish his stake and will fight just as hard to keep things the way they were when there was no one else but him. He's not interested in community—he's all the community he needs—and he resents seeing what he thinks is his from being parceled out to newcomers. To "others."

It's why the homesteaders are being harassed. Some have suffered enough intimidation that they're threatening to leave and it's only the entreaties of Starrett that keep them from leaving. Shane, himself, is on the receiving end of those taunts from one of Ryker's men, Calloway (Johnson), which ultimately leads to an old-fashioned bar-fight that wrecks the Grafton bar. Given the intervention of Shane into the struggle, Ryker brings in reinforcements, a sadistic gunfighter named Jack Wilson (Jack Palance), who takes a satisfied glee in gunning down anyone he can provoke into a fight.

For a Western of that era, Stevens ramped up the level of violence than what audiences were used to. His fights were messy affairs that were tightly edited to maximize the cuts and scrapes one associated with the usual dust-ups. And anyone seeing Shane remembers the shoot-outs where a bullet could propel a person backwards like they were yanked off their feet (which they were, due to some discrete cabling).

In such a world it's no wonder that Marian Starrett tells her young son "Joey, don't get to liking Shane too much." There's always the possibility that a man such as Shane won't be sticking around for too long, whether riding out of town or being buried in the cemetery that overlooks the slip of a town. But, the kid can't really help himself. Shane is something of a mystery, not saying much, but giving the child the same level of attention as he does the father and the mother. That makes an impression on a kid. And his proficiency with his fists and his guns—all fascinating to little Joey—endears the man to the boy.*

Stevens is playing with Myth in Shane, and nowhere so boldly as in little Joey's hero-worship of the competent stranger, his version of a White Knight, who gives him a lesson in strength in restraint (something Joey doesn't quite comprehend) as well as the cold competency in "doing what has to be done." To standing up in the face of wickedness, not backing down, no matter the consequences, and fighting the good fight. At times, it's almost too much, with Stevens cutting back and forth between fights and Joey's wide-eyed reactions to the fireworks.

And it all comes to a head when, once the killing is done, Shane takes his leave, having brought resolution—but hardly peace—to Jackson Hole. The dirty work is done, and just as there was no place for a killer like Wilson, there isn't for Shane, either. And despite the child's entreaties, there is no going back...not from what you've done. And not from what you've seen. It's a weird scene, simultaneously a bit over the top, but also punches the gut on an emotional level. Even more so when you take in George Stevens' history in the war.

That ending resonates...and haunts. Not so much as a small child's plaintive pleas, but of the echoes embedded in them of a director who had seen the worst atrocities perpetrated by man, and, through that boy, implores the darkening wilderness for a world of forbearance and a return of the merely and simply decent. 

In context, Shane is so much more than "a Western", and is heart-breaking. Fundamentally.

 

* And to the point, author Raymond Chandler (who'd written a couple of Ladd's noirish movies) had said this about Ladd some years earlier: "Ladd is hard, bitter and occasionally charming, but he is after all a small boy's idea of a tough guy."

Olde Review: The Wild Bunch

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This Friday's ASUW films in 130 Kane are Masaki Kobayashi's Hara-Kiri and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

"When you side with a man, you stay with him and if you can't do that, you're like some animal! You're finished! We're finished! All of us!"

This is the credo of the films of Sam Peckinpah. Throughout his film career--even before Peckinpah had William Holden speak those words in The Wild Bunch--it has been the thread that has bound his films together, formed their basis, given them a purpose. And this credo doesn't just apply to a band of outlaws as it does in The Wild Bunch, but also to employer and employee (as in The Killer Elite) or to husband and wife (The Getaway and Straw Dogs) and to former friends, even if they are on opposite sides of the Law, as in almost all of Peckinpah's films. In the realistic morality of Peckinpah's worlds, the combatants, though on opposite sides of their battlegrounds, are neither totally pure or totally evil. They are amoral, with aspects of both, and thus that credo--the credo of loyalty--is the only means we have of separating them and determining the better men.

"If they move, kill 'em"...right before Peckinpaw's director credit

Peckinpah has always been accused of being nothing but a "macho" film-maker, and though it may be true that he primarily focuses on the male world, I think the term macho is inappropriate. If "The Wild Bunch" are macho, they are blithely ignorant of it. They are not dedicated to their maleness as much as to their survival, and to the spirit of the credo.

Another thing that is popular to hit Peckinpah on is his use of violence--his explicit use of violence. And while The Wild Bunch is violent--even by today's standards**--it might be wise to keep in mind the work of a lot of hacks around these days*** who make more violent films and do so with less imagination and regard for anything. Peckinpah's uses of slow motion violence are not prolonged, they are quick vignettes of an individual confrontation with death, that much like the life itself, is here, then gone, leaving an impression in one's mind no matter how many deaths one sees.

Also, it might behoove you to keep in mind that Peckinpah doesn't just make Wild Bunch's and Straw Dogs'. He has made two recent films which I would urge you to see--Junior Bonner and The Ballad of Cable Hogue which are boisterous but gentle, apply Peckinpah's credo, but also celebrates life. Not only are they my favorite Peckinpah films, they are his, too. The reason he doesn't make too many films like them is that they don't make money.

The Wild Bunch has an all-star cast, uniformly excellent in their roles: William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine,**** Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, Edmund O'Brien, Strother Martin, and L.Q. Jones (who, only incidentally, wrote and directed the film of A Boy and His Dog). These are just the stars, but this film is filled with people and faces that you will never forget. Nor will you ever forget the experience of The Wild Bunch.

Broadcast on KCMU-FM October 28 and 29th, 1975

The Wild Bunch (led by William Holden) and the motley crew that pursues them (led by Robert Ryan)

I'm still a big fan of The Wild Bunch and Junior Bonner and The Ballad of Cable Hogue, and Ride the High Country and Cross of Iron and Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, and Major Dundee, now that they've been released in versions that are closer to the way Peckinpah intended them. Producers had a habit of hiring him and then firing him and re-editing his films themselves (often into confusing plot-line dangling confusion), and I think that had a lot to do with The Peckinpah Credo about loyalty. He wanted them to know that if you hired him, you'd better trust him to make the film, but there's always disagreement about that when the red ink starts to flow.

I think Sam would crawl into a bottle if he saw how corporate loyalty invaded politics to create administrations of co-conspirators who couldn't think beyond their loyalty to their jobs and bosses. It goes to show that too much of anything can turn into a problem.

The Wild Bunch grows more interesting with age as a film about the old guard being unwilling to change in the face of the modern world, and convinced of their own transitory nature, while sticking to their code. It also shows layers of greed, between the outlaws and the members of Ryan's gang that have no moral hedge against body-robbing. There's a very fuzzy moral line there, but Peckinpah's morality could be very fuzzy. As fuzzy as the world lets it, I suppose.

The film was made part of The National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1999.

** Not so true today. Nowadays, The Wild Bunch looks tame. But, this film came out after audiences had been prepped by the "Dance of Death" in Bonnie and Clyde—the sequence influenced the editing and blood-spatter of the "Battle of Bloody Porch" sequence in The Wild Bunch—and even the relatively tame Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

***Don't know who was thinking of here, but, at the time, maybe Tobe Hooper, and Paul Bartel. But, the era of bloody violence—with wounds that would take more than a band-aid to heal—were in such mainstream films as The Godfather, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Dirty Harry, and other films that came out during the "ultra-violent" Christmas Season of 1971 (which included Peckinpah's Straw Dogs).

****I've become convinced that Ernest Borgnine played one of the atypical roles of his life when he played "Dutch" Engstrom--who, from the evidence I see in the film, is gay (Ernest Borgnine?!). Dutch doesn't join in with the Bunch's whoring activities, and his cries for Pike Bishop during the finale show a definite emotion more than loyalty. Of course, there have been gay sub-texts before in Westerns, and in the classic ones, long before Brokeback Mountain made it seem revolutionary (Well, yeah, if nobody was watching...) Peckinpah snuck it right by--that's why I like the director so much.

The History of John Ford: Wagon Master

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots).

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. 


Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950) The western expansion of the American frontier is a standard theme of...the Western. John Ford had featured prospective settlers (and settling prospectors) in many of his films, but made the phenomenon the center of his film Wagonmaster, a modest black and white western, made in between When Willie Comes Marching Home and Rio Grande. Wagonmaster could well be the pilot episode of the television series "Wagon Train" (1957-1965)—which also starred Ward Bond in the first four seasons. There are no A-list stars—just the "Ford Stock Company" stepping front and center in the film, rather than filling the corners and back-stories.

Ford begins the movie bluntly with an almost silent sequence (Ford learned his craft making silent pictures)—the Clegg's (Charles Kemper, James Arness, Hank Worden, Fred Libby, and Mickey Simpson) are robbing the Crystal City Bank, resulting in Pa Clegg being shot in the wing, and, incensed by the inconvenience and the impertinence, shooting the chief clerk in the back without regard to the escalation. The bank's sole source of internal light, a hanging hurricane lamp, swings with the force and the temerity of it. There have been no titles, no studio accreditation, no introduction. The movie begins with a terrible act with no word of warning.

It is only then that the titles appear proudly, diametrically, over footage of a dogged wagon train (complete with dog) accompanied by the "Song of the Wagonmaster" by The Sons of the Pioneers emphasizing the highs and lows of the rolling life. There is a lot of music in Wagonmaster, over such montages, that one might be distracted from some of the more beautifully comp0sed shots, or the rigors it took to achieve them, but to say it's a "musical" (as some appreciative writers have stated) may be stating it too strongly, considering the amount of song and group-musicianship in others of his works.

As the Clegg's silently take to the hills, watching their backs, two horse-traders ("That's my business!"), Travis (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey, Jr.) ride  out of Navajo Country with their latest acquisitions, trying to calculate their fortunes at $30 a head. They pull into Crystal City, the town still recovering from the recent murderous bank robbery and the Sheriff makes a show of checking the ponies while actually appraising the men attached to them—they're neither the type nor the number.

Convincing the Sheriff enough of their innocence to sell him a pony—and play a prank that sets the horse, with the Sheriff temporarily attached, careening into the streets—the two plan to rest up in town to play a few rounds of "High-Low-Jick, Jack, Ginny and the Bean Gun," which, besides the passing of funds, will give Travis his own assessment of the town and his future fortunes, given a conversation he'd had previously that day.

"I'm in"

The film proper doesn't get underway until Travis and Sandy meet the blustery ("I repent my words of wrath") Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond) and a small contingent of his party of Mormons who are being run out of Crystal City by the "fine" folk there who do not like their ways ("that's why I keep my hat on—so the horns won't show"), Their aim is to wagon-train to a "valley reserved for us by the Lord," by the San Juan Rover, hoping to get there before the winter rains come, to set up an outpost for their brethren to follow to. They want to buy the ponies and are in need of "wagon-masters" to negotiate the trail. During an extended negotiation that involves whittling interspersed with some volatile umbrage by the elder over price and the pony-men's lack of availability (even though they don't drink, don't chaw, don't cuss—much—and display no vices, other than a propensity towards gambling), the elder walks away merely with horseflesh and the responsibility for the journey.

Well, if there ever was a gamble...; when the Mormon party is escorted to the city limits, Travis and Sandy are there to meet them as they inform Wiggs that his group is not facing hundreds of miles of unknown alone. Wiggs is grateful for the help, but not all of the party are thrilled, chafing from taking orders from ruffians not part of the flock—they have women and children, after all. Wiggs has to be peace-maker, which is an unusual role for him, and one he's not accustomed to.

It's a big country out West—it was filmed in Moab, Utah (out-of-reach in order to discourage visits by producers) and parts of Monument Valley (to take advantage of extras from the Navajo nation, some familiar faces from other Ford productions can be seen among the Natives), but being close to the outskirts of civilization—that being Crystal City—the wagon train comes across others of their outcasts, which the sheriff listed as "Mormons, Cleggses, showfolk, horsetraders." The Mormons are far enough along that water is in short supply when they come across #3 in the list: Dr. A. Locksley Hall (Alan Mowbray), travelling showman and rumored dentist, selling a healing elixir, accompanied by two women no one would confuse with nurses Fleuretty Phyffe (Ruth Clifford) and Denver (Joanne Dru, who had just featured in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon). When they're found, they have run out of water, and are staying alive—but not on their feet—with the doctor's snake-oil.

Liquor and loose women are usually not a good mix with Mormons, but as the party is in a terrible spot, they're allowed to be party to the train, at least until they reach water. Being show-folk, they don't quite understand the necessity of rationing water with no shaving and no showers.

But outcasts attract, and though the Mormons keep the "show-folk" at arm's length, Elder Wiggs has enough of a past with (what he calls) "hootchy-kootchy shows", he can see Miss Fleuretty as "a fine figure of a woman" (she's loyal to the doctor, however), and Travis and Denver have one of those passive-aggressive flirtations that pop up in Ford films with strong women and cowed boys. Although the journey involves struggle, generally everyone is doing the right thing, perhaps due to their empathy with their lot as outsiders or undesirables, perhaps to their religious beliefs, regardless of their faith—extending to the Native Nahajo's who welcome them into their camp, as Mormons have a reputation for being less dishonest than other whites.

And far less than the "Cleggses." It is inevitable in the rules of drama that in all the wilderness that they should eventually meet up with antagonists. It's where the good feelings generated within and by the wagon train are challenged and where their dreams are threatened. It's also crucial in the Ford Universe; sure, everybody is an outcast from "polite society," but that doesn't make everyone a saint by default. That list of "Mormons, 'Cleggses', show-folk and horse-traders" has one rough-hewn peg in it and the "Cleggses" have no best intentions other than fulfilling their basic needs with no aspirations beyond that. Ford's heroes, no matter their place in society (or outside of it) have hopes, dreams...plans...purpose.

But, his villains: they may have dreams, but also have no qualms ruthlessly—or cluelessly—quashing the dreams of others. In Wagonmaster, community is all, and once the stakes rise high enough to affect the future, that's when ultimate action must be taken against oppression, even on a wagon train that now, thanks to being overrun by the "Cleggses", has no guns.

Wagonmaster has no stars to bank on, (but, then, neither did Stagecoach)—the one Oscar winning actor of the bunch, Jane Darwell, has very few lines (maybe five) in the entire thing. Stars have a tendency to dominate story, and in the case of Wagonmaster, would distract from it. Better that the story remain distributed among the many, and that the focus be on the journey and the collective that it forms. As it's the story for the quest for settlement and the forging of a community with the best of intentions and with an eye toward the future.

It was one of director Ford's favorite films, despite it lack of success at the box-office. That maybe entirely due to the vision that he held for it and his view of how well the task was accomplished—what we now call the "signal to noise" ratio.* 

Better than The Searchers, though? To my mind, no. But, then, The Searchers is a study in human nature and its worst qualities in regards to race prejudices, whereas Wagonmaster points to the best instincts, despite the impact of such things. Wagonmaster has hope and looks ahead, not back.

It's a beautiful film to watch, and one to cherish.

* A modern example is George Lucas' Star Wars: Oh, sure, everybody loved it, but it was a film that he was disappointed in, despite its success—that he felt that need to tinker with it, erasing the flaws he constantly saw in it, to make it closer to what he originally had in mind.

Olde Review: One-Eyed Jacks

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a bit of a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This Saturday's films in 130 Kane Are Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961) This one's something of an oddity--it's the only film directed by the greatest "method" actor, Marlon Brando. But what you will see on the screen is really not the film that Brando made. You see, it's one of those stories where nothing really works right. Brando and a number of script-writers worked on the screenplay for a couple of years. Stanley Kubrick was signed to direct and pulled out.* Then, Brando decided to direct it himself and shot a quarter of a million feet of film over a six month period at a cost of five million dollars. Supposedly, there was about 35 hours of film to edit down to a watchable size. Brando's cut was five hours long, but with some noticeable studio shooting, plot summaries were accomplished and got it down to its current two hours and twenty minutes. So it isn't totally Brando's concept.

What is there in those two hours and twenty minutes? A superbly acted film, based on a script that at times is intriguing and at times is dull cliche. It's a very weird movie. It's weird, but it does show that Brando certainly had an artistic eye for shots, camera angles, sequences that sometimes take the breath away. You'll also see excellent performances from a cast of Brando, Karl Malden (before TV neutered him),** Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens, Pina Pellicer, Elisha Cook, and Ben Johnson..especially Ben Johnson.

Johnson first worked for John Ford in his westerns and evolved into more than a great actor, but one of those genuine screen presences working in film today. When Johnson and another screen presence, Brando, play off each other in a scene, sparks fly across the screen. Those sparks were expected to fly between Brando and Jack Nicholson in The Missouri Breaks, and never appeared. To see these two greats square off is one of the joys I had watching this film, and also, this film contains my favorite epithet in all of cinema....

"Get up, you scum-suckin' pig!"

They just don't write 'em like they used to.


Broadcast on KCMU-FM on November 19th and 20th, 1975

Or over-write them. The parts that you can glean from the current cut of One Eyed Jacks (and no one is rushing to restore the full length version, certainly not Paramount Studios, although Criterion did do a restoration for Blu-Ray that was supervised by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg) suggest an idiosyncratic western with a gritty, grimy feel, which would have made it unique in the western-glut that was happening across theater and television screens across America. Brando's fights were inelegant, and people looked like they got hurt. But the film is a cliche about Authority Figures and Oedipal Conflicts--Karl Malden plays a once-friend-turned-lawman named..."Dad." At one point, Brando's character is whipped in the street before a crowd of on-lookers, and if that doesn't convince you he's a Christ-figure, his tied, outstretched arms just might.

Ulp! It starts to get so thick with things like that, you need hip-waders out in that desert.

* Kubrick says he quit because Brando was wasting a lot of time, and really wanted to direct it himself, so he moved on to a more worthwhile project.

** Malden was (at the time of writing this) appearing in an American cop series called "The Streets of San Francisco," with a young actor of good parentage named Michael Douglas. 

"Get up, you scum-sucking pig!" occurs at 3:55 in this video—he says it to Ben Johnson

The History of John Ford: 3 Godfathers (1948)

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." 

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948) Ford's version of The Nativity Story set in the very wild West is a remake of his 1919 silent film Marked Men,* which starred Harry Carey. The son of John Ford's first star, Harry Carey Jr. made his acting debut in this one as The Abilene Kid, who along with John Wayne and Pedro Armendáriz, play former cattle rustlers up-scaling to bank robbery. After the meager heist, they escape a posse from Welcome, Arizona (led by Ward Bond's Sheriff B. Sweet, as well as Hank Worden and Ben Johnson) by taking a perilous escape route through the desert (it was filmed in Death Valley)—not the wisest of men or maneuvers. Their flight leaves them wounded, their water supply draining and quickly losing every means of survival in the desert.

Things get complicated when, looking for water, they come across an established well that a tenderfoot, in his ignorance and panic has dynamited in an an attempt to get more water, destroying it. If that weren't bad enough, he's run off into the desert to find his stock, driven loco by alkaline poisoning, leaving behind his wife (Mildred Natwick) delirious and about to give birth. Unbeknownst to them, she's the niece of Sheriff Sweet's.  

Armendáriz, Wayne and Carey Jr. don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no babies

The leader of the group Bob Hightower (Wayne) can't cope with the intricacies of the situation, leaving "Pete" Rocafuerte (Armendáriz) to deliver the baby, and when the mother dies, leaving the three with a promise to care for the child she has named Robert William Pedro, the three villains must learn the basics of child-care (thanks to a book written by "Doc Meechum"), but with limited supplies they must cross the desert, led by a single star to the town of New Jerusalem (the other choices are Cairo and Damascus). It isn't long before The Kid tells them it's their Destiny, that they were led to this place, this child, this duty, this precedent.  
It is, after all, almost Christmas.

It's a sweet story, about how the spirit turns with the charge of a newborn, and how even those on a downward spiral can be lifted up by a lack of self. And Ford, working with screenwriters Frank Nugent (a new find with his Fort Apache script) and Laurence Stallings (with whom Ford and Nugent would collaborate on She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) keeps the sentiment high, and the humor all over the map from leaden to subtle. Even without its silent roots (Mae Marsh from The Birth of a Nation has a large role!), the film, in tone, feels like a throwback to an earlier time, like Ford's work in the '30's circa Stagecoach—not a bad time at all. And, in the timeline of his work this looks like a wave good-bye to his western work of the past, as Ford would subtly move on to the slightly more serious She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to the dire The Searchers within the space of seven years.  

It was about this time that Wayne's performance in Howard Hawks' Red River (playing "old" at 41 years of age) was noticed by everyone, and notably Ford, who had still been using Wayne in co-starring roles. "I didn't know the big sonuvabitch could act!" Ford groused to Hawks. 3 Godfathers is Wayne stepping into the limelight of Ford's films, where he would stay (mostly) for the rest of Ford's career. And, as with the humor of the film, Wayne's performance covers a lot of ground, leaden to subtle. His physical work is unmatched, as usual, casually sitting on a horse as if it was an easy chair, stumbling through the desert in an alarming drunk march (supposedly holding a baby, which throw some scary drama into it, if you think about it), doing little character things you only notice later, like the way Hightower trudges dumbly through an edge-of-town water collection at the start of the film before it becomes of the utmost importance, and something that seems peculiarly florid and over-the-top but pays off hugely throughout the film: Hightower is something of a jerk and mean-spirited and given to elaborate mock-formality when teasing others, especially the way he takes off his hat and does a too-formal presentation of it. It looks phony (it is phony for this rough man of the West), but it turns into genuine acts of kindness and civility—the man grows into the gesture and becomes him, a signature of the man he has become through the trails and tribulations that have become the period to a life of bad manners, bad habits and bad choices. And the film ends with that same gesture, sending the man off to his fate, but promising the return of a better man and a better future.

The resonant gesture of John Wayne in its most practical usage:
Thanks to the Way of Seeing blog for noticing this one.

This is all done with pictures, part of the skein of direction that Ford imposes on the film that, combined with the exquisite cinematography of Winton Hoch, makes this odd, anti-Christmas Christmas film something of a precious gem for the Holidays.

* There is also a harder edged 1936 version starring Chester Morris, Lewis Stone and Walter Brennan, directed by Richard Boleshawski.