I
PAGE 4
by GARY HILL
Monte Walsh is a song being
sung, not a film being ac
companied not even by
Mama Cass:
"The good times are coming.
They're coming real soon. And
I aint just pitchin' pennies at
the moon."
The film itself is being
sung.
Monte Walsh (Lee Marvin)
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfoiiia
Presents
Mercy Mercy Mercy
A concert of progressive jazz
Music by
Love Quintet
8 p.m. Union Ballroom
Friday, October 23rd
Admission $1.50
SAW imORBl
o LOWEST PRICES ON CIGARETTES
o ICE CUBES ALWAYS READY-50 BAG
o NO BETTER GAS SOLD . . . ANYWHERE
DIVIDEND
BONDED GAS
16th & P Sts.
We Never Close
.'. : ii
conies down from the moun
tains with Jack Palance, out of
a winter hard enough to put
them both out of work in a town
called Harmony, where
horseless cowboys blink and
stare at eastern accountants. A
giant consolidation firm in the
east is cashing in what it can of
the bankrupt land and
livestock.
They take jobs from a range
manager anything they can
do on a horse.
Scenes fade in and fade out
like musical movements. They
are not nailed to storytelling.
The film is not so much a
story being told as it is short
rhythms being hummed, and
the people humming are whole
people. There is more word and
gesture information given
about Marvin and Palance and
Jean Moreau than the other
characters, but not even the
smallest parts slip into two
dimensionality or caricature
out of convenience to a
storyline.
The gestural language of the
film is intimate.
Marvin and Palance, who
have been cowboys together for
a long time, sit on the porch
with Palance about to tell
Marv in he has decided to mar
ry the Hardware Widow and
stop being a cowboy. Marvin is
dozing. Palance turns to nudge
him but hesitates and scrapes
instead the head of his match
under the arm of Marvin's
chair enough to wake him
gently to the bad news.
Action is not announced.
Things simply happen, and
there is no hurry to put these
things into words. The weight
of silence is felt, and the
silence is respectful, nearly
reverent.
Fighting Joe Hooker took the
name of the general he rode
under on Missionary Ridge in
the war. He's old now, riding
fence a last man's job. When
Marvin and Palance ride out
with wire, the old man lights
his pipe and stares out across
the hills to the war. I had a
good life, puff puff.
Can we do something?
No.
Later, Fighting Joe comes
screaming down the ridge
whipping his horse and kicking
his way into death.
"He's coming down
Missionary Ridge," says
Marvin.
"He'll never make it,"
Palance answers.
"He don't want to."
The horse stumbles and the
old man is thrown.
"I wonder if he felt any
thing." "Yeah," says Marvin,
"surprise."
The dialogue is human.
Events aren't being talked
about so much as people and
their feelings are being opened
up. The economy of the
dialogue is matched by an
economy of detail which ap
proaches a spare form of
iconography.
Jean Moreau cuts Marvin's
hair and loves him, never
charging him for either. At her
death, he opens a hinged box in
which she kept her scissors, his
lock of hair and a clip of money
she accepted from him when
times were bad.
These details, like the
gestures in the film, are simple
reflections of the slow and
unsurprising hard times. They
are expressions of the quality
of the lives being lived, weav
ing as they do inside of actions,
words and movements.
This is important and hard
for me to verbalize.
The film establishes it's own
sensory space, it's own sensory
terms. The objects of the film
grow out from the action and
feelings of the characters, and
are rarified by the care with
which they are rendered.
Marvin and Palance do more
with cigarettes and matches
and fingering each other's
tobacco tins than most
westerns do with charging
armies and bloody Indians. And
what is being done is the
establishing of a sensory
language belonging to the film
itself.
There are no outside
referents. The film establishes
it's own sensory terms from
which the warm and meaty
moments pull their strength,
their warmth, their meat, their
reality.
Shorty, the bronco buster, is
first seen shooting a tobacco
can off a split rail fence.
Marvin knows Shorty from
before, and shoots the can off
just as Shorty draws a joke.
Shorty sets the can back up and
draws again, this time firing at
Marvin in the bunkhouse, flat
on the floor. When Shorty
comes to the window, his
thumb and forefinger are a
teasing gun, and he clicks his
Continued on Page 5
FEATURING. A
TsrrrsfffAl
THE NEBRASKAN
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1970
