1. Stu invited me to join him at the Silver Valley Hoops event to watch his son, Jeff, compete in the 3 on 3 tournament. I declined. I didn't want to get sick sitting in the sun and heat.
I was blogging away or doing something similar when a knock on the front door echoed through the house.
It was Stu.
He wondered if I'd like to take a ride in the huge late 1960s Oldsmobile he purchased a while back.
I said, "Sure!", got dressed, and we took a spin through Sunnyside, cruised on uptown, noted who used to live in different houses and other changes throughout town, and then Stu brought me back home.
With the windows down, the ventilation in the car was very good and I was happy to have had a comfortable ride through Kellogg, as if Stu and I were high school kids again, cruising the gut.
2. Well, as far as going out of the house, my ride with Stu was it.
I decided to stay cool in the house and return to Vizio University for more movie viewing and film history study.
While flopping around the World Wide Web, working to increase my knowledge and understanding of movies made before 1960, I came across references to the director Henry King. You'd think I would have heard of Henry King given that he directed over 100 movies, from 1917-1962.
But, I established Vizio University largely because my experience with movies is very similar to the vast open plains and deserts so many Westerns are set in: there's a lot of emptiness.
After watching High Noon, I read that Gregory Peck had turned down the role of Will Kane because it seemed too similar to the role he played in Henry King's The Gunfighter.
That fact caught my attention.
If the story of The Gunfighter, I mused, in any way parallels the exploration of conscience I experienced watching High Noon, I want to see this movie.
And so I discovered that it's a Criterion Channel offering and I fired it up.
In The Gunfighter, Gregory Peck plays the notorious outlaw, Johnny Ringo (John Wayne played him in Stagecoach).
In The Gunfighter, Johnny Ringo has decided to reform. If this movie were The Wire, Johnny Ringo would be getting out of the game. Johnny Ringo arrives in the frontier town of Cayenne, looking to reconcile with his estranged wife and eight year old son, hoping they'll leave Cayenne and join him on a ranch far away where they can start over again as a family.
Johnny Ringo wants to change his present, change his future, but he cannot change his past.
The Gunfighter explores how things that have happened in the past take on a life of their own. They weigh down on Johnny Ringo's life in the present moments of this story. While Johnny Ringo spends much of this movie in contemplation and self-examination, searching his conscience, looking for ways to leave his life as an outlaw behind, he must also some to grips with how, in many ways, he is who he has been and his past has a power and force in his life that must be overcome if he is to become a new man, a reformed outlaw.
I've watched four US made Westerns in the past five days.
I'm wondering if essays exist in the world that explore the American Western movie as akin to Shakespeare's history plays -- I know I'm seeing this parallel and want to contemplate it further,
3. This evening, I decided I had enough energy and concentration in me to watch a second movie.
I'd been deeply impressed with Humphrey Bogart in his last film appearance in The Harder They Fall and decided to go back to the first movie he appeared in playing a leading role.
Once again, subscribing to the Criterion Channel paid off -- High Sierra is available on this streaming service.
They are not clones of each other, but The Gunfighter and High Sierra are both about a character who has lived a criminal life and wants to "crash out", not only from prison, but from life as a criminal.
If only it were as easy as just wanting it.
Bogart's character, Roy Earle, does get released from prison at the movie's outset, but he did not receive a Get Out of Jail Free card. A crime boss paid a bribe to get Roy Earle released and the kingpin wants a return on his investment.
Roy Earle cannot escape his obligation to commit one more crime, head up one more heist, and the movie centers around Roy Earle's last job.
The movie takes a few detours from the central story of the heist. It develops subplots that work to unfold that Roy Earle can behave like a hardened criminal, but deep down he is tender-hearted. We see that if he can pull off this last job and escape being captured by law enforcement, he has it within him to be a good man and to live a life free of robbery and homicide.
Will he escape? Will he find a way to crash out from his criminal deeds and live a free life, free of crime and free to love?
I'm not saying.
But the movie does answer the question and if you want to know, you'll have to watch High Sierra yourself!
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