Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show has arrived in the frontier town of Hornitos, California. The townspeople throng the dusty main street, waiting for the horse-and-camel race to thunder by, and in his showman’s wisdom, Buffalo Bill Cody has provided plenty of entertainment for his customers while they wait: dancers, frontier exhibitions, and game booths where everyday people who fantasize about being western idols can live out those fantasies for a second. Still, though, most of the townspeople occupy their time waiting for the race.
All seems to be going smoothly until a stranger appears at the head of the street. He sports graying hair; an old, wise face; and sad eyes. He wears an old-fashioned black suit-looking a little worse for wear after frontier riding-with a hat to match. He carefully guides his horse down the main street, casting friendly smiles and tips of his hat at the townsfolk who seem to be jeering at him.
This stranger is Steve Judd (Joel McCrea), and he’s the real-life version of what the people at the shooting galleries aspire to be. A former lawman of some renown, he’s been spending the past few years picking up odd jobs as payroll guard and other temp work that requires a man who can ride a horse and work a gun. In fact, he’s in Hornitos looking to pick up another freelance gig: heading to the mining camp of Coarsegold, gathering gold from the miners, and transporting the gold back down the mountains to Hornitos’ bank, where the gold will be deposited into the miners’ accounts.
Before this living legend can make it to the bank, however, he’s stopped by a constable, who yells for the old man to get out of the street so the race can carry on. Not wanting to kick up a fuss, Steve Judd guides his horse out of the way, the old cowboy making way for the New West.
As fate would have it, Judd’s old partner, Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), is also in Hornitos. He’s not looking for freelance work, though; he has a steady gig with the Wild West show, dressing up in fancy gunfighter garb and cheating unsuspecting marks at his shooting gallery while spinning lies about single-handedly facing down outlaw gangs. His new partner, young Heck Longtree (Ron Starr), also cheats the innocent patrons, consistently winning the rigged races. Westrum has no qualms about cheating the people who visit his booth. The way he figures it, he paid his dues working legitimate jobs with Judd back in the old days, and now he believes he’s owed a more luxurious life. However, the nickel-and-dime bets he wins at his booth are nowhere near enough to finance the kind of life he wants, and Heck agrees.
However, when Judd happens upon Westrum’s booth, Judd offers his old friend a job: ten dollars a day escorting the gold shipment from Coarsegold to Hornitos. Judd agrees to take Heck on as well, for the same wages. Westrum and Heck have other plans, though: that gold shipment would be more than enough to finance the lifestyle they dream about, and they don’t see any issue with taking the gold for themselves. They’ll even cut Judd in on the deal, if Judd wants…
That’s where we find ourselves at the beginning of Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962), the director’s lyrical meditation on living an honorable life, evolving with the changing times, and looming obsolescence set in the dying days of the Old West. With his two complex lead characters, Peckinpah paints a beautiful portrait of two old friends facing a dilemma: how to adapt to a world that seems to have no place for people with their skills anymore. Judd and Westrum have very different ideas about how they should move on with their lives, and that’s the debate from which the movie’s thematic conflict grows!
As his manner indicates, Judd is a stately man who believes in living according to his old code of honor: striving to be honest in his dealings with the world around him, so that he has nothing to be ashamed of when he passes away. Living by this code means that Judd has been denied a lot of good things: a romantic relationship, the wealth that his legendary status would usually provide, and even something as small as a decent set of shoes (his boots are so well-worn that there’s a hole worn through one of their soles). However, Judd has no regrets about how he’s lived; he’s been a straight-shooter (no pun intended) for most of his life, and he has no intention of changing.
Westrum, on the other hand, believes that the evolving world has cheated himself, Judd, and their other friends. Westrum tries to convince Judd to join the gold heist in a subtle way, never directly mentioning the heist itself. Instead, he tries to put Judd in a mindset where he’ll want a bit of the gold with depressing stories about loves lost, old friends who died forgotten with nobody to attend their funerals, and about working hard jobs without getting the appreciation they deserved. They’ve worked all their lives, Westrum says; why not finally kick back and enjoy the better life by grabbing a piece of the pie? Judd refuses to take the bait, continuing to stick to his moral code.
As this back-and-forth continues to no avail, Heck grows impatient, telling Westrum that he’d rather split the gold two ways than three. As the moment of truth grows closer, Westrum begins to wonder if the chasm between himself and his old friend has grown too wide, and what he might have to do if Judd doesn’t go along with him and Heck…
In a genius bit of filmmaking shorthand, Peckinpah filled his two lead roles with two Hollywood western icons: Joel McCrea as Judd (at right in the gif above) and Randolph Scott as Westrum. I’m confident that Peckinpah knew that the two stars would give his movie a sense of authenticity; audience members would have seen McCrea and Scott in countless western adventures over the years, and they would bring those memories with them to the theater, giving Judd and Westrum a legendary status that Peckinpah wouldn’t have to fill in. I’m sure that worked with flying colors in 1962, when those western movies were more recent.
As a younger movie fan, I’m not as familiar with McCrea and Scott’s prior work (beyond knowing its reputation among cinephiles), so that legendary weight wasn’t as heavy for me. However, McCrea and Scott’s performances were both strong enough that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t bringing those movie memories into the movie. McCrea is good as the straight-arrow Judd, speaking his lines with a quiet dignity that belies his simple life and solid moral code.
However, as good as McCrea is, I think Scott is GREAT as Westrum. Since Westrum has spent a solid portion of his life as a carnival con man, he has a way with words, and Scott is excellent at conveying that articulate, persuasive style by infusing his speeches to Judd with a concerned tone and a warm, best-friend attitude. He also does a great job depicting the inner conflict Westrum faces throughout the film: as much as he feels that he deserves a better life, is cheating and stealing the best way to get it? Then, on top of that, does he have it in him to betray his old friend?
As Steve Judd and Gil Westrum struggle with how to adapt to the changing times, Peckinpah gives us a view of how the younger generation is reacting to the times through another pair: Elsa Knudsen (Mariette Hartley in her debut role) and Heck Longtree (the aforementioned Ron Starr). Elsa is in love with Billy Hammond (James Drury), a dashing but secretly violent member of the animalistic Hammond clan. Billy hasn’t revealed his brutal side to Elsa, though, and she’s determined to marry him as soon as she can get out from under the thumb of her domineering father (R.G. Armstrong). When Judd, Westrum, and Heck stay at the Knudsen ranch for the night, Elsa sees a golden opportunity to get out of her father’s grasp. She joins the trio of men on their trip to Coarsegold, where Billy has a gold stake. Once she’s there, however, Billy reveals his true colors, making Elsa re-consider her options.
Mariette Hartley does a good job depicting Elsa’s naivete, stemming from the sheltered life she lived with her paranoid, domineering dad. She’s full of romantic ideas of the west and the world outside her farm, and I really felt for her as her dream marriage turned out not to be as great as she had hoped. There’s a quiet moment as Hartley sits in Billy Hammond’s tent alone, where you see her face change as her hopes drain out of her in one moment. It’s a beautiful (and rather sad) bit of acting!
As Heck Longtree, Ron Starr does a fine job depicting the character arc Heck goes through over the course of his ride with Judd and Westrum. As the trio leave Hornitos on their way to Coarsegold, Starr plays Heck as a thug: reckless, violent, and impatient with Westrum’s fruitless efforts to coax Judd into crime. However, as Heck observes Judd’s dignity and satisfaction with his life, and (more importantly) as he falls in love with Elsa, we see Heck’s hard heart begin to soften with turmoil and conflict. Peckinpah depicts Heck as the kind of person Judd and Westrum were in their younger days, and it’s easy to see how he could become like either of his older counterparts. Starr really delivers on the complexity of the character!
Peckinpah would continue to revisit the theme of struggling to adjust several times over the course of his career, most notably in his famous 1969 film The Wild Bunch. However, although The Wild Bunch is arguably a better movie than Ride the High Country, I really love the hopeful note that Peckinpah sounds in the latter movie: that we hold the key to our own futures, and we can make them whatever we want through our choices. Because of that freedom to choose, we need never feel obsolete, because we can continue to evolve and improve however we’d like. Ride the High Country is definitely a rich, lovely way of getting that theme across, and I really like it a lot!
The Vintage Vestibule 