Themes: Lone Wolves, Faltering Friendships, All Washed Up
Main Cast: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr, James Drury
Release Year: 1962
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
This Sam Peckinpah-directed feature outing was intended as the cinematic swan song for both Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea; while McCrea would unexpectedly emerge from retirement, this 1961 western serves as an excellent valedictory for both men. The time is the early 1900s, when the Old West was slowly and stubbornly giving way to the new. McCrea plays Steve Judd, an ex-lawman living on the fringes of poverty but maintaining his dignity and honesty. Hired to escort a gold shipment from the wide-open mining town of Coarse Gold, he engages his old pal Gil Westrum (Scott) to help him. But Gil hasn't Steve's integrity, and he and his young saddle pal Heck Longtree (Ronald Starr) hope to talk Steve into helping them steal the gold. En route to Coarse Gold, the three riders spend the night at the farm of a religious fanatic (R.G. Armstrong), whose daughter Elsa (Mariette Hartley in her film debut), chafing at her father's loud piety, is planning to elope with her boyfriend Billy (James Drury). The next day, Elsa insists on joining up with the group so she can marry Billy at Coarse Gold, leading to numerous complications and, of course, a final shoot-out that allows Steve and Gil to reconcile their differences and pave the way for the film's elegiac finale. Released at the tail end of the western genre, and virtually thrown away by MGM, Ride the High Country feels like an elegy for the western itself -- and Peckinpah himself would go on to revise western conventions with such later efforts as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Sam Peckinpah's second feature united aging Western stars Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in a beautiful meditation on the passing of the West's heroes. Having survived into the automobile age, McCrea's ex-sheriff stoically maintains his honorable values while Scott's Wild West performer parodies himself for cash. Even as a job guarding gold puts them on opposite sides of the law, the need to safeguard the next generation from extremes of piety and pragmatism finally unites them. Devoid of the brutal violence that would mark Peckinpah's later revisonist Western The Wild Bunch (1969), Ride the High Country explores similar ideas with a literate, autumnal approach -- although, in Peckinpah's world, violence is still justified to battle the savage remnants of an untamed Western past. Cinematographer Lucien Ballard's spectacular landscapes glorify the waning high country, underscoring Peckinpah's elegy to a better, if difficult, time. MGM buried Ride the High Country on the bottom of a double bill, but critics still noticed its charm and newcomer Mariette Hartley as Elsa; the first of several Peckinpah Westerns eulogizing the genre, it has since come to be seen as one of his best films. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Peckinpah flipped a coin to decide whether Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea would receive top billing. McCrea's role is actually slightly larger than Scott's, but Scott was billed over McCrea. Critics occasionally point out that McCrea's role seems to have been written for Gary Cooper and that John Wayne would have been perfect for Scott's part, but Cooper and Wayne never worked together. In his autobiography In the Arena (1995), Charlton Heston wrote that he was considering remaking the film in the late '80s, presumably with Clint Eastwood as a co-star. Heston was convinced to take the part on Peckinpah's next film, Major Dundee (1965), after viewing Ride the High Country.
The film reunites old friends and aging ex-lawmen Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) and Steve Judd (Joel McCrea). The two men, mainly because of their age, have been reduced by circumstance to guarding a shipment of gold from a high country mining camp. However, Westrum and his young sidekick Heck Longtree (Ron Starr) are, in fact, planning to steal the gold for themselves. Westrum attempts to subtly recruit Judd to their plan over the course of the ride.
Acquiring a young girl (Mariette Hartley) escaping from her domineering father as a traveling companion, the three men reach the mining camp only to discover that the girl's fiancé (James Drury) is a drunken lout who intends to prostitute her to his brothers (played by, among others, Peckinpah regulars Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones). They rescue the girl from the marriage and start off towards town with the girl and the gold. At this point, Judd realizes Westrum's plan and confronts him. Planning to put him on trial when he returns to town, Judd is forced to relent when the jilted groom and his brothers appear in hot pursuit.
The aging men shoot it out with the brothers, killing them all in a heroic, face-to-face confrontation. Judd, mortally wounded, asks to die alone. Westrum promises him that he will get the gold back to town as Judd would have wanted. The celebrated final image of the film is of the dying Judd looking off towards the high country as he falls slowly out of frame.
Reception
Ride the High Country was not an immediate success in the United States, but it was hailed as an instant classic upon its release in Europe, beating Fellini's classic 8½ for first prize at the Belgium Film Festival and winning the Paris film critics award for best film. Critics were particularly enthusiastic about the film's mix of the conventional and the revisionist in its treatment of the Western. They hailed Peckinpah as a worthy successor to classic Western directors such as John Ford.
The film's reputation has only grown in following years, with Peckinpah's admirers citing it as his first great film. They also note that all of the themes of Peckinpah's later films, such as honor and ideals compromised by circumstance, the difficulty of doing right in an unjust world, the destruction of the West and its heroes by industrial modernity, and the importance of loyalty between men are all present in Ride the High Country for the first time.
