File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 159


Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 16:20:52 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: "A fisher or hunter is averse to society"


Zarathustra Goldstein:
>	You are so desperate to return to your cocoon of a world comprised
>of black hats and white hats that you are even distorting Marxism.  Class
>analysis is a little more complicated than a John Wayne movie.
>

You have a point here. Just last weekend I was up at my mom's house in the
Borscht Belt and I tuned in "El Dorado", with the Duke, Robert Mitchum and
James Caan. Directed by Howard Hawks, this 1967 movie defies many of the
western conventions that Hawk's counterpart, John Ford, drew upon.

Mitchum plays an alcoholic sheriff. In a wild, comic scene, Caan, an expert
with a knife named "Mississippi," concocts a folk-medicine that would cure
Mitchum's hangover and, more importantly, stave off any future taste for
booze. This is important because the Duke needs Mitchum's help in a
shootout with a gang led by Ed Asner(!). They pour the stuff down Mitchum's
throat, while he is passed-out drunk. As soon as he awakens, he takes a
swig of some whiskey (what I used to call the hair of the dog that bit me)
and gets violently ill.

The Mitchum character is highly reminiscent of the Lee Marvin character in
"Cat Ballou", but is less overdrawn and, therefore, more effective.

Meanwhile, the Duke has periodic loss of control in his shooting hand
because of a bullet that is lodged near his spine. All in all, this is one
of his superior performances. He is clearly an old man, so there is no
attempt to kid the audience into thinking that he is in his prime or even
some kind of sex-symbol. By the same token, he has not become the iconic
figure of the last few films which tend toward nostalgia for the
age-wracked actor. "The Cowboys" certainly suffers from this.

The Caan character is dysfunctional in his own way. Though an expert with a
knife, he has never learned to shoot properly. When he fails to hit a
rather large target in his one lesson with the Duke, they improvise a
solution. They fit him with a sawed-off shotgun. The Duke assures him that
he won't be able to miss even if he tried. So the three men--a
semi-paralytic, a recovering drunk and a novice to gunplay--go out to
confront a bunch of bad guys. It is very possible that Hawks had
internalized and remythologized frontier symbols for the troubled period of
the Vietnam war. The American president had demanded that the troops bring
the coonskin home, but the NLF would not accomodate. Vietnam as Little Big
Horn.

Tomorrow I look at "The Emerald Forest," a fascinating film on Amazon
Indians versus predatory corporations, a 1985 film directed by John Boorman.

Louis Proyect



     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005