From the 1960s: The Unforgiven

1960 Western

From United Artists

Directed by John Huston

Starring

Burt Lancaster

Audrey Hepburn

Audie Murphy

Lillian Gish

Charles Bickford

John Saxon

Joseph Wiseman

Albert Salmi

Doug McClure

June Walker 

Kipp Hamilton

Carlos Rivas

First of all let's not confuse this film with Clint Eastwood's superior 1992 western, Unforgiven.  The difference is all about the the.  Well, ok, it's not the only difference... Eastwood's film is far superior but that's not to say I didn't find much to admire here and it's long been one of my favorite westerns.

Though unintended I realize this film has a great deal in common with another movie for which I just did a posting... Duel in the Sun.  Both feature a woman with a Native American background at the crux of the story with strong racial and racist overtones.  A difference in the former is her ethnicity is never in dispute while here a dispute is the very point of the story.

While we're at it, both films (oddly) star two of the same actors, Lillian Gish and Charles Bickford, and both feature musical scores by Dimitri Tiomkin who warrants kudos for his soft, beautiful theme here.  Let's cinch up that saddle and head out.

The Zacharys are a Texas frontier family consisting of a tough widow (Gish) and her grown children, three sons (Lancaster, Murphy and McClure) and an adored daughter (Hepburn).  The father was killed by Kiowas and Lancaster as the oldest son has taken over the leadership of the family.

We learn how they interact with one another and see how they go about their day as they prepare to drive a herd of cattle to Abilene for sale.  They are partnered in this venture with their closest neighbors, the Rawlins family (headed by Bickford) whose one son (Salmi) wants to marry the Zachary daughter.

Lancaster must approve of the union and he actually doesn't because he secretly loves Hepburn who was taken into the family but never legally adopted.  While she is prepared to marry Salmi, there are instances where we notice she may actually care for Lancaster in a non-sisterly way.

Out in the brush is some crazy-appearing old geezer Abe Kelsey (Wiseman) who, while brandishing a sword, says he knows that Hepburn is actually a Kiowa.  He maintains she was stolen as a baby by the Zachary father during a raid on a Kiowa village.  When Lancaster and Murphy hear it, they believe it's a lie and try to kill Kelsey.

One day Lost Bird (Rivas) and two Kiowa braves show up on the Zachary property with horses to trade for Hepburn.  He tells Lancaster that she is his sister who was stolen years earlier.  Still, Lancaster doesn't believe the story.

Then Salmi is killed by Kiowas after visiting Hepburn.  While attending a large group of mourners at the Rawlins home, the Zacharys feel shunned which is confirmed when Mrs. Rawlins (Walker) screams vile names at Hepburn when she touches her, trying to provide some comfort.

Wiseman is there, too, on a horse with a rope around his neck.  The crowd, at first disbelieving him, seems to come around when he offers that his own son was captured by the Kiowas and when they offer a trade for Hepburn to be given back, old man Zachary refuses and the boy is slain.

Gish, the only Zachary who knows he's telling the truth, suddenly grabs a switch and lashes at the horse resulting in Wiseman's hanging.  Then Rawlins and seemingly the rest of the neighbors want nothing more to do with the Zacharys because of Hepburn.  

Back home two people have serious problems with their new truth.  Murphy, the hot-headed Zachary, is especially hateful and turns his back on his sister.  Hepburn, of course, is shaken, and vows to return to her real family but Lancaster will not hear of it.

As all of this is being bandied about, a Kiowa war party  converges upon the homestead and of course there is a great skirmish resulting in the destruction of the family home and the death of one of its members.  The film ends with the surviving four standing in front of their burned home.  We are not made aware of how things will turn out for the surviving family members.

Westerns were always more popular with the public than critics.  I've long felt that if one is paid to be critical of films, it's not a difficult thing to accomplish.  Westerns are an easy target to pick apart... they're pretty simple and straight-forward and not full of psychobabble where one must pause to more easily digest.  Man kills bad guys, loves woman who resists him some, loves horse more who never resists him.  This most American of movie genres is pretty simple.

The tough Zachary family

Once in a while westerns have had something important to say and sometimes they get that point across well.  Understanding that a stranger might want to help struggling farmers stand up to bad guys was expertly handled in Shane (1953).  And how about the anti-hero whose family was slaughtered by Comanches and his racist, prejudiced, bitter journey to find a niece who's been captured in John Ford's The Searchers?  There are so many more good ones that aren't so simple.

By the way The Searchers and Kiowa Moon (the title on which The Unforgiven is based) were both novels written by the same man, Alan Le May.  These works have similar themes but with a decided twist. 

I admire the western theme of looking at the lives of pioneer families.  I guess it's the hardship part and the triumph of the family unit that moves me... and get something beautiful to look at at the same time.  Here is another social-conscience western... this time about racial injustice and its attendant racist stance regarding a time and place when there was much racial fear and hatred.  It may be hard to hear at times but it's not like it didn't happen.  

Ben Maddow adapted Le May's work for the screen and succeeded in being faithful to the novelist's ideas.  Le May certainly was drawn to racial themes.  I liked Maddow's writing for such westerns as The Man from Colorado, Johnny Guitar and The Way West but also such non-westerns as The Asphalt Jungle, The Naked Jungle, No Down Payment and The Secret of Santa Vittoria.

The film turned out to be one of those that appeared more exciting behind the scenes than it did on screen.  It started with the production team of Hecht, Hill and Lancaster which had produced some interesting films, ones I very much liked, but most were not moneymakers.  Someone in that trio imagined that The Unforgiven would be one that would restore finances.  They liked the story that Maddox crafted.  

In general it's difficult to have a producer who is also the star of the movie.  The director is always in charge of the day-to-day handling of the film but since the producer is the money man, actually he could be considered in charge.  Usually the producer defers to the director but not if that producer is Lancaster.  Always a control freak and a major pain in the ass he and the original director, Delbert Mann, likely didn't see eye to eye and the director fled before things got too wild.

Huston was then brought on board.  It was an unusual assignment for him.  The Old West was not really his milieu for starters.  Everything had already been assembled and ready to go when he joined.  Usually he was the one who got his films rolling and many were projects that excited him.  Not this time.  He, in fact, said The Unforgiven was the film he disliked above all others he made.  No kidding?  Had he forgotten a dog he made a couple of years earlier with John Wayne, The Barbarian and the Geisha?  And how about the Humphrey Bogart-Jennifer Jones-starrer, Beat the Devil in the early 50s, certainly in contention for one of the worst films of all time?

I suspect he disliked it not for what appears on the screen but because it was difficult to make and he spent most every day hassling with Lancaster.  When the actor-producer was successful in altering the arc of the film, turning it from a thoughtful peace on race relations into a standard, highly commercial cowboys and Indians yarn (per Huston), the director effectively shut down.  His cast and crew would say he stopped directing.  Huston said that HHL needed a hit to remain solvent so they turned the film from a thoughtful, arthouse-like piece into a crowd pleaser.  Because the western ended up doing less than stellar business, HHL folded.

According to bios on Huston, he didn't accept the project for the right reasons.  Accounts vary but it's been claimed he only took the work to make money to renovate an expensive castle he'd bought in Ireland or that he wanted to be near family in the area of the filming (Durango, Mexico) or that he wanted to buy pre-Columbian art that was stashed away in Mexico... or perhaps all three.

It is and has almost always been true that movie stars want to be in a western at least once.  Hepburn was one of those... she liked the script, admired Huston and thought it might be interesting sharing the screen with Lancaster.  She knew a hot, dusty location, a single hairstyle and not one glamorous frock would be unusual but it all also excited her.  She would come away with a far different opinion.

Hepburn and the spirited Diablo

Huston claimed that a mishap that occurred with Hepburn is another reason he didn't like the film.  Diablo was a large white stallion, once owned by President Batista of Cuba, that threw Hepburn when a crew member raised his hands in front of the horse causing him to freak out and buck her off.  She broke her back, was off the film for three months and eventually suffered a miscarriage.  Huston always felt guilty about the incident which he and everyone else apparently knew could have been handled in a safer manner.

While I thought Hepburn's acting was as good as it ever was, I had to suspend my disbelief to see her as an Indian.  She would always consider The Unforgiven as her worst film.  Apparently she'd never seen Green Mansions.

Huston would not only have a problem with Lancaster, whom he didn't like, but also had issues with Murphy whom he did like.   The two had worked together in 1951 when Huston directed an excellent Murphy in The Red Badge of Courage.  Murphy also hit a home run in To Hell and Back (1955) but then it was his own story of America's most decorated WWII soldier.

His work in this film as the hot-headed brother is on par with his turns in Bed Badge and Hell.  To get it he accepted the second male lead and third billing, something he had never done before.  He would love to have done more important work over the years but it was rarely offered to him because he was also a pain in the ass on movie sets and firmly stuck in B westerns that were never highly regarded except by his fans.

And it gnawed at him.  Instead of being grateful for this chance, he became the problem child.  He complained that Huston wasn't directing him (we know he wasn't directing anyone) and Murphy felt adrift.  He went crazy, according to others, when Lancaster slapped him in a scene.  All knew the scene was coming but Murphy apparently didn't expect what he got and Huston had to take him aside and try to calm him down.

Huston and Murphy

Gish despised Murphy.  She would not speak to him or be in the same area with him unless they were before the cameras.  What she disliked the most is how many animals he would shoot (primarily rabbits).  She asked him to stop but he refused.  Several times Murphy apparently fired a gun over the heads of cast and crew as they sat around outside awaiting a scene to be set up.

Possibly nobody knew that he was in a perpetual foul mood because he was suspected of cattle rustling and he was hiding out while making the film.  One day he and a buddy on the crew were shooting ducks from a boat when it capsized.  Because of a war injury Murphy could not swim and might have drowned had a female photographer not spotted him and raced to save him. 

I am not aware of Lancaster's take on the film but I thought his acting was as good as it always was.  I also found his character to be especially tender with Hepburn's, far more than he usually was with female characters.  Their acting styles are so different... they made an exciting team to watch.   

Fourth-billed John Saxon had a few scenes in the beginning and then vanishes without explanation.  Playing Johnny Portugal (oh those western names) he is a Zachary ranch hand who develops a yen for Hepburn.  We won't quote Lancaster directly but he said he didn't want anyone but himself having a thing for Hepburn's character.  The result?  What happened to Saxon?

The remainder of the cast also delivers the needed punch.  Gish is a tough cookie and Bickford offers his frequent stern portrayal of an independent man.  It was his fourth and final film appearance with Lancaster.  Wiseman had a leg up on playing oddballs and this character is certainly one of those.

Carlos Rivas's final scene with Hepburn is very sad... for me the most memorable one in the film.  The handsome Riva might be remembered by some as Rita Moreno's forbidden love interest, Lun Tha, in 1956's The King and I.  They sang I Have Dreamed and We Kiss in a Shadow.

Huston claimed a celestial vengeance visited him and his cast and crew with sweltering sun, flies, fleas, dust storms, bad water, horrible food and bandidos.  The latter robbed the company's pay station of all its cash.

The reception not surprisingly was mixed.  Some called it noble, semi-classic, great in the tradition of The Searchers.

Sitting and directing

Huston thought Lancaster's acting changed the film into a swashbuckler in the Mexican desert and, as stated earlier, from a thoughtful study on race relations to a typical cowboys and Indians saga.  I get all that has been said but offer this opinion (and it is just that).  There certainly were things that got muddled in a film that had a well-intentioned message. The film's strong message against racism and intolerance seems a bit betrayed by portraying Indians as they almost always were as the bad guys.

But I wonder...  How does one deal with racism and intolerance without portraying racism and intolerance?  This is a movie not a lecture.  It didn't show the Indians as bad guys.  Their land and one of their women were stolen from them and they were mad and sought revenge.  Okay.  Here they show the white people as ignorant and intolerant and some as hateful.  Wow, just like real life.  Where exactly is the problem?  And so what if some actor-producer wants it to be a commercial hit?  It's not intended to be a documentary.

What are we to do...  burn all movies from our past?  Aren't we just a little skittish these days?  Are we to believe whites and Indians got along fine?  Are we to believe there was no prejudice?  I would like to believe I am sensitive to the plight of others, all others, but haven't things gotten just a little looney?  Don't we have enough problems than to spend time bashing movies from 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago?  It was a different time.  Thinking has evolved since then.  Save the unrest for films made today.

So I thank Le May, Maddox, United Artists, Huston, Lancaster, Hepburn, Murphy, Gish, Bickford, Wiseman and all the others for an entertaining, thoughtful western.  I had a wonderful time.

Here's a trailer:

 

Next posting:

Universal's superstar from the 40s