Am I right in saying that in this Arizona set film featuring big crowd scenes I saw not one black face? It seemed like it. Which is quite shocking. Also weren’t a high proportion of the original cowboys black? I should pay more attention next time.
But yes, this is good. McQueen is the aging rodeo star whose dad Robert Preston is still riding too, and going from one money-making venture to another, well distanced from former wife Ida Lupino; brother Joe Don Baker is making millions in real estate. McQueen circles the family warily and knowingly in the first of his two collaborations with Peckinpah. Ben Johnson is the promoter.
And he partakes in a rodeo that's come to his home town, anxious to get the better of a particularly viscous bull. Peckinpah and editors Frank Santillo and Robert Wolfe and DP Lucien Ballard make the most of intercutting action with lots and lots of footage of spectators, and in using editing on zooms interestingly. The occasional split screen is not as successful (I don't think it's ever been used that well).
Has a sweet ending. Written by Jeb Rosebrook. It's not so much about the passing of the old west (rodeos are even now still a big thing) but what happens to the people as they age (The Wild Bunch and Guns in the Afternoon are about this too). And about the Individual, the Loner. We like him at once as he buys apples for his horse. Moment where he's threatened by a bulldozer is memorable.
I used to have a book about Sam Peckinpah, I think. There are so many now. I read that Ida Lupino found him living in a shack and gave him a job on her TV show; he repaid the favour by casting her here.
Researching McQueen somehow led me to John Ford's Hurricane, which Maltin rates ***1/2.
It bombed.
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