Session: Inspired by Spaghetti Westerns, Week 4
Movie: The Hunting Party (1971)
Directed by Don Medford
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL
Plot:
A gang of outlaws kidnaps the wrong woman, and boy is her husband pissed. Hilarity ensues.
Reaction:
The primary plot was pretty thin. Keith called it -- with some justification, I might add -- a one-trick pony. And in some ways, I saw this as an object lesson in what not to do when I work on my own project, Bleed Me a River. In fact, I went back to the drawing board on that when I decided that the plot was too much of the same. I came up with ways to make it more complex. ANd this could have benefited from some added complexity. There's a lot of the same old same old.
On the other hand, someone in the class (I forget who) said that it's OK to be a one-trick pony if you do that one trick well enough. And this one does it really well.
It's really easy to see how Party is influenced by Spaghetti Westerns. Brandt (Gene Hackman) -- the man whose wife gets kidnapped -- should be the hero, but he is portrayed as so contemptible that the film is effectively robbed of its good guy. On the flipside, Frank (Oliver Reed), as the kidnapping gangleader has a soft side, which keeps him from being a complete villain. That the main characters have multifaceted natures helps to make up for a lot of sins. I say that despite realizing that there isn't really a whole lot of character development.
Someone -- Joe? or was it Dave? -- correctly observed that this played more like a Sam Peckinpah film than a Spaghetti Western. The extensive use of blood squibs and graphic gun deaths assured that. On the other hand, Peckinpah was strongly influenced by Spaghetti Westerns, so (by the transitive law of cinematic influence) this derives its feel from the Spaghetti Westerns.*
On the downside, there were some scenes that were out of place. For example, there's the whole peaches sequence. It plays like a bad sitcom scene -- complete with music that sounds like it's out of a small-screen romp. I can still visualize Candace Bergen -- her face stuffed with peaches and her chin dripping with juice -- smirking like she's Marcia Brady. Along similar lines, there's the reason that Frank and his gang kidnapped Bergen's character: He wanted her to teach him how to read. That's a sitcom setup if I ever heard one
But the class really came alive in the discussion as we debated Brandt's motivation. The way he kept not shooting Frank was odd. I thought he was playing some kind of game with him -- teasing him by picking off his gang and leaving him to live with the losses until he died last. Keith interpreted it as some kind of weird psychosexual thing -- that Brandt was too awed by Frank's intense manhood. Or something like that. I know I'm not explaining that well. If Keith cares, he can chime in. Assuming he reads this post. Anyway, my interpretation yields some great irony at the end, as it means that Brandt's cruelty leads to his demise. On the other hand, the psychosexual interpretation creates its own interest. The idea that Brandt is a closeted homosexual kind of makes some of the earlier scenes -- his failure to perform with his wife and again with a prostitute -- make more sense.
The lively debate about Brandt's motivations (and, I guess, his sexuality) made for one of the best critiquing sessions the class has seen to date.
Ratings:
Balancing the strengths and weaknesses, I was thinking in terms of rating this an 8. But I changed my mind when we got into the discussion. The fact that we were able to have such a passionate discussion -- and disagreement -- about the characters' motivations elevated the film in my mind, and I gave it an extra half a point.
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.3 - 9.4
Ethan: 8.5
Joe: 10
Scott: 6
Sean: 2 out of 4
*Yeah...that's convincing.
No comments:
Post a Comment