Joe Kidd (1972)
Universal DVD (region 4)
Director John Sturges’ reputation rests primarily on his still rather neglected contributions to the Western.
Starting in the mid to late 1950s he made a number of lean and exciting films that were pioneering examples of widescreen compositions. He carried this on into the next decade to increasing popular success and virtually inaugurated the so-called “super-Western” with such films as Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Magnificent Seven and The Hallelujah Trail although there are many who prefer his more brooding works, like Hour of the Gun. Towards the end of the 1960s he went into something of a genre hiatus although finally returned to the Western in the 1970s with two vastly underrated and decidedly elegiac and sombre works. However, in the interim period the Western had undergone an immense transformation, with the influences of Eastwood, Leone and Peckinpah in particular re-defining the genre. Still, expectations were high for Joe Kidd as the film to finally bring Sturges back to the Western, with its newest acting icon, and prove if he would (or could) tackle how it had changed. With a script by noted crime novelist Elmore Leonard, Joe Kidd remains one of Clint Eastwood’s most ignored Westerns, an offbeat part of his efforts to find an American niche away from the spaghetti Western legacy. However, it has fared decidedly better than Sturges’ other late Western, the remarkable The Valdez Horses.
In Joe Kidd, Clint Eastwood stars as the title character, something of an arrogant lowlife first seen in jail. The judge’s chambers are soon interrupted by Mexican bandits, idealists who have a grievance over the loss of their land to wealthy American landowners, whom the Mexicans consider little better than plunderers.
After a shootout which sees Eastwood an ambiguous but skilled gunfighter, the bandits ride off. Soon, one landowner (Robert Duvall) and his associates (including Don Stroud, who had earlier been cast against Eastwood in the bridging Coogan’s Bluff) arrive in town and want Eastwood to be their guide on what they call a “hunting trip”. It becomes clear to Eastwood that they want him to lead a posse and track down and eliminate the Mexicans, whose leader (John Saxon) is now a valued trophy for these unscrupulous men. Eastwood finally agrees, believing that Saxon is out to kill him, but when he witnesses Duvall’s treatment of the local Mexicans he begins to regret this decision. Duvall besieges a small, impoverished community and indiscriminately holds the villagers hostage, threatening to execute them one by one unless Saxon surrenders himself. Duvall claims to represent the law but clearly wants to kill Saxon rather than bring him in for trial lest Saxon’s legitimate grievances actually be heard. Eastwood is soon imprisoned by Duvall in a church but seeks to escape and possibly aid Saxon.
Director Sturges shapes the film so as to in effect chart a morally non-committed man’s realization that he must take a moral stand.
In that, it is in part Sturges’ critique of Eastwood’s persona as it had emerged to that date, further seeking to thus reposition him in terms of the genre’s traditional morality – to transform the Eastwood anti-hero into a more conventionally heroic and righteous figure. What offends Sturges is what he apparently considers the petty pride and arrogance at the root of the Eastwood persona – his morally ambiguous coolness does not appeal to Sturges, who feels compelled to in turn put him in his moral place and to even reform him as much as possible – to make the type rediscover the rightness of taking a moral and ideological stand. Thus, the narrative moves from the point where Eastwood is a hired gun indifferent about the fate of his quarry to the point where he is prepared to accept the responsibility for Saxon’s fate and risk his own life to protect him for an eventual fair trial. This is a character type in turnaround and flux, a persona in the process of acquiring some humility. Indeed, Eastwood’s subsequent westerns would essay the sense of newfound responsibilities his character acquires here. Still, there is an over-riding cynicism to the film as many of the characters are vile figures, with even the proud Saxon allowing his ideological veracity to overwhelm his humanity.
This clash of ideology and humanity marks the film as Saxon is repeatedly contrasted to Duvall, the Capitalist exploiter prepared to use violence against innocents as a means of almost terroristic intimidation.
All for money and power – perhaps Eastwood recognizes something of his own pettiness and potential monstrosity in Duvall, hence his realization that he can no longer be a part of such horrendous amorality. Eastwood decides that he must make a stand, to restore the balance of ideology and humanity being eroded around him. In that sense, Joe Kidd represents the point where the amoral man-with-no-name was duly re-incorporated into a truly American mythos of justice and moral honour. As would follow in his Westerns of this period, Eastwood depicts a man in a state of moral transition – Sturges names the man-with-no-name. The rediscovery of a lost morality is hence the point to this Western and Sturges is fully knowing of the sly irony of the concluding sequences in which Eastwood brings in a wanted man not to collect the bounty on his head but to hopefully bring him to a fair trial. Correspondingly, it is as though the Eastwood figure is further expounding on his persona’s transition from cowboy to law-enforcement advocate in two of the films he made with Don Siegel (Coogan’s Bluff and Dirty Harry), the film thus anticipating much of what Eastwood would do in the exceptional The Outlaw Josey Wales.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The transfer is competent throughout in anamorphically enhanced original aspect ratio. Such a transfer is essential considering Sturges’ reputation as a true master of widescreen composition. Clarity levels are always fine, with textured shadows and an engrossing sense of movement from light to shadow and out – is this a possible comment on morality within a genre then swamped in a kind of moral murkiness? The film starts out with this suggestion, moodily pursuing it in further interplay. The combination of widescreen and long lenses adds tension and uncertainty to many scenes and the film has the traditional earthen, dusty look of the genre, though with a sense of increasingly inhospitable terrain as the trek leads into the mountains and its snow-capped peaks. The bitter cold is well suggested in tone, texture and costume choices as the film is deliberately drab and low-key. It has a fine sense of overcast skies and a fondness for ironic moments of fading light as the imposing physicality of weather is a dominant factor. The Mexican community in this harsh land is a brief oasis of solace and togetherness and its violation by Duvall and his men is a truly disturbing demonstration of American capitalist callousness, the quality that Eastwood realizes he must finally transcend. After forceful opening scenes, much is made of Saxon’s absence from the middle of the film, building considerable expectation surrounding the finale.
Sound
The sound transfer may not fare quite as well as a home theatre experience but is always clear, clean and concise in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. Although shorn of any major directional effects there is nevertheless a slightly expansive sense of soundscape as the transfer does seem to have been slightly enhanced, with some simulated fullness and depth in which voices especially seem to have a resonant but hollow crispness. Although efficient, the transfer makes the original mix seem slightly artificial. Thankfully, the transfer preserves the top notch score by veteran Eastwood collaborator Lalo Schifrin (who did the seminal Dirty Harry soundtrack, amongst many others). The aural design as treated here thus emerges best with the sounds of horses on the trail, the commotion during the violent action sequences and particularly with the tones of angry voices. Nature’s increasing hostility is nicely conveyed in a subtle mounting wind, with no major obscuring hiss. However, in such an audio mix, the DVD clearly reveals the unnatural sound that can arise from the Dolby Digital treatment of such older films in the attempt to update them for more home theatre oriented spectacles. Thankfully, this doesn’t distract too much from the movie as it unfolds and the expected genre sound details are all featured nicely, leading to an impressive aural conclusion which makes unusual and gripping use of a train.
Special Features
Unfortunately, there are no special features on this DVD release.
