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WILL PENNY (1968)
PARAMOUNT DVD (region 4)
d. Tom Gries; pr. Fred Engel, Walter Seltzer; scr. Tom Gries; ph. Lucien Ballard; m. David Raksin; ed. Warren Low; cast. Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Donald Pleasance, Anthony Zerbe, Lee Majors, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Clifton James (108 mins)
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Unglamorous Existence of the Ordinary Cowboy
Following the lavish widescreen western spectacles of the early 1960s there emerged towards the end of that decade a counter-trend featuring a greater emphasis on the real, unglamorous day to day existence of the ordinary cowboy.
Tom Gries’ film of Will Penny is perhaps the first and foremost of these films and its emphasis on weathered grit anticipates the so-called “mud-and-rags” school of revisionist westerns of the 1970s. But where these later revisionist films used a realistic squalor to subvert the glory of the western hero, Will Penny and its ilk sought to find a quiet inevitability and resigned dignity in the hard life of the cowboy. Gries had been involved in television before he wrote the script and submitted it to producers on the condition that he would be the only one to direct it: he was understandably fond of it and intended it as his feature debut. His tactic worked and Gries made a stunning though quietly realized film (which would ironically prove to be one that his subsequent career was considered to never match), one of the first westerns to tackle the predicament of the ageing cowboy. Indeed, these problems of ageing western heroes, also explored to different ends in Sam Peckinpah’s seminal The Wild Bunch and Richard Brooks’ adventurous The Professionals, subsequently became something of a mini-vogue as films sought to address a beloved type at the end of its lifespan.
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Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Will Penny tells the story of the title character, an ageing cowboy (marvellously played by Charlton Heston) who drifts from job to job on the range. It is winter and he is out of work.
He goes with two acquaintances (Lee Majors and a most amusing Anthony Zerbe), one of whom is soon wounded in a shootout with a demented preacher (Donald Pleasence) and his wandering clan of thieves. Pleasence soon swears vengeance for the death of one of his clan. Heston and his friend get the wounded man to a doctor, but Heston rejects any possible teaming and goes his own way. He gets a job as a line rider for a large ranch (headed by Ben Johnson) and soon sets off on the lonely trail to the rider’s distant, isolated shack. There he finds a woman (Joan Hackett) and her son squatting, hoping to avoid the ravages of the winter. Although he has been told to move all travellers along, he agrees to let them stay for a day or two, provided they are gone when he returns from his ride. On his ride, Pleasence and his clan ambush him and leave him to perish in the harsh winter conditions. He makes his way to the shack where the woman slowly nurses him to health. He lets them stay and soon develops a bond with them, experiencing a family for the first time in his life. However, Pleasence and his clan return and Heston’s idyll is interrupted as Pleasence now intends the woman for one of his two sons.
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The Western as Essay in Lonliness & the Comforts of Inter-Personal Bonding
The film depicts cowboys as grimy (Heston balks at the suggestion of a bath after weeks on the trail) and essentially prairie drifters. Insisting on such ragged authenticity in costume and landscape throughout, the film soon becomes an essay in loneliness.
The cowboys are isolated figures, many of them valuing the temporary friendships that develop on the trail, where petty egos and resentments don’t get in the way. The small details are telling – in a new bunkhouse for instance, Heston’s main concern is for mending his socks: these are not the traditional western heroes, but practical survivors, constantly having to battle against an inhospitable nature. Heston is an old man, fifty-something and seemingly equating mortality with endurance. He claims contentment in his loneliness but it is clear from his smile when in company that he has wondered of something else, despite himself. His quiet longing finds its brief fulfilment in his relationship with Hackett and her son, where for the first time Heston is able to experience what it is like to be a potential husband and father. His actions reveal his inner tenderness but also chart his mounting inability to deal with the emotional instability that comes with such love. His personal battle is thus with the realization that he may prefer his aimless, familiar cowboy life to the emotional flux and uncertainty that is love. He has been conditioned by his hard life.
As usual for the western, the woman represents a civilizing and stabilizing force, literally making him bathe and shave – to appear at least to make himself into a new man.
In this film in particular, however, she also represents the taming force of Christianity and especially the New Testament as opposed to the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye philosophy of the demented preacher Pleasence. She is the way of the New West and Pleasance the Old, with the ageing Heston caught between the two – just as another future is offered him, the reality of his lonely lifestyle comes to plague him as he realizes, and accepts almost as a safety valve, that he is irrevocably bound to it. Much of the nuanced film thus concentrates on the slowly developing relationship between Hackett and Heston, revealing Heston as a man who does not know how to react to the stirrings of romantic love and the select pleasures of fatherhood and domesticity that he slides into as he assumes responsibility for the mother and child. The security he found in his loneliness is slowly eroded by his discovery of love and he is thus emotionally lost, forced to choose. His eventual decision is perhaps inevitable given this predicament and the film has an air of understated melancholia, which nevertheless breaks to depict Heston’s befuddled joy at what he discovers within himself. It is a tender film without ever being maudlin.
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Cruelty of the Elements
The anamorphic widescreen transfer is most effective, true to the bleak, wintry landscapes as they move from earthen tones gradually through to a snow covered terrain. Yellow-brown slowly gives way to white.
The cruel elements form a constant background and even sunlight seems ever colder as the snow covered mountains initially in the distance close-in as Heston takes his job as line rider. However, despite the harshness of the land, it is open, brightly lit and free. The interiors, although safe and warm, are by contrast cramped and shadowy, even restrictive. This important contrast between exteriors and interiors is perfectly preserved here and encapsulates Heston’s dilemma as a man of the outdoors slowly inaugurated into the pleasures of indoor domesticity. Interiors are both sanctuary and trap for Heston in as much as they offer the prospect of a true home for the first time. Interior compositions thus frame Heston at first apart from the woman and child but then gradually drawn more into two shots and group shots as he struggles with a potential new self-definition. The film also stresses the drab authenticity of the West, from dirty clothing to the contrast of sunshine and warm, golden candlelight. It depicts the landscape as home to nomadic marauding clans and with small ramshackle towns springing up along the established trails – this West may be in its transition, but such is slow to reach this far.
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The Quiet, Soft-Spoken Solitude of Man against Nature
The sound transfer is clear and efficient in Dolby Digital mono, perfectly serviceable for a film of this age despite its limitations in the home theatre domain. Nevertheless, the film itself is deliberately quiet and soft-spoken for much of its length.
The score is sparse and there is an effective background ambience of the gradual sounds of a changing weather affecting the landscape. Likewise, this authenticity carries through in the background sounds of cattle and horses during the opening cattle drive. As the weather becomes more inhospitable, so there is a greater contrast between the windy outdoors and the quiet interiors, broken only when a door is opened. Quiet scenes of Heston alone also stress the solitude in the struggle of man against nature and much is made of Heston’s surprisingly warm gentility here, making his character vulnerable despite his carefully erected defences. The understated score is well attuned to the undercurrent of tenderness running through this humane western. Its violent moments are sudden and are never dwelt on unnecessarily. The quiet interior scenes add considerable intimacy to the shared moments between Hackett and Heston, crouched in an effective golden candlelight that truly makes their scenes peaceful and idyllic. The source print is mostly blemish free. In addition, Pleasence’s unique speech mannerisms make for considerable uncertainty, humour and tension in his scenes.
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Treats for Western Connoisseurs
Included as special features are two brief but interesting featurettes, filling in some needed background in the absence of a full commentary track.
The first and longest (about 12 mins) of these is titled “Remembering Will Penny” and is a nice introduction to the film. It was shot recently, specifically for promotional and historical / archival purposes of the kind offered by DVD, and features several of Heston’s recollections on the making and casting of the film. Though anecdotal, there is some humour to Heston’s recollections, particularly concerning the part that eventually went to Hackett. Heston also discusses the importance of the film’s theme of the ageing cowboy in the evolution of the western as a genre. He emphasizes the filmmakers’ stress on authenticity and adds that the character is perhaps the nicest guy he has ever played. It also offers recollections from the director’s son (who played the boy in the film) and an informative discussion concerning the necessity of the ending, despite other choices. The second featurette, “The Cowboys of Will Penny” contains Heston’s praise for his character actor co-stars. Indeed this praise is well-earned as the supporting cast make for a fine film. Heston and Anthony Zerbe would later co-star again in the excellent 1971 cult science fiction film The Omega Man. It is a shame that Will Penny, a quiet, lovely Western, is not more widely known, though it is certainly admired by critics.
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THIS FILM IS NOT YET ON BLU-RAY
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