I've mentioned this before. Love it. Walsh talks about his formative years in terms of the impact made on him by films. After the early childhood viewings of Lawrence of Arabia, etc, when he would have been about 10, he moves through films like The Innocents, The Enigma of Caspar Hauser and on to Don't Look Now. The last seems to haunt him and he links it with his experiences as a father. The childhood accidents, the times he felt he'd let his children down, a residual guilt.
It's obvious Walsh is a film fan, despite being a critic. Rather like David Thomson, his knowledge does not prevent the child-like wonder and love that the true fan feels for the movies.
As I've said before,it's the book I should have written. Maybe I still could, because the half-dozen films I would choose would quite different. I'll make a start by listing them soon.
By the way, on a similar theme, Alan Bennett talks about the influence on him of 'the pictures'. (Alan, of course, wouldn't talk about 'cinema', let alone 'movies'.) In his book, Untold Stories.
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COYNE, Michael The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western. Tauris, 1997.
I'm always cautious about books with titles like this. My hackles rise at the smell of anything 'sociological'. I remember being infuriated by Big Bad Wolves, a feminist take on Hollywood. Molly Haskell, I think. It's not that I disagreed with her, just that I didn't care. and why spend years watching films that obviously annoy you in order to write a book that will merely annoy others.
I remember Molly slagging off every male star - she seemed unable to distinguish between character and actor - for being fascist, chauvinist rapists. Every one, except Clark Gable. Apparently he respected women. Well, possibly. My theory is that the dear girl was just in love.
Anyway, back to Mr Coyne. I recommend it because the the theme of the book is just a framework for talking about Westerns, how they've changed, developed and reflect the environment in which they are made. But he doesn't push it and you get some pretty intelligent reviews of Stagecoach, The Wild Bunch, Outlaw Josey Wales,etc. He obviously likes Westerns and does not need a sociological reference to appreciate them.
I don't need to know that The Wild Bunch, Ulzana's Raid and Soldier Blue are 'about' or at least influenced by the Vietnam War to like them (or otherwise). If they were just that they would be as transitory as a newspaper editorial.
I get fed up with arguing on message boards about whether High Noon is 'left-wing'. I know that Foreman was a commie, that Zinnemann was a liberal. Maybe they did think, 'Aren't we clever, getting an anti-McCarthy message through via the most right-wing of genres.' Maybe, but the point is this: how does the film stand up 50 years later? Or with people who've never heard of McCarthy? The answer is - pretty well. And it's a standard right-wing Western: the triumph of law and order; the victory of the upright individual when normal society fails; the need to use violence; the failure of pacifism; the marginalisation of women, etc.
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