Break the News...Cable Hogue is coming to town..

I really enjoyed this unusual offering from Sam Peckinpah. It is offbeat in several respects, but most notably in that it lacks the violence and bleakness of his prior film(s), The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah takes a risk here as well though, exploring a genre, the western semi-comedy, that fails more often than it succeeds. For every Blazing Saddles, there's a Cat Ballou and a Paint Your Wagon. Interestingly enough, the humor here is not incredibly sharp or witty as a rule. Some techniques, like the sped up film and winking currency seem pretty silly today. The movie is endearing nonetheless because we sense the Director's sincerity and good intentions. Scenes like the singing of Butterfly Mornings could easily have fallen flat (particularly given that neither the tune nor the voices were exceptional), but I found them charming, since I felt the director and singers were totally behind them and went with the emotions. But sincerity and good intentions are of course by no means enough; other pluses here are the complex themes (the trappings of technology, man as an individual vs. social being, morality, role of serendipity in life), strong acting, and interesting characters.

The setting, in one of the last western outposts of the 21st century, really brings out the inexorability of technology's advance. Hogue is ultimately a tragic figure who fails to adjust to technology and city living, and literally suffers for it in the end of the movie. However, we are left with the suspicion that he was the happier for never having given into city ways, and for having remained an individual. Being on his own certainly helped him, as eulogized, stay a man, both good and bad (nice observation about Cain &Able=Cable, b.t.w.). Robards also plays the character right; neither too tough nor too weak, too good or too bad-just a man true to himself.
We also have an interesting assortment of side characters and misfits (which seems to have influenced several Eastwood films including The Outlaw Josie Wales, the two Orangutan films, and Bronco Billy) who while caricatures to some extent, are also interesting characters. There's the philandering preacher, and the hooker with a heart (not to mention a body!) of gold.

I can't give this film five stars, since it's a bit long and some parts feel kind of clunky and dated today. But it gets four stars without any reservation, thanks to the offbeat feel, warm tone, and several charming performances and scenes.

If you enjoyed this film, you might check out Junior Bonner, Little Big Man, Bronco Billy, and the Outlaw Josey Wales.

Tomorrow is the song I sing....

When I was younger, Sam Peckinpah's more violent films were my favorites, now, as I approach the age of the title character, this film is far and away my favorite. Peckinpah came up with a philosophical, almost biblically themed picture here- yet it is also filled with the most laugh-out-loud humor of any of his films. It had to be an accident, it just works too perfectly to have been done on purpose....

This is the story of Cable Hogue, a prospector in the Arizona territory of 1908. He is left to die without water by his two partners. Not only is he left to die- he is laughed at because of his "yellowness" at not doing the same to them when given a chance. So Cable tries to walk out of the desert knowing that he has no chance. He talks (he never prays) to the God that he has never had much use for. As a result, he finds water; water where it never was and could never possibly be.

This is the start of Cable's desert kingdom. He builds it out of nothing and out of bluff. He builds it with his own hands, out of what the desert provides. When necessary, he defends it with deadly force. Yet Cable gains respect and friends along the way. Sure, he can be mean and ruthless when he has to be, but to those who prove worthy, he can be a generous and loyal friend. He even wins the love of the most beautiful woman in a land where women are scarce (Stella Stevens- she never looked better than she did in this film.)

Then, at the height of his success, the two former partners that left him to die are delivered into his hands....

I used to wonder at the name "Cable", since I had never heard it before. Then I got it, Cable is a combination of Cain and Abel. This is because Cable is a combination of good and bad. On the one hand he is capable of hardness, even to the point of taking a life, but on the other hand he can show justice and mercy in sparing a life. To paraphrase the phoney preacher at the end of the film, Cable wasn't strictly a good man, and he wasn't strictly a bad man, but Lord- he was a MAN!

A brilliant little gem of a movie.

Starring Jason Robards & Stella Stevens and Directed by Sam Peckinpah, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a brilliant little gem of a movie that somehow never made it onto the national radar screen when it was released. A major departure for Peckinpah, whose forte back then was the ultra violent epic-movies like The Wild Bunch and the highly acclaimed Straw Dogs-The Ballad of Cable Hoague tells the tail of a fellow abandoned for dead out in the western desert who is lucky enough to find the equivalent of an oasis and converts the spot into a way station for the pony express and the stage coach runs of the time. Wonderfully acted by Robards as Hoague and Stella Stevens as the nearby town's "working girl" as his romantic interest, the story is in essence a depiction of western life and the characters of the time.

This was a wonderful vehicle for may well know western character actors of the day: It's full of those sort of actor you recognize in an instant and have no idea what their name is. The story is sweet and engaging and the movie is totally devoid of the violence and gore that Peckinpah was famous for at the time.

So, if you are the sort of person who wants a movie to actually tell a story, actually present real characters, and warm your heart-this is definitely a choice you should make. You will not be disappointed.