@deanduncan63Saw Richard Brooks’ stirring, at-the-crossroads Western, #TheProfessionals. He’s messing w’ us, protagonistically …
… Liberty Valance (John Ford, ’62) plays the hero! Dashing Burt Lancaster is a cad, & still one of the good guys. Ralph Bellamy …
… serial cuckold (Hawks, 1941) is a deservingly (?!) wronged husband. And there’s Jack Palance (qua, or contra, Shane) …
… setting us up for a very big, very geo-politically important surprise. Films of this period have a reputation of running, swine-like, down that steep place to the sea …
… This particular 60’s milestone reminds us that the good ol’ days could also be pretty rotten, that radical/rude reform was often exactly what was needed.
#TheProfessionals. Bracingly progressive, w’ regard to race & class. (And yet they couldn’t quite bring themselves to cast an actual Mexican, could they?) …
… Somewhat or even palpably not so, on the gender front! (Ms. Cardinale.) There are almost always blind spots. One thing at a time, eh?
#TheProfessionals gets a jump on Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Covers very similar ground, minus the inadvertent & even advocated psychopathology …
… This one is, for me, much more palatable, much more defensible. Also, much less familiar! That’s always, inexhaustibly, one of the great things about movies.