A Good Sense of Yuma

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Elmore Leonard

This week's fish and not-a-proper-film-night Friday was another Western fest. My friend arrived with fish and chips, two bottles of Spitfire beer and the DVDs of 3:10 to Yuma (1957 version) and Hombre, the Paul Newman classic from ten years later.

Both were films we had seen more than once but are always happy to see again and both were also originally written by Elmore Leonard who, after his Western period, turned his hand, with some success, to the crime thriller genre.

A number of his later works have been turned into films, for example his enjoyable dig at Hollywood, Get Shorty, and perhaps Tarantino's most underrated film: Jackie Brown. A recent television favourite of mine "Justified" features one of Leonard's protagonists: Raylen Givens.

There was never any doubt that we were going to enjoy this programme and the two (one black and white, one colour) sharing a genre, original writer and the Arizona location were very good partners.



Right from the credits (period photos including one by the famous Mr Fly of Tombstone showing the real-life equivalent of Newman's John Russell - a boy raised by the Apache) Hombre is a class act, beautifully shot compellingly acted and moving.

The film reflects the change in attitudes to the Native Americans and the way they had been treated by the white man in his relentless surge West across the continent. By the 1960s people were no longer comfortable to simply see them, not as individual human beings but as ruthless warriors to be cut down in waves by the likes of Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and the heroic U.S. Cavalry.  Three years after Hombre, Little Big Man would show us life from the other side and introduce us to Chief Dan George a charismatic Native American (albeit from Canada) actor.

Hombre pulls no punches itself in showing the injustices meeted out to the Apache and presents some interesting moral questions about racism and loyalty as well as giving us a bunch of white men and women, none of whom are particularly honourable and some downright villainous. By the end of the film we are in no doubt that, despite his at times ruthless pragmatism, the moral high ground belongs to the man with the Apache heritage.

3:10 to Yuma presents some more moral dilemmas and grey areas. Although I enjoyed the more recent remake with Russell Crowe, I still prefer the version we watched which is more subtle, has a lower body count and stars Glen Ford as the villain with a heart, Ben Wade.

His Ben exudes a lethal confidence but, even though we see him take a life at the beginning of the film, there is an intelligence and conscience at work and there seems a potential for redemption. Frightening though he is, there is also a charisma and even gallantry around the ladies.

This is all contrasted to the dogged bravery of the scared but determined Van Heflin who is stubbornly trying to wrest a living out of the parched earth of Bisbee to support his lovely but wilting flower of a wife and two lads. Wade clearly has a grudging respect for this man who desperately needs the pay for putting Wade on the eponymous train but nevertheless refuses to be bought by sums many times greater offered from the ill-gotten grisbi from Bisbee.

Far from being sated with the genre this has made me want to see the remake again and to re-watch many other favourite Westerns (Shane, Little Big Man, Winchester '73, Rio Bravo, Butch and Sundance, High Noon...) Next up though are more likely some more recent films:  Appaloosa and another attempt to watch the wonderful Parlez Moi de la Pluie.