Monday, December 18, 2006
Subtle parody
Not everyone thinks of "True Grit" as a send-up of old Westerns, but I think it's clear that the movie never takes itself too seriously. It was made at a time when the corny white-hat Western was decidedly on the way out, and the movie is awash with sentimentality. As I said, I think Rooster is played as a subtle parody of Wayne's entire career, and I think the romantic, sweeping vistas and the over-the-top music are part of the joke. The final shootout scene is the ultimate nod to the audience, with Wayne riding out to meet the bad guys across a pastel-colored meadow, holding the reins of his horse in his teeth and shooting with both hands.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Yes, by 1969 the traditional Hollywood western was pretty much gone. The spaghetti westerns had been around for about five years by then. I don’t know many American saw them, but they seemed to help bury the classic type. A high profile western from 1969 was “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. It was also not traditional and it was set at a latter date than western had been before.
Another good parody was the court room scene. I thought that was funny. And then after Mattie hears the account of all the different bad guys that Cogburn has killed and that he would as soon shoot them as look at them, she goes on perfectly deadpan talking about Cogburn bringing Chaney. You know that ain’t going to happen.
I don't know if it's a parody, but more of a more modern wester. The late sixties kind of reinvented the western. One trend that film scholars note is that when times were bad, gangster movies were popular, such as "Public Enemy," "Scarface," and "Little Caesar" during the depression, then "Stagecoach" ushering in the popularity of westerns. The gangster films were anti-establishment, while the westerns were all about expansion and prosperity.
But when the sixties came around, you still had the westerns, but you had the outlaws as the heroes: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Wild Bunch" are good examples. Rooster Cogburn fits that mold to me. He's not the western hero upholding the law; he's willing to bend it to make a buck.
Good point, G.
But the mood doesn’t really fit those “counter” westerns. I can see the “my country right or wrong” crowd cheering Cogburn on as much as they cheered “The Green Berets”. This movie seems much more like an establishment production that is only toying with a counterculture sensibility.
I agree that Rooster didn't fit the mold of Wayne's previous characters, but I agree with Rick that the film feels more like a poke at the old standard than a rebellion against it.
Post a Comment