31 Movies of May, Day 16: The Westerner
May 16th viewing: The Westerner, which I was forced to choose by those goldarned farmers who put up fences ‘round all the other movies
Year of Release: 1940
Directed by: William Wyler
Written by: Jo Swerling and Niven Bush (from the story by Stuart N. Lake)
Starring: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone, Forrest Tucker, Paul Hurst
Accompanying Beverage of Choice: Gumballhead (Wheat beer, 5.6% ABV), 3 Floyds Brewing Co., Munster, Indiana
(Support Independent Breweries - buy local when getting buzzed during quarantine)
The Westerner is about a nakedly corrupt head of government who is so brazen in his kleptocracy that he announces all of his grifts right out in the open. Despite his cut-and-dry admissions to these crimes, most are powerless to oppose him, and those that do stand up for the law wind up just screaming and yelling while he gets away with it. His followers in the town love him, because they think he’s tough and he makes the scorned newcomers to their land suffer under his boot heel.
Thankfully, this is a film about the 19th century Old West, with absolutely no relevance to our lives today.
I kid, of course. It would be a disservice to The Westerner to use it to talk about Donald Trump. I’m reminded of an interview with Tracy Letts when his play The Minutes debuted, and he objected to critiques that labeled his work as a reaction to Trump, because he felt the themes he addressed were applicable to our culture more broadly, not just Trumpism (he was right and the play is great, totally go see it someday if live theatre is ever a thing we get to do again). Similarly, the type of corruption displayed in The Westerner has always existed. But all the same, it is really jarring to see a movie about 1880 made in 1940 feel so applicable to 2020.
The Westerner embodies that corruption through a fictionalized version of real historical figure Judge Roy Bean, played wonderfully here by screen legend Walter Brennan. Bean is essentially a small-time crook with outsized influence. He awarded the title of “Judge” to himself, he uses his own bar as a courtroom, and he forms his trial juries out of his bar’s regular customers. Through this system, Bean holds near total power over his west Texas town, and he wields that power by setting up show trials for “criminals” who are quickly sentenced and hanged, then their bodies ransacked for valuables. Bean’s cravenness reaches its most ridiculous after a man dies in a shootout outside Bean’s bar. Immediately, the undertaker starts going through the man’s pockets and finds $84. On the spot, Bean fines the man post mortem: $80 for disorderly conduct and $4 for carrying a concealed weapon. Bean then pockets the money.
Director William Wyler (who was having a particularly good year, having also released Best Picture nominee The Letter and started filming The Little Foxes) treats Bean’s kangaroo court with just the right level of dark absurdity, and Brennan is perfectly cast. Brennan plays up the natural old coot folksiness that he was famous for, but adds a fair amount of intimidation and menace just underneath the surface. Brennan won his third Oscar in five years for this role, and it’s hard to find fault in that decision.
By the end of the movie, there’s a shootout in a theater, and Bean dies at the hand of handsome good guy Gary Cooper. Notably, they are both in that theater because Bean used a bunch of cash he stole to buy out the entire theater for himself to get a private performance with his favorite starlet. And also because Bean burned down all the crops of the farmers Cooper’s cowboy had befriended. Bean kept self-dealing to the end and things got considerably worse before they got better, is my point. No particular reason for emphasizing that.
