Arts & Culture

‘Ride Lonesome’ at the Cornell Cinema

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Content Warning: This review contains discussion of violence and anti-Indigenous racism. 

Last weekend, the Cornell Cinema presented the 1958 low-budget Western Ride Lonesome on a tattered, well-loved 35 mm print, both a fitting visual experience for a genre which has largely fallen out of fashion with contemporary audiences and an ironic one, given the genre’s depiction of a lifestyle that, even in the genre’s hay day, remained a wistful reflection of a time since passed. Ride Lonesome, appearing as part of the Cinema’s Cinemascope series, is the most famous of the so-called Ranown cycle, a series of B-Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott at the tail end of a period of non-revisionist Westerns before Italian Spaghetti Westerns reimagined the genre in the 1960s. Underrated in their day, the films were quickly reappraised by French Critics and have since received wider acclaim stateside, being hailed by Martin Scorsese and awaiting canonization in the Criterion Collection this July. 

Ride Lonesome opens with a quintessential Western image: a lone figure on a horse riding through the dusty hills of an unknown, and perhaps unnamed, territory. Ben Brigade, played reservedly by Randolph Scott, is a mysterious bounty hunter, pursuing and capturing the murderer Billy John, who is to be hanged once the two get to town. As they go on, they are joined by a woman and two men who are themselves hunting after Billy John, all while fleeing from the looming threats of Native Americans and Billy John’s brother Frank, who is chasing the crew with his own gang of bandits. 

The West of Ride Lonesome is sparse, populated not by towns with saloons, railroads or ranches, but by isolated ruins, minimal structures and miles and miles of blank landscape.

Diversity

The Not So Old West: The Magnificent Seven Updated

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Though there were some notable cinematic disappointments to come out of 2016 (I’m looking at you Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), this year we, at least, saw everyone’s favorite regal blue tang overcome her short-term memory loss to be reunited with her family and Ryan Reynolds finally redeem himself from the atrocity that was Green Lantern. After the release of Suicide Squad in August, I was expecting the box office to be relatively light on major blockbuster releases until early November, when Marvel’s Doctor Strange will grace screens. After all, seeing the world get devastated three different times in three different movies (see: Independence Day: Resurgence, X-Men Apocalypse and The 5th Wave) gets cumbersome. Even I, an action movie connoisseur, needed a break from the carnage and violence. But rising up from the dust coming in out of nowhere comes Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven, an explosive remake of the 1960 film of the same name (which, in turn, was a remake of the 1959 film Seven Samurai).

Arts & Culture

Best Western: Hell or High Water

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Considering its high-profile cast and overwhelmingly positive reviews, it is a mystery why Hell or High Water went relatively unnoticed as an end-of-summer thriller. David Mackenzie directs, with Ben Foster and Chris Pine playing the Howard brothers, two Texan ranchers struggling against the foreclosure of their family farm who decide to organize a series of bank robberies to raise some needed funds. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham play Texas Ranger Hamilton and his partner Alberto, respectively, who are investigating the thefts, constantly and threateningly close on the heels of the Howards. From the outset, the film holds its audience in unparalleled suspense. The soft country music foils the searing heat of the Texas sun, palpable thanks to the artful cinematography: every surface carries an auburn tinge, and as a result the entire film feels burnt.