Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
You know, I think I’m developing an infatuation with Anthony Perkins. He’s the star of one of my favorite surprises of the column so far, THE MATCHMAKER, and today’s AMAD is another one that really kind of came out of left field, hitting me dead-center.
THE TIN STAR is directed by Anthony Mann, who helmed yesterday’s Ricardo Montalban extravaganza BORDER INCIDENT and is western through and through.
Henry Fonda top-lines the flick, opening it riding into a small town leading a horse with a dead body folded over the saddle. It’s a slow walk down main street as the townspeople stop and watch him pass, looking both stunned and disgusted.
Bounty hunters aren’t popular around these parts, apparently. When this guy, Morg Hickman, goes to collect his bounty from the Sheriff of this little dusty-bowl town he discovers a kid wearing the tin star. Well, not literally, but it’s Anthony Perkins looking incredibly young and doing his best semi-fumbling uncomfortable performance.
The heart of the movie is an Obi-Wan/Luke-like relationship… but if Obi-Wan’s personality was more like Han Solo’s… as Fonda reluctantly takes Perkins under his wing. Turns out that this bounty hunter who just wants his cash used to wear a tin star of his own, but won’t tell anyone anything more than that. It’s none of their damned business!
But the dude has a heart. You can see his tough exterior crack a little bit when he’s turned out from the one hotel because he’s just a dirty lowdown murderer-for-money. He ends up shacking with a widower and her boy, a half-Indian kid, which doesn’t make him the most popular around this town.
The widow is played by Betsy Palmer who later went on to gain notoriety amongst the horror community as Pamela Voorhees and boy… was Jason’s mama a hottie back in the day or what?
One of the great things about the movie is how atypical it is while following some very strong and lasting archetypes. For instance, the core mentorship between Fonda and Perkins is straight up Joseph Campbell, the reluctant hero’s journey, but the characters in the piece are all either way ahead of their time or inherently complex.
Palmer’s widow character isn’t a damsel in distress, but a strong person who is the only one in the town who stands up against the intolerance of the Indians, who seemingly can be shot dead in the street with little consequence. The romantic interest she has in Fonda isn’t fueled by machismo or any particular physicality, but by her son’s adoration of him and his returned kindness. In short, Palmer and the boy are the only ones he drops his guard around… initially.
What’s particularly interesting is how Dudley Nichols (SCARLET STREET, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE) wrote the bad guys. Without a doubt the main villain of the piece is Neville Brand as Bart Bogardus… what an awesome name, huh?... and he’s not the killer of the story!
No, the killer is Lee Van Cleef (!!), whose brother gets shot during (I think) a failed stagecoach robbery. The kind old doctor is pulled in to help the dude out, but Cleef rides off to kill him to make sure the buckshot pulled out of his brother’s arm isn’t reported.
Even Cleef isn’t a black hat-wearing villain. He kills out of desperation and fear.
The big thrust of the second half of the movie is Fonda teaching Perkins how to quick-draw, how to use his brain and how to evaluate a situation. In short, he’s teaching him how to be a man, find his confidence and be the sheriff he wants to be.
Perkins has one important rite of passage and that is to defeat Bogardus, who walks all over Perkins, putting him down in front of the townspeople, who view him as only a temporary sheriff anyway. The dude abuses the law, knowing he can get away with it.
When Perkins finally stands up to him, he does it clumsily. Bogardus shoots an Indian man in the back, in broad daylight on the main street, and when Perkins finds enough backbone to arrest the man, he almost gets shot. Fonda has to step in. But if Perkins is going to “graduate” he’s gotta confront Bogardus on his own.
It’s a wonderful role for Perkins. Like I said in the intro, the more of his work I see the more fascinated I am about the guy. His roles aren’t radically different in terms of execution. He’s always a stuttering, jittery “Aw, shucks” type, which is why his casting in PSYCHO is so brilliant. You get to like Norman so much that you don’t want to believe he could be a killer.
But while he might not be a chameleon, he somehow makes his physicality work completely for every character and in everything I’ve seen him in I can’t look away when he’s on-screen. He could very well be one of the most openly vulnerable actors to ever appear on the silver screen.
Mann’s direction is solid, his main triumph in the character work and pacing. The movie moves and never drags. But also keep an eye out for some of his framing, especially during the Perkins rite of passage scene at the end.
While your eyes are busy make sure to open your ears to Elmer Bernstein’s awesome score, which has more than a hint of what would come with his incredibly iconic MAGNIFICENT SEVEN work. It’s really catchy stuff and goes a long way to helping Mann in keeping the pace up.
Final Thoughts: This is a must-see if you consider yourself a western fan in the slightest. Fonda is in top form as the grizzled bounty hunter who has been chewed up and spit out by life, but still retains a true moral center hidden underneath a healthy layer of cynicism and sarcasm. It’d be fascinating to double feature this with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, go from kind, reluctant killer to one of the coldest bastards to ever sling a gun. The character work here is fantastic, but more than anything this movie is entertaining. It’s just fun, but smart fun. I loved it.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Wednesday, November 26th: ON THE BEACH (1959)
Thursday, November 27th: TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1949)
Friday, November 28th: GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947)
Saturday, November 29th: PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)
Sunday, November 30th: THE HOT ROCK (1972)
Monday, December 1st: WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)
Tuesday, December 2nd: THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN (1973)
See you folks tomorrow as we follow Anthony Perkins over to ON THE BEACH, about a small group of people who survive nuclear war in Australia, co-starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
