Der Marshal (1969)
8KDer Marshal: Directed by Henry Hathaway. With John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, Jeremy Slate. A drunken, hard-nosed U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger help a stubborn teenager track down her father’s murderer in Indian Territory.
“Like most Americans, I have seen hundreds, maybe thousands of westerns in my life. I donu0026#39;t care for them much, primarily because I usually canu0026#39;t fall for them.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn movies, the desire to please as wide an audience as possible seems always to win out, effectively robbing most westerns of the motion pictureu0026#39;s essential gambit; the suspension of disbelief. Itu0026#39;s very hard to lose oneself in a tale of the late 1800u0026#39;s when the female leadu0026#39;s eye-liner and coiff are pure 1950. Or 1940, 1960, whatever. In True Grit, very little of 1969 is allowed to intrude on this rather simple tale of justice and revenge. This movie is anchored by two very strong themes, shared by all the actors, across most of the scenes.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe first, is language. The dialogue is an absolute delight. Crack open anything by Mark Twain, Henry James or any other late 19th century author, and you will see that people really did speak differently 150 years ago. That the dialogue in 99% of westerns is straight from the time of their filming is a travesty, at best.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSecond, is innocence. Not that of any one character however, but the innocence of the human race as a whole. It is probably almost impossible for any of us now, in this day and age, to truly imagine what it must have been like to live back when. But one thingu0026#39;s sure, people were much more naive. There was no such thing as mass-communication, a good percentage of the population didnu0026#39;t read, and newspapers, the only u0026quot;organizedu0026quot; form of news at the time, were hard pressed to report on anything more than a dayu0026#39;s ride from town.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis basic, shared innocence is achingly portrayed by Robert Duvall in two short sentences near the end of the movie when heu0026#39;s caught Mattie and heu0026#39;s attempting to threaten her. Study those two lines, and youu0026#39;ll see that u0026quot;Luckyu0026quot; Ned Pepper, the worst villain in the story, really has no idea of what he could possibly do to a slip of a girl. Heu0026#39;s totally at a loss. The unspeakable, modern-day atrocities we consume every day with our coffee and bagels are so far from contemplation by Duvallu0026#39;s character, that all he can do is assure her, u0026quot;Iu0026#39;ll do what I have tou0026quot;. Itu0026#39;s a priceless moment – frighteningly accurate commentary wrapped in two lines of simple dialogue, delivered with dead-on interpretation.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe only other western I can think of at the moment that delivers with such viscerally historic accuracy is u0026quot;Unforgivenu0026quot;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enMjM”
