Disappointingly familiar coverage reeks of Pauline Kael with Hall as a mean cowboy wanders round the present day western scenery - lots of derelict Prairie Schooners.
It starts in with a Tombstone coffee mug and abusing a kid with a lap top. Shane & High Noon in the 1952 era when a quarter of Hollywood production was westerns and Son of Paleface Was their biggest earner. He compares the action with American national policy - High Noon as a Coalition of the Willing. ("The dude can't network")
Hall puts forward a contrast between the straight forward values of My Darling Clemantine and the increasingly perverse action of westerns from the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam eras, the Searchers follows integration etc. Misfits & Hud represent contemporary deglamorisation like Liberty Valance, along with Little Big Man and McCabe & Mrs Miller, Sergo Leone.
The odd unfamiliar story like Peckinpah killing his horse by trying to get it into a hotel lift. Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Richard Dix don't figure. The famous (mainly 50s) scores turn up often of different films. Passable documentary production values and unsurprising interviews.
Move along - nothing happening here.
Hall puts forward a contrast between the straight forward values of My Darling Clemantine and the increasingly perverse action of westerns from the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam eras, the Searchers follows integration etc. Misfits & Hud represent contemporary deglamorisation like Liberty Valance, along with Little Big Man and McCabe & Mrs Miller, Sergo Leone.
The odd unfamiliar story like Peckinpah killing his horse by trying to get it into a hotel lift. Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Richard Dix don't figure. The famous (mainly 50s) scores turn up often of different films. Passable documentary production values and unsurprising interviews.
Move along - nothing happening here.