The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: The Shooting (1966) Run Time 1H 21M

Greetings gentle readers and welcome to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s the bleak and cold-hearted Western The Shooting, which could be described as Western Noir.

Reviews:

cageyfilms says:

From the very first images, The Shooting makes clear that it is no ordinary movie. Through the careful use of camera, editing and sound, Hellman establishes an atmosphere of deep unease. A man, Willett Gashade (Warren Oates, in his first starring role), pauses by a river for a drink of water; he senses someone following him and deliberately leaves signs to mark his trail. When he gets back to the mining camp he shares with his brother and two other men, he’s shot at by nervous younger partner Coley (Will Hutchins), who tells a garbled story of Gashade’s brother Coigne and their other partner, Leland Drum, returning from a nearby town where they apparently drunkenly ran down, and possibly killed, a man and perhaps a child. That night Drum was shot dead by the campfire and Coigne took off on Coley’s horse. All of this information comes from the jumpy, almost incoherent babble of the terrified Coley and we are never given any more certain information as the film unfolds.
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All of this makes the narrative sound clear and direct, but everything about The Shooting is allusive and elliptical. The characters, as much as we have access to them, are psychologically plausible, with an air of authenticity provided by the distinctive vernacular of the dialogue (the script by Carole Eastman is beautifully written). But the key here is the degree to which our access is limited. We know little about these people and less about the events which have led them to be joined on this journey across a stark, inhospitable landscape. As viewers, we are forced to fill in many blanks. The Shooting is about uncertainty and unknowability, and the ways in which we create our own narratives to give meaning to events we can only glimpse a part of. It is, in fact, an epistemological western in which are buried echoes of Greek tragedy; the woman is a fury leading men to their deaths for crimes left unspecified. And at the end, just as it seems that everything will abruptly resolve into a straight-forward conclusion, the narrative collapses mysteriously into even greater levels of uncertainty (prefiguring the final breakdown of the cinematic apparatus itself in Two-Lane Blacktop).

Apocalypse Later says:

One reason that this plays so well is that the back story is kept deliberately vague. That’s a result of Hellman adhering to Eastman’s script closely except for throwing the first ten pages away. “Exposition, by its nature, is artificial,” he said and ditched all of it. Roger Corman, the uncredited producer of this pair of films, had him mention one crucial detail three times so moviegoers weren’t completely blindsided by the ending, but that was it.

And it really is as stripped down a western as they come. A very bad thing happens (or so it seems) and revenge is sought (or so we come to believe). That’s pretty much it, though the few characters are seriously built and the way the film ends adds a whole other level to how it unfolded. Sure, it’s an inexorable journey to death but it’s a fascinating journey too.

There are no drugs in play but the desert is a good equivalent, because dehydration bites hard and there are some trippy scenes out in the middle of nowhere, a.k.a. Kanab, Utah, the small town known as Little Hollywood. At one point, our leads run into a bearded man with a broken leg sitting in the middle of the desert waiting to die. It’s agreeably weird but the key is that he’s no worse off than they are. Even if they get to where they’re going, there’s little guarantee they’re going to get back again.

I liked this movie while watching it, but it’s camping out in my brain because of just how much it does with not a heck of a lot. Much of it is pure cinema. The mysterious lady doesn’t say much, Willet listens far more than he talks and Billy Spear lets his demeanour do much of the talking. Only Coley runs his mouth but he never has anything useful to say, so it ends up amounting to much the same thing.

Instead, we fall into the quest at the heart of the story and so fall into the desert too. There is a scene in a tiny town called Crosstree, but it all starts in a mining camp and spends most of its time in what seems to be remote desert. We don’t see a lot of people and we don’t see a lot of anything else either. We just feel. Deeply.

And westerns were never the same again.

My take: This is one dark Western. There are no moments of levity. Even Sergio Leone included some absurd moments of humor in his blood-fests. The character of Coley, a mentally challenged man, is loud and goofy but in a way that stands out in razor sharp contrast to the grimness of the others. It only makes things worse.

One of the more brutal elements of The Shooting is the number of horses that die: one by being shot, one in due time due to a cracked hoof, and three or four due to dehydration in the desert. I cannot think of another Western where so many horses were knocked off.

It’s also rather surreal. The desert landscape is half of that but the narrative is the other half. We don’t get a lot of information about the characters and their motives. There are plenty of things that don’t seem to make total sense and the viewer is left to fill in the blanks. But it doesn’t come across as bad writing, rather it seems part and parcel of the sense of ambiguity that the movie was obviously designed to express.

Director: Monte Hellman

Writer: Carole Eastman

Notable Actors: Jack Nicholson, Warren Oates, Millie Perkins, Will Hutchins

Plot (Spoilers!):

Bounty hunter turned miner Willet Gashade (Oates) has been gone from his mining camp for a while and a surprise awaits him upon his return. First he is fired upon by his dull-witted partner Coley (Hutchins). After Gashade calms him down, Coley explains that that another miner in their group named Drum was shot and killed a few days prior by someone in hiding nearby. It may have been a revenge killing, as Drum and Gashade’s twin brother Coigne had been carousing in a local town and had accidentally killed a man with a “little person” who may have been a child. Coigne had fled the camp after Drum was killed.

The next day, a young woman (Perkins) arrives at the camp. She offers Gashade a large sum of money to take her to a town called Kingsley which is a several day journey away. They leave the next day, Coley in tow.

It’s not a pleasant journey. The woman is imperious and entitled and won’t even tell them her name. The trio stops in a dingy little town called Crosstree and Gashade learns that his brother had passed through a day or so earlier.

Things get weirder. Gashade comes to understand that they are on the trail of someone. This is a hunt. As they enter the desert Coley notices that someone is in turn following them. The woman has been firing her pistol at random times and Gashade realizes she has been signaling the stranger to allow him to track them.

That night, due to some random gunfire from Coley, the stranger joins the party. The woman introduces him as Billy Spears (Nicholson) and reveals that she has hired him. Gashade instantly recognizes him as a professional gunman. Spears is obviously a stone cold killer and he threatens both Gashade and Coley repeatedly.

The woman presses the group to pick up speed. She disables her horse due to exhaustion and takes Coley’s. Coley and Gashade must now ride together. When Gashade’s horse begins to falter he tells Coley to ride with the woman but Spears says no. The woman and Spears pressure Gashade to leave Coley behind and he has no recourse but to abandon his simple friend to his fate. A short time later Spears reveals that it was he who shot Drum at the mining camp.

The trio comes across a man with a broken leg sitting in the middle of the desert. The woman approaches him and learns that the man she is seeking is only a day away. Meanwhile Coley comes across the disabled man’s horse and tries to rejoin the group. He draws on Spears and is shot dead.

Soon all of their horses are dead due to dehydration. Spears is growing weak and Gashade takes the opportunity to assault him. They struggle and Gashade knocks him unconscious then takes a rock and crushes his gun hand.

Gashade pursues the woman who is in turn pursuing a man up a hill side. We see that it’s Coigne, Gashade’s twin brother. The woman fires and kills Coigne then collapses while Gashade whispers “Coigne”. Behind them a despondent Spears, holding his crushed hand, wanders aimlessly through the desert.