Ride the High Country

Ride the High Country (released internationally as Guns in the Afternoon) is a 1962 American CinemaScope Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Mariette Hartley. The supporting cast includes Edgar Buchanan, James Drury, Warren Oates, and Ron Starr. The film's script, though credited solely to veteran TV screenwriter N. B. Stone Jr., was – according to producer Richard E. Lyons – almost entirely the work of Stone's friend and colleague, William S. Roberts, and Peckinpah himself.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The serenity of its outlook and the surety of its convictions about the nature of right and wrong place it far outside the tortured worlds inscribed by his subsequent films. At the same time, it shows clearly the thematic obsessions and stylistic hallmarks that the director would make his own when American society began to come apart in ways that enabled him to become the great poet of late 60s apocalypse.
 * 2) Its purity of heart is clean and strong and makes it a film that is easy to love, in a way that The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs made defiantly difficult for viewers. Its unabashed celebration of straight-forward heroism strikes notes that Peckinpah never again sounded in his work. This makes it an instant outlier among his films and a touchstone of virtues that his later protagonists strive to maintain, but never quite succeed in doing.
 * 3) The film comments on the traditions of the movie Western that he had inherited while also going on to break them. It acknowledges the passing of the West, and by implication, the passing of a previous generation of performers and filmmakers; although the film still believed in the basic truths of the genre: (issues of morality, the necessity for hard choices, the temptations of evil.) The film has tons of respect for the genre.
 * 4) Incredible performances from Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea that rank among the best in their careers, and ends their careers on a very high note. Although the latter would come out of retirement for a few more roles.
 * 5) The film's leads Steve Judd and Gil Westrum are portrayed as aging Westerners who had become anachronisms in a country now largely settled and on the cusp of modernity. While the theme of men who have outlived their time is nothing new -- and Peckinpah himself would continue to use the theme for future films -- the execution was pulled off in a fairly creative way.
 * 6) * Steve and Gil have nice contrasting personalities despite both falling into hard times and being out of their prime. Their relationship is the first instance of an enduring pattern in Peckinpah’s work, a focus on paired characters, former friends on opposite sides of the law, one of whom aims to betray the other. Although, the film differs from the later films by allowing both characters to achieve personal and moral redemption. Steve keeps his honor, and Gil abandons his plan to steal the gold, returning, instead, to rescue Steve and their companions from attack by a family of “redneck, peckerwood trash” that wants the gold.
 * 7) A rather innovative approach to film violence is shown in a magnificently filmed gunfight at the climax, reflecting the kind of ambivalence to violence that would become Sam Peckinpah's trademark. In one scene, he uses an aggressive zoom-in to reveal a bloody bullet hole in the forehead of a corpse. As the Hammonds beat a drunken judge, Peckinpah shows a pair of prostitutes watching the beating. One turns away in horror, as the other gazes in fascination while eating a chicken drumstick. The director would continue to employ such juxtapositions of violence and indifference in his later films.
 * 8) The film was shot in less than a month and on a relatively low budget, but Peckinpah had the great good fortune to partner with cinematographer Lucien Ballard whose anamorphic widescreen compositions showcase magnificent landscapes on location in Inyo National Forest, where the majestic peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the vibrant, autumnal colors of the forest elegantly visualize the film’s themes about aging and redemption. Peckinpah's history in the television industry, was a crucial difference from earlier directors. He had learned how to use multiple cameras, where he'd shoot from as many angles as possible, and then edit scenes together from the best footage.
 * 9) Thanks to Sam Peckinpah's rewriting of the script, the final film's filled with names, people and incidents from his life, making this a rather personal film.
 * 10) One of the script’s many alterations has ending changed so that Steve, rather than Gil, became the character whose death concludes the film. This resulting change leads to a very poignant and powerful ending. The power of the film’s ending lies in Steve’s ability to achieve his goal and in Peckinpah’s visual statement about this. Namely, Steve turning and looking back at the mountains of the high country in the final shot, which have embodied his moral aspirations, and he sinks slowly out of the frame. Steve is gone; the mountains remain. His example has swayed Gil, who tells the dying Steve that he’ll take the money to the bank just like Steve would have done. To this news his old friend offers Gil a note of grace.