62-66 Five Tall Tales: Budd Boetticher & Randolph Scott at Columbia, 1957-1960

[Perkins Cobb]

Why is there a picture of John Woo on the cover?

[ByMarkClark.com]

If that's actually the cover, I'll throw the box away and file the discs individually.

I'm not kidding.

[HerrSchreck]

That is just absurd.

[Matt]

The sad thing is that people like us, the target audience for this set (who are buying it because of Boetticher's auteur status), are the reason they put him (and not just a nice still of Randolph Scott) on the cover. And I think I speak for all of us when I say we would have preferred just a nice still of Randolph Scott.

[der_Artur]

And I think I speak for all of us when I say we would have preferred just a nice still of Randolph Scott.

But with a gun in his hand, for increased masculinity.

[zedz]

Oh wow! Taylor Hackford! Now I'm definitely going to buy it!

(Actually, maybe that box art was originally designed for "The Films of Taylor Hackford" and then they just swapped out the text and images)

[essrog]

Savant

[Jeff]

I just hope that all of these sets come with individual slimpacks for the movies. The meticulous alphabetizer in me is driven to madness when multiple films linked only by a director or star are housed in a single digipak.

Packaging: Folding card and plastic disc holder in card box

Argghhh!

[domino harvey]

At least it's not goddamn slots!

[Florinaldo]

I have no problem with this cover picture. On the contrary, it is nice to see a lesser known director being so prominently displayed, instead of having still another shot of an actor like Randolph Scott. The layout is not precisely imaginative or attractive, but there it is anyway.

The one drawback I see is that it may not catch the eye of a casual non-specialist buyer, which could lead to low sales and thus less chances of seeing similar projects being published.

[ByMarkClark.com]

Hey, lay off Taylor Hackford. I interviewed him once and he was a nice guy. Funny, too. Besides, I sorta like THE IDOLMAKER. But I digress.

[Coen]

Does anybody know if the movies are all subtitled?

thanks a bunch!

[rgross]

Just finished watching 'The Tall T' A good film that I had seen a long time ago. It was better than I remembered. And it has optional subtitles. I haven't looked at the other films yet. It looks like a good week of watching good movies.

[zone_resident]

Beaver

[Gregory]

Anyone else spy the reference to "hauteur directors" in the original advertising blurb for this? I checked the box itself, and they apparently caught it in time before printing.

[Matt]

The Tall T is a magnificent film, with what is now one of my favorite last lines in a movie: "Come on, now. It's gonna be a nice day."

Buchanan Rides Alone is sturdy, but lackluster. It and Decision at Sundown, the two films in the set written by Charles Lang, certainly suffer in comparison to Burt Kennedy's terse, powerful scripts. Buchanan does have plenty of nice reversals of fortune for its characters, though, and a lovely "romance" between Scott's Buchanan and L.Q. Jones' Pecos Hill.

I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the films in the set. I am still kicking myself for not taking the opportunity to see these in new 35mm prints for free several years ago.

[GringoTex]

The Tall T is a magnificent film, with what is now one of my favorite last lines in a movie: "Come on, now. It's gonna be a nice day."

Hear hear! Not at all what I expected after seeing the great 7 Men for Now, which was much more conventional. This one is almost a formalist piece, where (as Scorsese points out) every single movement and gesture is important. Kind of like Jeanne Dielman. I feel like I've discovered a new Western form, and it sends a tingle up my leg.

[jojo]

Not having seen any of Boetticher's films before, I blind-bought this on a "sale" this week.

Wow!

I love what I've seen so far. In some ways, I think the low budgets Boetticher had to work with may have helped, because I just LOVE the fact that there are so very few interior scenes in these films. It looked like he and his crew just went outside with a camera, filmed it all, and then laughed as the films came out just as good looking (and in some respects even better!) than some bigger-budgeted westerns.

This is an interesting group of films to see together. A number of them feature the same basic plot, same character dynamics and in the case of The Tall T and Comanche Station, the same resolutions as well! You definitely get a feel for how each film is merely one piece of a larger whole of themes and ideas.

The "remastering" in these DVDs look pretty good overall, although does anyone here feel that the reds in Ride Lonesome have been boosted up a little too much? It looks great in the final scene, but since Scott is dressed in all browns for the entire the film, sometimes he looks like he's a walking red pepper.

[jesus the mexican boi]

since Scott is dressed in all browns for the entire film, sometimes he looks like he's a walking red pepper.

Insert Cary Grant joke here.

[HistoryProf]

Not too many comments on the picture quality, but I have to say I'm watching The Tall T right and am awed by the crispness of the image! One of the best looking westerns of this period I've yet seen on DVD. I'm impressed.

This was a freaking STEAL for $23 from that DD sale a few weeks ago.

[HistoryProf]

Well I'm finishing Comanche Station after watching the first 3 last night, and Ride Lonesome and CS today. I just couldn't stop putting the next one in! This is the best box set I've bought in a long time - the PQ is amazing, the films are all absolute gems, and a nice collection of extras. Seeing Ride Lonesome again after many years reaffirmed my opinion that it's among the best westerns ever made - I true masterpiece of the genre. One of my all time favorites for sure.

Randolph Scott wasn't much of an actor, but in a lot of ways he was just made for these pictures. I think he's better in the Ranown pictures than Jimmy Stewart is in his Anthony Mann collaborations. those are also great, but I always have a side distraction of Jimmy Stewart never quite fitting in the genre - the one exception being Liberty Valance. Add in the widescreen color treatment here, and these are just a treat to watch.

[domino harvey]

What other actor of the era could have possibly played Stewart's role in the Naked Spur with the same psychological depth?

[zedz]

I'm not going to dispute HistoryProf's high estimate of Boetticher / Scott, but I have to agree with domino on Mann / Stewart. Those films are doing quite different things, and Stewart is one of the keys to their success. He's dragging up some dark and bitter stuff in those films and I can't think of many other stars who ever cut so deep. I don't know if even Mann and Stewart knew he had it in him until they threw it out there. Really great films that shatter the mould of Hollywood heroism, so if you approach them from that perspective, Stewart might well seem out of whack - he is.

[HistoryProf]

What other actor of the era could have possibly played Stewart's role in the Naked Spur with the same psychological depth?

I didn't word that sentiment very well, so let me try again: I wasn't trying to disparage ANY of the Mann/Stewart Westerns...they are all fabulous, and you are right that The Naked Spur is a masterpiece in large part because of Stewart. And you are also correct that Stewart was ten times the actor that Scott was, and Scott would be the first one to agree with that! What I was trying to say is that as pure westerns, with all the loaded iconography of the mysterious drifter and honor code machismo that goes with them, the Ranown pictures are nearly unsurpassed. Mann and Stewart had much bigger budgets, and arguably more talent to go with those resources, and produced a series of masterpieces on their own - but i've always felt that those pictures in some ways really surpassed the genre. Winchester '73, for instance, is one of my favorites, but it didn't really need to be a western to tell that story. I adore the film, and i'm glad it is a western, but it isn't an inherently western story. does that make sense?

All I was trying to say is that the marriage of Boetticher, Scott, and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada's was something very special that i'm glad is finally getting a little recognition. Everyone knows Naked Spur, but Ride Lonesome is arguably just as good at telling almost an identical story. Yet they are different animals, and I think Scott's limitations as an actor actually help make these pictures feel more genuine - by fulfilling the promise of the mysterious drifter type - perhaps in spite of himself - that made westerns so popular. I rewatched The Tall T tonight - and I NEVER do that! - and am now watching the documentary on that disc, and someone said something to the effect that "There's John Ford, there's Howard Hawks, and there's Budd Boetticher." I think you HAVE to put Mann in there too, but these 6 films (including 7 Men) are a special group, and that's all I really wanted to say. That doesn't make them better than Mann/Stewart, or Ford/Wayne...just unique within a very esteemed group.

As an aside, for me personally, my favorite Jimmy Stewart Western is an early one: Broken Arrow from 1950. It was one of the first to take a sympathetic approach to Indians, and was a real game changer along with Devil's Doorway, which came out earlier that year. The genre is so maligned in many ways, but there are pictures like these smaller ones that say so much about America, that I wish they weren't so often dismissed as simple matinee genre fare. People don't go for them much anymore....but who knows, maybe at some point they'll see a renaissance like Noir seems to be going through right now. I hope people who wouldn't consider themselves fans of westerns give this set a chance, because I think it will surprise them. My wife watched The Tall T with me tonight, and she's a Jane Austen period piece and classic hollywood junkie - but she loved it and said something to the effect of "wow, that was a really good movie!" Not western, but movie. that's pretty cool.

[zedz]

I think I see what you mean now, with the Boetticher / Scott films as some kind of apotheosis of core western values and characteristics - the essence of the western, if you like (though I think they're playing around with the form a little more than they're generally given credit for) - but with the Mann / Stewart films as bringing new stuff into the genre (or making films outside the narrowly defined genre but with many of its trappings, which difference is I guess is just a matter of perspective).