4/2/08: A Gunfight (1971)Yeah, I met Johnny Cash. It wasn’t my idea. Those iconic types can be a real pain. I was trying to avoid the guy. For a while, it seemed that I’d get away without having to talk to him. I felt pretty clever hiding in a corner—until I didn’t have anywhere to go when everyone else left the room, and I was alone with Johnny Cash.
Who was staring at me. Expectantly.
So I walked over, and I said, “Mr. Cash, I know you’re an important songwriter, but you’ll always mean a lot to me for being in, um, in a film as good as
A Gunfight.”
Johnny Cash looked at me like I’d just addressed him in fluent Swahili. He looked at me for a while. Then he held out his hand, I shook it, and we each went about our business.
I didn’t realize until then how much I liked
A Gunfight. It would’ve been more like me to compliment the man on his
Columbo episode. That was a good one, with Ida Lupino as the murder victim. Also, I wouldn’t have had to stammer to avoid sounding like I was telling Johnny Cash that I enjoyed him being in an actual gunfight.
But there’s a lot to like about
A Gunfight. You’re not really getting an acting duel between Kirk Douglas and Cash as two old gunslingers. It’s more like Douglas having a good time while Cash finds a sympathetic setting for his usual persona. You get a plot that feels fairly libertarian, though, venturing into the reasonably capitalistic.
Douglas is Will Tenneray, who’s making a living showing off at the local saloon in the border town of Bajo Rio. Cash is Abe Cross, who walks into town one day. He was returning from some poor prospecting when a damn rattlesnake bit his horse. We get a close-up when Cross pulls a gun on the rattler. Some animals might have been harmed in this production.
The opening credits had Cash singing about how December snow is ugly when your boots have come apart, and that the country isn’t pretty when you’re hungry. Meanwhile, Tenneray isn’t enjoying the changing American West. He’s being kept awake by construction going on beneath his modest hovel. Tenneray’s also dealing with a liberated wife who proclaims that he “ain’t keeping or sending” her anywhere she doesn’t want to be.
The locals find out the identity of the stranger in town, and the rumor mill starts turning. Everyone figures that Cross is looking to challenge Tenneray to a showdown. The two resolve that issue pretty quickly once Cross stops by the saloon. They get to drinking and enjoying each other’s company, and talking about how badly everybody wanted to see a gunfight.
“Maybe we oughtta sell tickets,” laughs Cross.
That gets Tenneray to thinking.
He brings up his big idea to Cross while the horse is getting buried. The two will sell tickets for a gunfight in a bullfighting arena, with the sole survivor getting all the money. Cross doesn’t like the idea, although he admits there isn’t much money in just shooting bottles. He’d once tried working in a medicine show: “’Sides me, they had a midget and a tattooed feller.”
Tenneray responds that he doesn’t feel much different than the working girls upstairs at the saloon. Cross still has his doubts.
“I don’t want to kill you, Tenneray.”
“I don’t want to kill you, either. What’s that got to do with it?”
Cross finally agrees to the deal, and the film builds to the big day. This entry will leave out some fun details, but that means it rushes to the big SPOILER. First, though, let’s mention the townspeople. Some of them are creepy, but there’s no big indictment over their role as consumers. What you’ve basically got here is a celebration of two individualists who go against society’s conventions. That's why some conservatives like
Brokeback Mountain. For the big finish, though,
A Gunfight dares to not care about the children.
Tenneray has a young son—as played by Eric Douglas. The gunfight ends with Tenneray dead, and Cross about to ride out of town. He stops to see Tenneray’s widow staring at him. This gets Cross imagining the alternate world where Tenneray is left standing. What we learn—and, honestly, Cross is probably right about this—is that Tenneray would’ve taken most of his winnings and abandoned his family. That’s a pretty bold ending. It takes away the sole moral defense of these two men getting paid for what they do best. What about Tenneray’s family? Kind of a moot point.
And maybe Cross would’ve given that widow a share of the winnings, but she tried to shoot him the night before in a bid to stop the gunfight. That makes her a bad guy. In this movie, you don’t go doing any shooting without a solid business plan. Don’t mess with capitalism.
If you’re still not convinced of the conservative content here, then consider Ed Driscoll’s
recent post on “the freedom to do potentially stupid things.” If you’re just upset about the idea of a gunfight at the end of
A Gunfight, then check out how Kirk Douglas later starred in
a virtual remake with a feel-good ending.
Make it your own: There was a DVD of
A Gunfight, but it went out of print quickly. Didn’t have special features, anyway. The film shows up in some cheap western DVD packages as
Dueling Guns, but you’re better off with
a VHS tape. It’s packaged as
Gunfight, for purely alphabetical reasons.
One last bit of trivia that’s always supposed to be mentioned:
A Gunfight was produced by the Jicarilla Apache Tribe of American Indians. It’s kind of neat that a bunch of Indians made a western about two white men shooting at each other.
