RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (GUNS IN THE AFTERNOON)

US, 1961, 92 minutes, Colour.
Joel Mc Crea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley.
Directed by Sam Peckinpah.

Ride the High Country is a fine western; action, scenery and good characterisation. It has a common western theme of the tough man of principle and his applications of his principles, but it also takes up the question of the changing west. The good old days were lawless days, but days of heroes. Times change and the western heroes grow older and look at the west with different eyes. It may be that even they do not see the frontier situations of the west as they really were.

Sam Peckinpah illustrates this theme well in his film. He was to take it up later with his monumental and brutal western - The Wild Bunch (1969), and his smaller scale sagas - The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970); Junior Bonner (1972). The world knows and loves the west, but it should continually test its faith in the myths of the west.

1. What is the theme of this film? What characters and sequences are 'typically' western? Which are not?

2. How does the film present the iron man of principle (Joel McCrea)? Is he fair and just? What obligations did he have to his partner? Should he have handed him over to the sheriff?

3. How does the film present the opportunist (Randolph Scott)? What kind of friendship did he have for his partner? Did you sympathise with him?

4. How is the generation gap shown? Does the film present the heroes as too old to be effective? What is the point of the constant references to the superiority of the older men?

5. How did you relate the girl's behaviour with her father's biblical strictness? Was she right in leaving?

6. Was the frontier wedding a real wedding? How well did the bride and groom know each other?

7. Do you think the mining town, its inhabitants, morals and customs were presented realistically? Were the mining towns and people like this?

8. What did you think of frontier law and justice as portrayed here? What were the bases of law and order?

9. Were you surprised that the hero died and the opportunist friend did not? Had the hero forgiven his friend? What point was the director making here?

10. Could you say that the film is about the end of the old west and the
changing of the times? What is the significance of the alternate title, Guns in the Afternoon?