James Stewart, Randolph Scott also are on view this week.
Here’s our weekly overview of choice options for home-screen viewing. (Note: All times listed are Eastern.)
The Hired Hand (1971)
Two years after the smash success of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda used his newly develop muscle to get a green light for this unconventional western, in which he co-starred with the late, great Warren Oates and directed from a script by Alan Sharp (Ulzana’s Raid). Fonda plays Harry Collings, a saddle tramp who tires of wandering and returns to the ranch where he left his wife, Hannah (Verna Bloom), and their young daughter seven years earlier. Arch (Oates), Harry’s long-time friend and traveling companion, follows Harry back to the ranch — and comes to appreciate, even more fully than his friend, the value of what Harry left behind. “In some ways,” Fonda told C&I in a 2003 interview, “this movie is really more about Hannah than about the two guys. She’s what everything else revolves around. Harry rides back because he wants to be with her on the ranch. And Arch ultimately leaves — and gets into trouble — because he knows he’s attracted to her. She’s attracted to him, too, but she’s glad that he’s leaving. Because she’s kinda jealous of Arch. It’s like she tells Harry: ‘He’s had more of you than I ever had. It’s like you brought another woman back with you, and asked if she could stay with us, and sleep in the barn.’” (9:40 pm Wednesday, Encore Westerns)
The Far Country (1955)
James Stewart and director Anthony Mann teamed successfully for five memorable westerns, the fourth being this well-crafted drama about two cowboys (Stewart, Walter Brennan) who hope to make their fortune by driving cattle to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush era. Unfortunately, they cross paths with a corrupt judge (John McIntire) who casts a covetous eye on their herd. Film critic David Denby accurately described The Far Country as “the most beautiful” of the Stewart-Mann westerns, adding: “The movie features vast open spaces and soaring mountains, through which Stewart, with his lean frame, silver hair, and sky-blue eyes, moves with absolute assurance.” (4:15 pm Saturday, Turner Classic Movies)
Comanche Station (1960)
The final collaboration of screen icon Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher is a straightforward western drama with an affectingly melancholy aftertaste. Jefferson Cody (Scott), obsessed with finding the wife who was kidnapped by Comanches more than a decade ago, barters with Indians for the release of another white woman (Nancy Gates), the wife of a man who has posted a huge reward for her dead-or-alive return. Hearty outlaw Ben Lane (Claude Akins) tries to muscle in on the transaction, but Cody won't be dissuaded from completing his chivalrous task. He remains true to himself, even though his noble gesture brings him no nearer a closure. The ending suggests he will never stop searching. Which, of course, makes him the quintessential Budd Boetticher hero. (10:45 pm Saturday, getTV)
The Missing (2003)
Ron Howard's vividly gritty and brutally arresting western is a powerfully effective piece of work, obviously inspired by John Ford's The Searchers — John Wayne's final line in that classic is echoed here by a major character — but well worth appreciating for its own considerable merits. Adapted by screenwriter Ken Kaufman (Space Cowboys) from a novel by Thomas Eidson, the classically structured scenario pivots on Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett), a resilient widow raising two young daughters while tending cattle and working as a “healer” (i.e., an unlicensed and obviously self-taught doctor) in 1885 New Mexico. One terrible day, Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood), Maggie's teen-age daughter, is snatched by renegades who specialize in selling nubile girls into slavery south of the border. The local law enforcers offer no help, so Maggie must enlist the aid of her long-estranged father, Samuel Jones (an aptly cast Tommy Lee Jones), a grizzled stoic who recently — and conveniently — returned from decades of living with various Native American tribes. As evenly matched co-stars, Jones and Blanchett generate a singularly potent chemistry while bringing out the best in each other. (Netflix)
