Terrence Rafferty on Jesse James

Terrence Rafferty does a nice job framing the new film in the context of some of Hollywood's previous attempts to tell the story. Rafferty is complimentary towards Walter Hill's The Long Riders (one of my favorites) and Philip Kaufman's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (one I've always wanted to see), and, most importanly, he mentions that the latter film is finally coming to DVD. Somehow this had flown completely under my radar.

So, I guess, even if the Pitt film is a stinker at least we'll have it to thank for the DVD release of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid.

. . . the article also mentions Sam Fuller's I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949) which I finally saw as part of the recent ECLIPSE set of THE FIRST FILMS OF SAMUEL FULLER - very interesting to see a first film by an auteur in which his very personal style seems to be so much in place right from the beginning of his career; the entire set is great, but this one really caught me off guard . . . I am also happy about THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID - another one I have managed to miss all of these years; now, if we can just get a decent DVD of William Beaudine's JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966) . . .

So, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (whew!) was shown on a total of 5 screens in all of our United States this weekend, earning an average of $28,800 per screen. Was the only Mobian money from me? I'll wait until more people have seen it, but I just wanted to pass on the word that you should all believe the hype. It is a beautiful work of art, very soulful and haunting. Aspects of it remind one of Mallick and Kubrick. The brilliant screenplay will most likely launch 1,000 film majors. Brad Pitt gives his best performance ever. And Casey Affleck does even better. If for nothing else, see it for the combination of Roger Deakins photography of the Canadian wilds and Nick Cave's music. But make sure you're in a more comfortable seat than I was. TAOJJBTCRW (hmmm, maybe plain ol' Jesse James works better in discussion!) is a slowly paced 2 hours and 40 minutes filled with moodiness, requiring extra consideration for tired backsides. But it should not be missed.

I welcome the arrival of another big budget western "at a theater near you" and I am now beginning to realize why so many Jesse James films have been released on DVD this year. THE ASSASSINATION... appeals to me far more than 3:10 TO YUMA did. I enjoyed the Ford/Heflin film, but I cannot understand why Leonard's mediocre short story was made into a film above some of his other great western stories...but I digress.

I finally got to see THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID this past weekend and I've been wanting to see the film after reading Quentin Tarantino's praise for Robert Duvall in the film (in an article he wrote for SIGHT & SOUND way back in 1993).

I enjoyed the film–with several caveats.

My biggest issue with the film was that Robert Duvall was barely in the film! Duvall and Philip Kaufman gave us a Jesse James that had the intensity (and the casual backwardness) of a Pentecostal preacher. Unfortunately, the film focused on the Younger brothers and the bulk of the picture was spent following around Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger-who the film portrays as the brains of the James-Younger Gang

The first scene of the James brothers features them sitting side by side while relieving themselves in an outhouse–I thought this was interesting choice. Kaufman made several choices that I would describe as gritty throughout the film (the medicine woman and her poultices, R.G. Armstrong's mule/manure farm, and the Peckinpah inspired blood squib soaked gunfights) but the cinematography of Bruce Surtees made the film look like a late seventies "Movie-Of-the-Week" for ABC. Way too many lights in indoor scenes polished away much of the grit that is apparent in the screenplay. (Surtees did several Eastwood westerns and they don't have this look-so maybe Kaufman is to blame for the television style lighting?)

(I think I've developed an overly critical eye for mediocre cinematography-my enjoyment of many films over the past few years has been negatively affected when I feel the cinematography is out of balance with the material...)

That said, I still think THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID is worth seeing. Kaufman and Company attempted something ambitious and, in my opinion, came up a little short. (Just don't even get me started on the whole Pinkerton Pullman rail-car cutaway/commentary scenes)

* * *

The other James film I watched this year was Fritz Lang's THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES - I enjoyed this film a lot more than THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID but I don't have time to tell you why today! Hopefully I can comment on it later or someone else can chime in with an assessment.

I have just added several more James Gang films to my Netflix queue. I guess this is the year that I should finally read some books on Jesse James (suggestions?) and abandon my latest historical obsession: mystical anarchists of the middle ages (theTafurs, the Free Spirit movement, etc.)

. . . if you have not already, be sure to see Henry King's JESSE JAMES (1939), to which the Lang film was a sequel, with pretty much the same cast . . . King's film uses the idea of Jesse James (Tyrone Power) and his brother Frank (Henry Fonda) as honest Southern men who were forced to take on the carpetbaggers, evil railroads and exploitive banking industry, who were after their land, destroying their way of life, and treating their ma very badly - sort of a Jesse James to fit the public mood during the depression era . . . then we move into the 50s and find Nicholas Ray presenting Jesse and Frank (Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter) as two more of his teenagers in trouble, with the adult world closing in on them, in the sometimes underrated THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES (1957) . . . with Jesse and Frank moving into the era of revisionism in films like THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1971) and the superior THE LONG RIDERS (1980), we see the focus of this story alter as these outlaws try to keep up with the times and reflect our ever changing society and its point of view . . .

I can think of three Billy the Kid movies that I would call good, strong Billy the Kid movies (i.e. movies about the real Billy): Kurt Neumann's THE KID FROM TEXAS (1950), starring Audie Murphy in one of his best roles; Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973), director's cut, probably the "best" of the Billy the Kid movies in terms of cinematic qualities; and Christopher Cain's YOUNG GUNS (1988), with Emilio Estevez, which has its problems, sacrificing historical accuracy in favor of filling the cast with Brat Pack celebs, but had something of the right youthful energy and the essential hungriness of the characters. I thought Geoff Murphy's YOUNG GUNS II (1990) was good, too, but suffered from retelling the events of PAT GARRETT without Peckinpah's artistry, forcing too much of an unfair comparison.
I've read books about Billy, most notably, Robert Utley's bio, which was very good and worth using for a reality check on the movies. As much as I like Peckinpah's film, I have a hard time accepting Kristofferson in the role, on an intellectual level, the more I learn about the real William Bonney. On an emotional level, it's another story entirely and in that sense he may be the best Billy yet, as long as you put aside any considerations about historical accuracy. It's all a question of what we want from our Billy movies. And that changes from era to era.

Jesse James, however, is a different story when it comes to the movies. I can't think of a single Jesse movie that caught the Jesse of history satisfactorily enough for me. Something's missing from every Jesse movie I've seen. (I haven't seen the new one yet--the 160-minute running time is proving a big problem for me, schedule-wise.) The one that came closest to me was--surprise, surprise--another Audie Murphy movie, KANSAS RAIDERS (1950), in which Murphy's Jesse is just one character in an all-star lineup of late-Civil War/not-quite-out-west outlaws. In fact, Brian Donlevy's Quantrill dominates the film. Scott Brady's Bloody Bill Anderson is impressive as well. But Murphy has that same quality he showed in the Billy movie (the same year!), that hungry quality, the sense of not quite fitting in with the society transforming itself and maturing around him. That brash, violent, aggressiveness that was essential to the early settlers' path of conquest but had no place to go once the settlements were made. Not necessarily a bad guy, but someone who can't find his place and turns against a society that decides to tame him. Something like that. The other Jesse movies (those cited in earlier posts) just don't have that, at least not in my memory of them. It's been a few decades. Perhaps it's time for re-viewing and reevaluation.

Henry King's JESSE JAMES (1939) is enormously entertaining and a lot of its flavor comes from the casting of Fonda as Frank James and Carradine as Bob Ford. Plus a lot of the supporting cast (Henry Hull, Jane Darwell, Ernest Whitman, et al). Tyrone Power was just too much of a movie star for the part to really satisfy western buffs in more recent years, and the script's whitewashed version of Jesse was light years from reality, but Power was a good movie star and certainly contributed to the film's entertainment value (and its boxoffice success).

Fantasy casting: James Dean or Elvis as Jesse in Nick Ray's 1957 movie version.

. . . wish I could remember where, but I have read your "Fantasy casting" of Elvis was also Ray's, however, the studio made him go with Wagner, their in touch with modern youth contract player . . . but Dean, now that would have been something . . .

Warners is releasing The Asssassination of Jesse James in more US cities this Friday, with almost no time for local promotion. It's also a mystery as to the full list of these cities. Man, they just LOOOOOVE this movie!

Catch it if you can. This flick is gonna become rarer than Grindhouse.

Read more here:
THE DUMPING OF JESSE JAMES BY THE STUDIO WARNER BROTHERS

I just saw this and by all means, if you're interested catch it now. Very light audience, though I saw it at my local multiplex, of all places, not the arthouse chain where I would've expected to find it.

I'm always a big advocate for seeing movies on the big screen and this one strikes me as another must, if you're gonna do it at all. There's some incredible landscapes here, and some very iconic shots that are just going to be diminished on a small screen.

As for the movie itself -- actually it really strikes me as having "arthouse disease", by which I mean I think it's an extremely well done version of material that I'm not all that sure works well as a movie at all.

SPOILERS COMING

The movie on the one hand seems to suggest that James and Ford are the same, or at least similar, both trapped by society into iconic representations that don't begin to explain the truth underneath. All of the shots we see of distorted reflections can't be accidental, after all.

But at the same time the movie casts supercool Pitt himself as James, and is always careful to photograph him iconically, and weasley Affleck as Ford, being suitably weasly. Just the visceral impact of seeing the two together tends to undercut claims that they're similar -- they sure don't feel like that.

And more -- probably unavoidable, but still -- much of the story is told from Ford's pov, and he's an unappealing character, ranging from sympathetically pathetic to unsympathetically pathetic, basically. We tend to get pushed into James's arms despite ourselves, as it were.

One thus leaves the movie thinking that there actually WAS a qualitative difference between Ford and James -- something beyond the extent of their accomplishments -- and that's an odd thing to suggest given the first point. Unless the movie really does want to have it both ways -- suggest that these guys were both victims of an uncaring society AND respectively heroic and villainous -- but in the end that just waters down to "Jesse James was shot by the coward Robert Ford" and that just leaves us where we started.

I suspect the heart of the problem is that movies, to my mind, are an inherently visceral medium. That means they do some things superbly well, but one thing they don't tend to do well is be ruminative, meditative, self-consciously detached. It's no wonder that some of the best-shot violence occurs in anti-violence pieces, there's something inherent in screen portrayal itself that supersedes that kind of detachment. I haven't read the novel, but the bits of narration (I suspect taken from the book) suggest a more ruminative, ironic, detached sort of thing.

I respect it in a lot of ways, but I don't know if I really liked it. Still, even a misfired Western like this was good to see on the big screen, and it's certainly worth a look from anyone -- it's a genuine stab at art, and how often do you see that at the multiplex nowadays?

doug

I was a big Audie Murphy fan as a kid so I've probably seen THE KID FROM TEXAS, but I don't have any concrete memory of it...just a very vague recollection of Audie playing Billy. I'd agree with your assessment of the other two Billy the Kid flicks but would add DIRTY LITTLE BILLY to the list; it's been getting on for 30 years since I caught it one time on late night TV but it made a very vivid impression and I'd love to see it again...I don't know if anything specific is keeping it off DVD or if there's just no obvious market for it?

What Doug said, though I found ...JESSE JAMES more of a snooze. But it deserves a wider airing than WB is giving it, as it will be most impressive on a big screen. [I imagine home DVD audiences will numb their fingers on their fast-forward buttons, vainly hoping to find action amidst the atmosphere.] I expect its last roundup in Manhattan will be in a week or two.

I find myself aligned with William's thinking on this film. It's a highly literate, beautifully shot art-western( with some realistic blasts of gunpowder here and there) whose underlying theme is the cult of celebrity circa the late 19th century.

One of the reasons I believe this to be Brad Pitt's best work is that the subject matter does not stray too far from an experience he's familiar with. As someone whose every move is noted by the tabloids to the point of obsession, inhabiting a "character" (Jesse talks about himself in the third person at one point) for whom their legend was both a blessing and burden, the script flies right into his wheelhouse and he sends it a long way.

Robert Ford comes across as an unformed, immature personality who identifies with Jesse James to the point of wanting to be him. As with most such circumstances, when the object of your idolatry disappoints, the thin line between love and hate is crossed and the same attributes that once seemed attractive now leave one with a bitter feeling. Robert Ford was a celebrity stalker before they had a name for it.

Doug mentions in his comments that he found Robert Ford to be an unappealing character. It's hard to disagree, but I don't really think that's the point. What made Jesse James appealing to people? In the film, he comes across quick to take things over-the-top, with his co-horts being the one's to try to cap his murderous impulses, and more than willing to do a slow-burn, hunter-prey dance with his victims (usually former members of his gang) when he suspects being sold out for a reward. Pitt is able to portray the charisma that would lead men to follow James on his exploits, but he's ultimately depicted as a king cobra; beautiful from a distance but deadly up close.

Robert Ford, on the other hand, does come across as every bit the creepy celebrity stalker. However, when Ford is involved in his first shooting, something visibly changes about him. His awkward lack of confidence evolves into a defiant semi-swagger; he's tasted blood and comes away high from it. One can very easily imagine Jesse, who seems every bit as troubled and unappealing, having had a similar experience that set him on his criminal path. But Jesse, inexplicably, is a legend in his own time. Robert Ford is not. And that's all that matters to the public.

Did I mention that Casey Affleck did a fantastic job?

This is a sorely underrated film which, had I seen it in time, would certainly have been high on my list of favorites for this year.

Mr. Moore is of course right that Jesse James here is played as basically a guy having a psychotic breakdown -- periods of rage alternating with periods of self-pity. But I think what I was trying to say above was that no matter what they were trying to do, the movie, by dint of it's casting, it's script, it's cinematography, works against itself.

The movie promises us revelatory/revisionist truths, but I'm not sure what they are. Our vision of Jesse James is complicated/darkened, but he's still seen throughout as iconic, different, somehow set apart. Ford is more sympathetically drawn, at least in some ways, but I'm not sure we're left with anything more than he was "the Coward Robert Ford" -- a complex coward who maybe was as much a victim as Jesse James, yeah, okay, but still a coward for a' that. So we invest three hours and I'm not sure at the end what we're supposed to take from it, that the old song didn't tell us. It's sounds harsh, and I don't mean to be harsh because I think this is a very interesting failure in a lot of ways, but I'm not sure I understand what the point of the thing is supposed to be.

doug

One of the things the film suggests, to me at least, is that Jesse James was, in fact, every bit the "coward" that Robert Ford supposedly was. During the course of the film, we see Jesse hit and knock unconscious a defenseless man, one whom he's about to shoot in cold blood before being stopped by one of his men. We also witness him shoot a former gang member in the back of the head after lagging behind him on his horse. At another point he terrorizes and threatens a young boy, Albert Ford, a relative of Robert and Charlie before, again, being prevented from doing further harm by one of his men. Indeed, in the aftermath of this latest episode, Dick Liddel says to Jesse, "Little deals like this just make me feel dirty." We see none of the supposed heroism or Robin Hood-esque behavior that was part of his legend. What we witness suggests that he, Jesse, was a coward. After all, since when is beating defenseless people, or shooting people in the back, considered courageous?

During the scene when Sheriff Timberlake visits Robert Ford at the store, he says to Ford, "Well...wait for your chance. Don't let yourself be found alone with him, and do not let him get behind you." Interestingly, Timberlake then very cautiously peers out the doorway first, before walking out onto the street. We see nothing in James behavior to suggest he'd go directly after the sheriff, but Timberlake seems,
nevertheless, to have incorporated the legend into his routine and acts judiciously. James' legend casts a very long shadow, but it's proportions do not match up with the man we see.

Even at the point of his ultimate fate, he couldn't face his own personal angel of death head-on. He volunteered his back to Ford. Appararently, he recognized similarties between the two of them afterall, because there's no way Ford would have gone after James face-to-face either. What makes this so interesting is that Ford is reviled, ultimately, for the same attributes that James himself evidenced. James had the celebrity, however, that Ford did not. Even Ford's brother, Charlie, whom one would think would know better, succumbs to the pressures of public perception of their actions, believing said actions to be cowardly rather than self-preservatory.

When someone can be convinced to go against their own experience and self-interest in the face of public ignorance, is more than a relevant concept in these politically confused times. A current president tells the middle class that his economic policies will benefit them, they fall for it, and he re-distributes the wealth upwards. The public votes for him a second time, even though all evidence points to him not acting in their interest. Jesse James stole and killed regular, everyday people, kept the money, and was then portrayed as a rebel and champion of the little person; subject of celebratory songs and dime store novels, lionized at the time of his death by a public resentful of the man who ended his reign.

Putting all of this aside for a second, the pacing of the film was absolutely essential in establishing the feel of the era. Our modern day existence is all about how fast things can get done; how many balls can we juggle at once. Life didn't move at the same pace and wasn't lived the same way one hundred and thirty years ago. The one thing that seems to have traversed the passage of time is our fascination with public personages and their perceived reputations. We exault people, then and now, in a particularly American way, who bare no resemblance to their image, or what is said about them.

As for the images, there is nothing ordinary about the cinematography. This film is special, if for no other reason, due to it's extraordinary visuals.

There were zero extras on the DVD. Has anyone heard of a Special Edition?

I enjoyed the film a great deal, and although I'm not surprised the film didn't do well at the box office, I am surprised Warner Brothers didn't give it more of a chance. In addition to Brad Pitt, a lot of Hollywood heavyweights were involved as producers: Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and David Valdes.

Finally got around to watching this tonight. Not much to add, other than NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN getting bumped to my fourth favorite film of 2007, after ZODIAC, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, and now this.

I'm even gonna say that I think Casey Affleck deserved the supporting actor Oscar over Javier Bardem.

It's really a great film...although I will hold off on buying until that inevitable special edition comes out.

I dunno, I wouldn't normally say this, but I'm not sure there'll be a special edition of this one. Somebody at Warner's really seems to hate the thing, or the people involved. I can't remember the last time I saw a prestige film, developed within a studio, treated so shabbily by that studio for no outwardly discernible reason.

There's a nicely packaged edition - 2 disc digipack with 44 page booklet - in Region 2 but the featurette on Disc 2 is only 30 mins apparently so not exactly brimming with features.

Victor

The half hour featurette is on the high-def releases (although the extra isn't in HD), and it's more of a companion piece than a look into the film itself: