Most classic Westerns are set during the period between 1865 and 1890, the quarter-century following the end of the American Civil War. Those set after that date, especially those set in the early years of the twentieth century, tend to be elegiac in tone, dominated by a wistful acknowledgement that the Wild West has now become the Tame West, a safer but also a duller place. The heroes of such films are often older men, looking back and trying to recapture the glory days of their youth. Don Siegel's "The Shootist" and Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" are both films of this type, as is "Ride the High Country", also by Peckinpah.
The action takes place in California in and around a mining camp in the Sierra Nevada. Several miners have recently been murdered by bandits while trying to transport their gold down from the camp, so the bank in the local town hires a former lawman, Steve Judd, to bring the next shipment down. Judd realises that he will not be able to accomplish this task himself, so hires his former partner Gil Westrum and a young man named Heck Longtree to assist him.
If this were a standard Western set around 1870 or 1880, Judd and Westrum would have been played by actors in the prime of life, which in 1962 would have meant someone like Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston or Paul Newman. The action, however, takes place sometime around 1905, by which time tough, sharp-shooting lawmen were a dying breed and those who survived were no longer in their prime. Judd and Westrum are ageing men in their fifties or sixties, played by those ageing veterans of the Western, Joel McCrea, and Randolph Scott.
Along the way, the three men stay briefly at for the night at a farm where they discover that the farmer's daughter, Elsa, is engaged to one of the miners. Knowing that her domineering, deeply religious father Joshua (who despises miners in general and Elsa's fiancé Billy in particular) will never consent to her marriage, Elsa runs away from home and joins the three men on their journey to the camp. Upon arrival Elsa and Billy are reunited and quickly married, but almost as soon as the marriage has taken place she realises that her father was right all along. Billy proves himself to be a drunken, violent lout. To make matters worse, Billy intends to prostitute her to his four brothers, all even less desirable than he is. (The film hints at this but never makes matters too explicit, doubtless because the Production Code was still in force in 1962).
The screenplay is officially credited to one N. B. Stone, but in fact Stone was a chronic alcoholic whose original draft was virtually unusable. His friend William S. Roberts produced an amended version which was then further amended by Peckinpah himself to produce the script which was eventually used. There is a curious parallel with Peckinpah's next film, "Major Dundee", from three years later. On this occasion it was Peckinpah himself who was incapacitated through drink and the film's star, Charlton Heston, who had no previous directorial experience, was forced to take over as director, although he was not credited for this.
Given its tangled history, therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that the plot of "Ride the High ends up as rather baggy and shapeless. There are essentially two plots, the Story of the Gold and the Story of the Girl. In the first, Westrum (who is far less trustworthy than Judd assumed) and Heck have secretly agreed to double-cross Judd and steal the gold. In the second, all three men agree to help Elsa escape from her dreadful marriage and return safely to her father.
The main difficulty is how we should regard Westrum and Heck. In the Story of the Gold they are the bad guys. In the Story of the Girl they are (along with Judd) the good guys, the bad guys in that story being Billy and his brothers. Scott and Ron Starr never seem to know how they should play their characters, whether as heroes or as villains. They are not the only characters whose portrayal seems inconsistent. Elsa's father, old Knudsen, is at one minute kindly and hospitable, at the next a bigoted domestic tyrant. Billy turns, in the space of a few minutes, from a personable young man to a complete and utter swine, so much so that it becomes difficult to understand what Elsa could ever have seen in him.
On the positive side there is a reasonably good performance from McCrea as Judd, a John Wayne-style man of honour who is horrified by the idea of stealing the gold, despite the meagre wages the bank are paying him. (There is a suggestion that Judd is trying to atone for some misdeeds in his wild youth). The action sequences are well handled and the film is visually attractive with fine photography of the mountain scenery. I found the storyline too confused, however, for the film to merit the label "classic" which some have tried to pin on it. It is not in the same class as something like "The Shootist". 6/10
The action takes place in California in and around a mining camp in the Sierra Nevada. Several miners have recently been murdered by bandits while trying to transport their gold down from the camp, so the bank in the local town hires a former lawman, Steve Judd, to bring the next shipment down. Judd realises that he will not be able to accomplish this task himself, so hires his former partner Gil Westrum and a young man named Heck Longtree to assist him.
If this were a standard Western set around 1870 or 1880, Judd and Westrum would have been played by actors in the prime of life, which in 1962 would have meant someone like Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston or Paul Newman. The action, however, takes place sometime around 1905, by which time tough, sharp-shooting lawmen were a dying breed and those who survived were no longer in their prime. Judd and Westrum are ageing men in their fifties or sixties, played by those ageing veterans of the Western, Joel McCrea, and Randolph Scott.
Along the way, the three men stay briefly at for the night at a farm where they discover that the farmer's daughter, Elsa, is engaged to one of the miners. Knowing that her domineering, deeply religious father Joshua (who despises miners in general and Elsa's fiancé Billy in particular) will never consent to her marriage, Elsa runs away from home and joins the three men on their journey to the camp. Upon arrival Elsa and Billy are reunited and quickly married, but almost as soon as the marriage has taken place she realises that her father was right all along. Billy proves himself to be a drunken, violent lout. To make matters worse, Billy intends to prostitute her to his four brothers, all even less desirable than he is. (The film hints at this but never makes matters too explicit, doubtless because the Production Code was still in force in 1962).
The screenplay is officially credited to one N. B. Stone, but in fact Stone was a chronic alcoholic whose original draft was virtually unusable. His friend William S. Roberts produced an amended version which was then further amended by Peckinpah himself to produce the script which was eventually used. There is a curious parallel with Peckinpah's next film, "Major Dundee", from three years later. On this occasion it was Peckinpah himself who was incapacitated through drink and the film's star, Charlton Heston, who had no previous directorial experience, was forced to take over as director, although he was not credited for this.
Given its tangled history, therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that the plot of "Ride the High ends up as rather baggy and shapeless. There are essentially two plots, the Story of the Gold and the Story of the Girl. In the first, Westrum (who is far less trustworthy than Judd assumed) and Heck have secretly agreed to double-cross Judd and steal the gold. In the second, all three men agree to help Elsa escape from her dreadful marriage and return safely to her father.
The main difficulty is how we should regard Westrum and Heck. In the Story of the Gold they are the bad guys. In the Story of the Girl they are (along with Judd) the good guys, the bad guys in that story being Billy and his brothers. Scott and Ron Starr never seem to know how they should play their characters, whether as heroes or as villains. They are not the only characters whose portrayal seems inconsistent. Elsa's father, old Knudsen, is at one minute kindly and hospitable, at the next a bigoted domestic tyrant. Billy turns, in the space of a few minutes, from a personable young man to a complete and utter swine, so much so that it becomes difficult to understand what Elsa could ever have seen in him.
On the positive side there is a reasonably good performance from McCrea as Judd, a John Wayne-style man of honour who is horrified by the idea of stealing the gold, despite the meagre wages the bank are paying him. (There is a suggestion that Judd is trying to atone for some misdeeds in his wild youth). The action sequences are well handled and the film is visually attractive with fine photography of the mountain scenery. I found the storyline too confused, however, for the film to merit the label "classic" which some have tried to pin on it. It is not in the same class as something like "The Shootist". 6/10