The story of a desert prophet, set in the closing days of the American frontier. “He found water where it wasn’t.”
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by John Crawford, Edmund Penney & Gordon T. Dawson
With: Jason Robards as Cable Hogue, David Warner as Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloan, Strother Martin as Bowen, Slim Pickens as Ben Fairchild, L. Q. Jones as Taggart, R. G. Armstrong as Quittner, Gene Evans as Clete, Kathleen Freeman as Mrs. Jenses, and Max Evans as Webb Seely
The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a very good western, Peckinpah’s best after The Wild Bunch. Its theme is common to Peckinpah’s westerns, the end of the Wild West, Wild Times, the closing of the escape route easterners, or anyone of any nation, can use to reinvent themselves. Freedom from hometown expectations and constraints.
(“We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closin’ fast.” “Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch.”)
This is sharp contrast to the highly regarded (by some) Spaghetti Westerns shot largely in Spain (the Iberian Peninsula does not resemble the American Southwest in the slightest). Revenge is the theme of Once Upon a Time in the West, a theme more suited to a violent gangster drama. Other than weapons and costumes, there is nothing that says American West in it. It lacks the heart of a Western, as the dialogue seems more the product of a writer’s room in Rome than a line camp in the high lonesome of Montana. It does not ring true at all, coming from writers whose first language is not English.
(Need I point out the dialogue is never in sync?)
As John Dos Passos pointed out, America is mostly the speech of the people.
Stagecoach Passenger:” Driver, it’s getting dark!”
Driver (Slim Pickens): “Generally does about this time. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
No matter how highly I regard a Western, I would never make the claim it is the best, or greatest western ever put on celluloid, for no other reason than there are so many films I have not seen. Ford, Hawks, Budd Boetticher, Bert Kennedy and others made pictures I still look forward to watching.
The scarcity of water in the Great American Desert is another theme in Cable Hogue. The conflict over water rights in many parts of the west continues to this day. Cable finds much needed water on a stage route smack-dab between two growing desert communities, Dead Dog and Lizard, after being betrayed and left to die by two companions, Taggart and Bowen. His stake is perfect for a stage stop.
Cable Hogue: “Wagons. Stagecoaches. Buckboards. With kids and mamas. People. Going somewhere on a road. And I’m on it.”
Property he is willing to defend with a Winchester.
“Shoot the son of a bitch. With his own rifle. He tried to kill me. He was my first customer.”
Every prophet requires an apostle, and Cable finds his in the person of Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloan, a journeyman lech, as one might expect of a man of god. His wise counsel is largely ignored by Cable.
Sloan distributes his lechery democratically, creating no lasting devotees, but Cable confines his to Hildy, a soiled dove. After she is expelled from Dead Dog by the upright citizenry as a result of her democratic dispensation of joy (at reasonable prices mind you) she bunks in with Cable at his newly contracted stagecoach stop. The reverend takes his martus on the road, (“Since I cannot rouse heaven I intend to raise hell.”) Leaving the sadder but wiser lovers alone.
What then followed was a May/December romance montage of true love, all to the tune of Richard Gillis’ sappy but appropriate song, Butterfly Mornings.
Nothing lasts forever, and Hildy departs for San Francisco and wealthy elderly gentleman known to lurk there. Well, who can blame her? Taggart and Bowen arrive at scene, thinking Cable is the same man they left to die. That is their mistake.
Progress makes Cable’s little spot of Eden obsolete, and runs him down in the process. If you live long enough, progress just might claim you as well. Hildy and the Rev. Sloan arrives in time to witness Cable’s eviction from his desert sanctuary.
The Reverend Joshua Sloan has the last word: “Lord, as the day draws towards evening, this life grows to the end of us all, we say “Adieu” to our friend. Take him, Lord, but knowing Cable, I suggest you do not take him lightly. Amen.”
The Reverend might have said, “Such was the end of our friend; concerning whom I may truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.”
Cable Hogue: “Come on and have a drink of the best damn water for 50 miles around. I found it where it wasn’t.”
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