Ride the High Country (1962)

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Via TV Guide:
A much-loved revisionist Western, director Peckinpah's second feature film proved to be a bittersweet swan song for the Old West and a classy farewell to the screen for actors Scott and--for some years--McCrea.

In RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, director Peckinpah began what was to be an obsession with men who have lived past their era in history and find it difficult to adapt to changing times (THE WILD BUNCH; THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE; and PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID all share this theme). His two protagonists, in some ways mirror images of each other, are wracked with guilt for sometimes failing to live up to the standards they have set for themselves. What separates them, though, from the scoundrels they invariably encounter is a personal code of honor they both try to uphold.

Eventually, these tortured souls attain a sort of grace because they do what it takes to regain their self-respect. Soon after producer Lyons talked McCrea and Scott into doing the film, McCrea--who had originally agreed to play the part of Gil Westrum, the lawman gone bad--felt uncomfortable with the role (he had never played a villain before, albeit, here, a sympathetic one) and asked Lyons if he could see how Scott felt about switching parts. Later that same afternoon, Lyons received a call from Scott who confessed that he was feeling insecure about his role and wondered if McCrea would mind a swap. Much to the actors' relief, the roles were switched. The only problem left was to decide who would receive top billing, but a public coin toss at the Brown Derby restaurant solved that one.

Shooting was planned on location at Mammoth Lake in the High Sierras, but after four days it began to snow, and cost-conscious MGM insisted the production be moved to a more workable area, using soap suds to simulate snow. Shooting was completed in an astounding 26 days, but a shake-up at MGM saw Peckinpah supporter Sol Siegel ousted and replaced by Joseph R. Vogel, who barred the director from the studio, forcing him to consult with editors and sound mixers by phone. The film was dumped onto the bottom half of double bills, but proved an astounding popular and critical success in Europe, winning First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the Brussels Film Festival (beating out Federico Fellini's 8 1/2), and the Silver Goddess from the Mexican Film Festival for Best Foreign Film. Peckinpah's attention to detail and character makes this film a multifaceted jewel to be studied and enjoyed again and again. The honest, subtle, and consummately skillful performances by Scott and McCrea and promising newcomer Mariette Hartley continue to draw viewers in.

Culture Vulture: After releasing Straw Dogs in 1972 Peckinpah would be reviled for his ostensible misogyny, and depending on how you see it Ride the High Country remains either the best possible rebuttal to this accusation or a measure of how far he would fall in the next ten years. It’s hard to think of any cinematic character, male or female, who is more sympathetically rendered than Elsa Knudsen, the naive farmgirl who escapes a sexually inflected relationship with her father only to land in an even worse situation. Elsa’s nightmare wedding to Billy Hammond remains one of the most heartfelt set pieces that Sam Peckinpah ever created, beginning with the comically lurid horseback procession in which the Hammond boys serenade the couple with a whiskey-fueled rendition of “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” The ceremony and ensuing revelry are presented to us through Elsa’s eyes, as she moves from disillusionment (Billy expects her to be married, and then to give up her virginity, in a whorehouse) to her horrifying discovery that the Hammond clan sees marriage as only a legitimized form of gang rape.

Seeds of the Sam Peckinpah who a few years hence would revolutionize cinema’s depiction of violence are evident in Ride the High Country. The unblinking portrayal of physical suffering that would become a Peckinpah hallmark can be seen in the aftermath of a gunfight above the timberline, when a mortally wounded man seems to be watching his own death descend upon him as a cold mountain wind whips at his hair. And the concluding gunfight, in which Judd and Westrum test their values one last time by going head to head with the Hammonds, is edited in increasingly percussive rhythms as the bodies fall, presaging in embryonic form the cataclysmic gun battles that open and close The Wild Bunch. With Ride the High Country, Peckinpah also took the first steps in forming what would become one of the most colorful stock acting companies in film history. Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones are wonderfully repellent as two of the Hammond brothers, and R.G. Armstrong appears as Joshua Knudsen, the first of many religious fanatics he would play for Peckinpah.

Via Wikipedia:
Joel Albert McCrea, (November 5, 1905 - October 20, 1990) was an American film actor.

Born in South Pasadena, California, McCrea became interested in films after graduating from Pomona College. He worked as an extra in films from 1927 before being cast in a major role in The Jazz Age (1929). A contract with MGM followed, and then another contract with RKO. He established himself as a handsome leading man who was considered versatile enough to star in both drama and comedy. In the early 1940s he reached the peak of this stage of his career in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).

From the mid 1940s he appeared predominantly in westerns and became one of the most highly regarded actors of this genre. He costarred with fellow veteran western star Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country (1962) but only appeared in a few more films after this, as he preferred to live the remainder of his life as a rancher. In 1969, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Joel McCrea has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Blvd. and another star at 6241 Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to radio.

McCrea married the actress Frances Dee in 1933. Together, they had three children; David, Peter, and Jody McCrea, who later bacame an actor like his father. Joel and Frances remained married until his death in Woodland Hills, California from pneumonia at the age of 84 in 1990. According to David Raban's Stars of the '30s, The McCreas were prodigious savers, accumulating an estate to the tune of $50,000,000 USD at the time McCrea's passing. This has in part been attributed to McCrea's Scottish heritage and also to his friendship in the 1930s with fellow sometime actor, Will Rogers. McCrea recounted that "the Oklahoma Sage" gave him a profound piece of advice: "Save half of what you make, and live on just the other half."

During his lifetime, McCrea and Frances lived, raised their children, and rode their horses on their ranch in what was then an unincorporated area of Eastern Ventura County, California. The McCreas ultimately donated several hundred acres of their personal property to the newly formed Conejo Valley YMCA for the city of Thousand Oaks, California, both of which celebrated their 40th anniversaries in 2004). Today, the land on which the Conejo Valley YMCA rests is called "Joel McCrea Park".

Gabrielle Murray on Sam Peckinpah via Senses of Cinema:

On his return home it was assumed that he would study law and enter the family firm but a meeting with a young drama student, Mary Sellard, who later became his wife, helped to re-kindle an adolescent passion for theatre, poetry and drama. Peckinpah completed a B.A. in Drama at the Fresno State College in 1949 and went on to complete a M.A. in 1950 at the University of Southern California. Although his choice of medium changed from theatre to film, he singularly pursued his desire to direct. After a stint as the director and producer in residence at Huntington Park Civic Theatre in California, he worked as a propman and stagehand at KLAC-TV in Los Angeles; then from 1951 to 1953 he worked as an assistant editor at CBS. In 1954 he had the good fortune to work as an assistant and dialogue director to Don Siegel. As Garner Simmons notes in his thorough research on Peckinpah's television work, it was through Seigel that Peckinpah came in contact with the CBS series Gunsmoke and ended up writing several scripts for the show. (6) Thus began the period of Peckinpah's television work in which he wrote scripts for numerous series including Broken Arrow, Tales of Wells Fargo and Zane Grey Theatre. The "The Knife Fighter" (1958) episode of Broken Arrow was his first attempt at directing. He went on to direct episodes of The Rifleman and between 1959 and mid-1960 he oversaw the production of ten episodes of The Westerner. It was during his television years that Peckinpah began to assemble actors like Strother Martin, R.G. Armstrong and Warren Oates who would later become part of his "stock company".

On the strength of his television work Peckinpah was hired to direct his first film Deadly Companions (1961). The film is about a dance hall hostess, Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara), and her desire to prove her son's legitimacy. The film received little attention and Peckinpah washed his hands of it claiming he had little freedom during its making. His next feature, Ride the High Country (1962) (7) won the Grand Prix at the Belgium International Film Festival over Fellini's 8½ (1963), the Paris critics' award, the Silver Leaf award in Sweden and was judged the best foreign film at the Mexican Film Festival. A glorious yet simple take on the dying West, the film evokes great sentimental appeal by bringing together Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott-both ageing, iconic western figures. Critics like Kael and Andrew Sarris reviewed it with high praise; but it died a quick death in America as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer could see little point in marketing a revisionist western.