The gunman in western movies is often a glamorous figure. (Who can forget tall, handsome, gallant Henry Fonda in "Warlock"?) We find him fascinating even though we know he is at best outside the law and at worst a murderer.
In "The Gunfighter," a terrific movie, Gregory Peck's Jimmy Ringo has some of the mystique of the gunman, but mostly what we see is his weariness of the life he has led and his fear that he is doomed to be hunted down and shot by some upstart gunman, pretty much like the Jimmy Ringo of 15 or 20 years before. Ringo at age 35 or so is now something of a gentleman in his relations with others, and we learn that he lives by a code--never drawing on an unarmed man, for example. But there is no attempt to whitewash his past. For all we know, his career has been one of unredeemed criminality.
What captures our sympathy for Jimmy Ringo and holds us in suspense as to his outcome is not the glamor of the gunfighter but the vulnerability of a tired man desperate to elude his fate. He has convinced himself that he can start a new life with the woman he has always loved but abandoned eight years ago, along with their young son.
The entire story covers a span of only a few hours. Pursued by three men who seek to kill him, Jimmy Ringo has arrived in an obscure town with precious little time in which to make his appeal to the woman and her boy. It is clear that his idea of reuniting with her and taking her and the boy away to a place where no one has heard of him is a fantasy. In the end, he dies the way he has lived--by gunfire.
"The Gunfighter" is a well-written, tightly constructed, tragic story filmed in stark black and white. It's a reminder of how much we have lost with the passing of the western genre.
In "The Gunfighter," a terrific movie, Gregory Peck's Jimmy Ringo has some of the mystique of the gunman, but mostly what we see is his weariness of the life he has led and his fear that he is doomed to be hunted down and shot by some upstart gunman, pretty much like the Jimmy Ringo of 15 or 20 years before. Ringo at age 35 or so is now something of a gentleman in his relations with others, and we learn that he lives by a code--never drawing on an unarmed man, for example. But there is no attempt to whitewash his past. For all we know, his career has been one of unredeemed criminality.
What captures our sympathy for Jimmy Ringo and holds us in suspense as to his outcome is not the glamor of the gunfighter but the vulnerability of a tired man desperate to elude his fate. He has convinced himself that he can start a new life with the woman he has always loved but abandoned eight years ago, along with their young son.
The entire story covers a span of only a few hours. Pursued by three men who seek to kill him, Jimmy Ringo has arrived in an obscure town with precious little time in which to make his appeal to the woman and her boy. It is clear that his idea of reuniting with her and taking her and the boy away to a place where no one has heard of him is a fantasy. In the end, he dies the way he has lived--by gunfire.
"The Gunfighter" is a well-written, tightly constructed, tragic story filmed in stark black and white. It's a reminder of how much we have lost with the passing of the western genre.