Word: westerns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...previous films this year (The Stalking Moon and MacKenna's Gold), Peck was saddled with period western costume. In The Chairman he is restored to mufti as John Hathaway, Nobel-prizewinning chemist, professor and all-round chump. Hathaway allows the combined intelligence forces to se crete an aspirin-sized transmitter in his head. He is blissfully unaware that the capsule also contains an explosive that can be triggered back at headquarters...
With Zero Mostel, and a wildly improbable storyline, The Great Bank Robbery seems all set to snipe away at an inviting target-the standard western heist. Unfortunately, amid leathery gags and uninspired parody, the guns jam early and often...
...remarks of herself at the outset: "Sister Lyda's ass is draggin." Indeed, she bestirs herself only for the strategic seduction of Clint Walker, who has no trouble at all playing an oafish, one-dimensional Ranger. Despite The Great Bank Robbery's pretentious effort, the genuinely amusing western remains an elusive specimen...
There is a fine Gallic impudence to the notion: take Robinson Crusoe, that age-of-reason parable of Western civilization's triumph over rude nature, and turn it upside down. In this position Crusoe's diligence, rationality, racial pride and Christian ethics-the very qualities that in Defoe's handling ensured Crusoe's survival-get lost while Crusoe accepts the "primitive" values of his black manservant. Call the book Friday to make the irony unmistakable. So much for Western civilization...
...seem to be one more demonstration-and a notably self-conscious and unconvincing one-of a mercantile society's well-known and often belabored shortcomings. Tournier intended some satirical comment on civilization's defects, of course, or why else so pointedly rewrite a tract in which the Western world is praised? What gradually dawns on the surprised reader is that the author has accomplished much more. As a 20th century author, Tournier is concerned with Defoe's implicit but largely unexplored theme, the development of a mind in isolation. With a winning blend of Parisian...