Budd Boetticher | One Mysterious Night | The Bullfighter and the Lady | Horizons West | The Killer Is Loose | The Tall T | Maverick: War of the Silver Kings | Maverick: Point Blank | Maverick: According to Hoyle | Buchanan Rides Alone | Ride Lonesome | Westbound | Comanche Station | The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond | The Rifleman: Stopover

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Budd Boetticher

Budd Boetticher directed many Hollywood films. He is famous for his Westerns, and for three films he made about bullfighters. He worked steadily in film and television (1944 - 1961), then made a handful of films later.

Some common visual style aspects of Boetticher's films:

Imagery: Technology: Geometry: Characters: Clothes and props: Not all of these are in every Boetticher film.

One Mysterious Night

One Mysterious Night (1944) is Boetticher's first feature (or at least the first one where he gets onscreen credit). It is part of the long running series of Boston Blackie films, about a reformed thief who tries to track down crooks. Like most such Hollywood series, it has quite a bit of comedy, and is low budget and short - just over an hour. The title has little to do with the actual movie: much of the action takes place during the day, and certainly transpires over more than a 12 hour period! Like most Hollywood crime series films, One Mysterious Night is definitely NOT a film noir, a movement then gathering steam in Hollywood. It does not resemble film noir, in either style or content.

Boston Blackie is a master of disguise, like many sleuths. This is part of his characterization throughout the series. Boetticher includes plenty of disguise in One Mysterious Night. Disguise is used by the crook in The Killer Is Loose.

Camera Movement

The most notable feature of One Mysterious Night is the large amount of camera movement. In scene after scene, Boetticher's camera is swooping around.

The camera movements tend to have a left-to-right or right-to-left motion.

The movements often go from one side of the set to another, and then often back again, in the reverse direction - all in the same shot. Some shots, such as one in the inspector's office, or the shot after the shooting on the street, involve more than two movements back and forth across the set. Boetticher can follow characters, as they move back and forth from one side of the set to the other. Or he can simply have the camera explore the scene.

Sometimes, Boetticher uses simple pans to move back and forth across the set: the early shot of the police crossing the street to get into the hotel, the back-and-forth panning in the inspector's office. Other times, Boetticher can combine panning with tracking, as in the first shot in the Chinese restaurant, in which a back-and-forth pan seems to give way to tracking that follows the waiter.

Boetticher can use a slightly elevated angle for his pans and tracks, that reveals the layout of the sets, and makes clear the motion of his characters through it. The elevated angle is steepest in the scene near the end, in which Blackie and the police arrive at the crooks' hideout. He can also pan or track head-on, with a non-tilted camera.

Boetticher can also move his camera forward, often to frame his characters more tightly. This can occur alone, or as part of an otherwise panning-based sequence. More rarely, he can move his camera straight back a little, also to reframe.

Both at the apartment, and at the pawnshop, Boetticher includes camera movements that sweep behind walls of the sets, following the characters from room to room. These are relatively common in movies. Still, such shots can have a non-realistic quality, and are quite conspicuous. These do not seem like "invisible" camera movements. They were a form of "Hollywood magic" that might be noticeable even to naive audiences. These room-to-room tracks also move from left to right, and right to left, like most of the camera movement in One Mysterious Night.

There are also some vertical camera movements. Boetticher moves up from the police playing cards, to the crooks hidden above them, pretending to be tailor's dummies. And Boetticher moves straight up, following his heroes' attempt to escape from the Murphy bed.

Young Punks and Strong Decent Women

The young hotel assistant manager who is involved with the theft seems to be the first of the no-good young man characters who get involved with crime, and who wind up dead, caught in the crosshairs of intrigue involving older, tougher and smarter men: see Buchanan Rides Alone. This is a common Boetticher character type.

The women, who work on terms of equality in a man's world, anticipate the later women in Boetticher's Westerns. The emotionally strong switchboard operator, and her brother, the weak-kneed punk who gets involved in the robbery, anticipate the strong decent woman-lesser crooked male husband and wife of Seven Men From Now.

Male Groups

In later Boetticher films, crooks often have entourages, young men who largely dress alike. Although they are not crooks, or followers of a leader, One Mysterious Night has some striking male groups. One Mysterious Night opens with police walking in a V-wedge on a city street. They seem ominous, a tough looking, all-uniformed group. We only gradually learn they are on the way to guard a jewel exhibit. A later scene with the police in the pawnshop, has all the policemen carrying nightsticks. This adds a striking visual note.

A group of reporters hang out at police headquarters gathering crime news. They are dressed in similar suits, that are well groomed, but which have a working-man feel to them.

The police Inspector Farraday and Blackie have a close relationship. The dialogue refers to it as "a beautiful friendship". This phrase has overtones of special male bonding. It is used in this sense in Ellery Queen's mystery novel The Dragon's Teeth (1939) (Chapter 1), and at the end of the film Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1941). Farraday keeps threatening Blackie with arrest, something which Blackie makes clear he enjoys, in dialogue at the end of the film. It is part of the men's duel of wits, a game they play.

Dialogue emphasizes the close bond between Blackie and his assistant Runt, characters who are familiar from previous Boston Blackie movies. Not only do the two men work together, but they sleep together in the same room. They are together 24 hours a day. Sleeping scenes run through later Boetticher, often showing people sleeping in a group. After this dialogue about sleep early in the film, later we see Blackie and Runt sleeping in bed together.

A Working Class Film

One Mysterious Night is unusual among series crime films in that everyone in it seems so working class. Men stay in suits throughout the film: there are no evening clothes, which were de rigeur in many crime series movies. The cop uniforms are standard, if sharp, and there are no motorcycle cops or fancy police uniforms that run through other entries in the Boston Blackie series. These look like regular working cops, and they talk with each other about how tiring their work shifts are. Both of the female leads are conspicuously working women: a switchboard operator, and a reporter, the only female among the otherwise all-male crime reporters. There are other female switchboard operators who work with the heroine, and a woman who runs a cigar stand in the hotel. There is also a dignified Chinese waiter in a Chinese restaurant, who is seen briefly. Even the relatively affluent patrons of the restaurant, and visitors to the jewel exhibit, are firmly middle class people in suits and ties, not the rich society people who so often show up in Hollywood movie series.

Some earlier episodes of Boston Blackie had bits of left-wing politics. Confessions of Boston Blackie (Edward Dmytryk, 1941) talks about Boston Blackie stealing pearls from the rich, and handing them out to people on bread lines. One wonders if the relentlessly working class nature of One Mysterious Night is designed to make it a "proletarian film".

The jewel exhibit is to raise money for the war effort of the United Nations, a favorite term among left wingers to refer to the Allies as a group (this is not what we today think of as the UN, which had not yet been formed.)

Blackie himself is working for a tool manufacturing company. He is depicted as a "businessman", so the film is not anti-business.

Leather Jacket

Many Hollywood films, especially musicals, have the hero in ordinary clothes at the start, and get him increasingly dressed up through the course of the film, ending with the hero in evening clothes. Boetticher's One Mysterious Night (1944) takes a parallel but different approach. Blackie wears a suit in most of the film, but disguises himself as a uniformed messenger in a leather jacket at the end. The leather jacket is glamorous, like the evening clothes of a conventional film: but it is also distinctly working class looking.

The anonymous costume designer of One Mysterious Night must have liked the look, because a very similar leather jacket is worn by guest star Steve Cochran in Boston Blackie's Rendezvous (Arthur Dreifuss, 1945). Both jackets have a series of button fastenings up the front, and diagonal pockets; neither has any zippers.

Leather jackets were just becoming popular for men in this era, and One Mysterious Night (1944) is one of the earliest films known to me where it is worn as a fashion statement (as opposed to occasional jackets worn by cab drivers, pilots, fisherman, etc.). They will recur in:

They are largely worn by tough working class good guys on the edge of the law, like Boston Blackie himself. There are hints in most of these films that there is something exciting and not quite respectable about men wearing such jackets - which probably made them more popular than ever in real life. Blackie is a reformed crook, the heroes of Railroaded! and 99 River Street are innocent but tough working men falsely accused of crimes, the hero of The Street With No Name is a government agent going undercover as a crook in a gang, etc. They are worn by high-powered criminals in the Raoul Walsh films.

The police of various cities wear them in:

They are followed by the black leather jackets of LAPD cops in: Jeffrey Hunter's firefighter wears a leather jacket as part of his US Forest Service uniform in Red Skies of Montana (Joseph M. Newman, 1952), and rides a motorcycle.

Villainous-but-glamorous bikers wear them in Thérèse Raquin (Marcel Carné, 1953) and The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1954), films which cemented a sexy bad boy image for men in leather jackets.

Revolving Poles

One Mysterious Night opens with a strange figure of style. A static street sign suddenly begins to revolve, then sinks down out of sight. I have never seen anything like this in any other film. It is really cool. It is a non-naturalistic effect, something that "stylizes" reality.

The street sign is on a large crossroads-style pole. And it gives way to a street scene that soon will be full of police, in striking formation. There are two other images in the film that also combine poles, revolving objects, and glamorized police.

At the gem show, the crooks steal a kid's pinwheel. This is a revolving object on a tall, pole-like stick. A kind-hearted and handsome policeman tries to help the kids out.

At the pawnshop, the police carry really long, black nightsticks. Once again, these include some good looking cops, in spit and polish police uniforms. The police do not spin these nightsticks at the pawnshop.

But soon, in an alley, the crooks see and are scared by a giant shadow of a policeman. This shadow is indeed spinning his nightstick. It makes for an archetypal image of a policeman, gigantic, and with the pole-like nightstick in full rotary motion. This too is a figure of style, on the borders of non-naturalistic imagery.

Open Areas: Large Street Scenes and Rooms

Much of the action of One Mysterious Night takes place in large scale, open places. These include city streets, large exhibit rooms, the hotel assistant's large office, the pawnbroker's, and apartment living rooms. These open spaces, while purely urban, anticipate the large scale open landscape arenas of Boetticher's Westerns. They give plenty of room to stage action, have his characters move around, and allow sweeping camera movements with no obstructions.

Street scenes will recur in The Killer Is Loose and Buchanan Rides Alone, which also involve rapid movements of individuals along the streets.

Strange Shaped Spaces

Boetticher films often contain small, box-like spaces, which contain the characters. There are a few of these in One Mysterious Night, right at the start of Boetticher's career.

The newsstand at the hotel contains the woman who runs it.

The desk at the women's hotel contains the clerk.

The Chinese restaurant has a booth, built into the wall. Blackie and the switchboard operator have dinner there, seated inside the booth.

The woman reporter uses a phone booth.

At the end, the police ascend to the crooks' apartment through the hall staircase. This staircase is not shown through overhead or tilted angles, the way stairs are frequently (and gloriously) depicted in film noir. Boetticher instead uses a radically different approach. He shoots the upstairs hall and the staircase from the front. We see the hall, and we can see down the stairs, in a deep focus shot. Soon the staircase fills up with climbing policemen. The stairway forms a "box", a container for the men in it. This is one of Boetticher's boxes, three-dimensional spaces that contain people. And it is a strange shape: a hallway with a staircase leading down from it: a familiar sight, but actually geometrically quite odd and complex, once you come to think of it.

The fire escape down which the crooks flee is in a box shaped alley, tall and narrow. It connects with the rest of the world through a brick wall, joined at a non-90 degree angle. Boetticher will include more odd shaped alleys in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond: another giant "box". The alley in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond will also turn on a polygonal corner, rather than a 90 degree right angle. It too will feature a fire escape.

Blackie and his assistant get tied up by crooks, upside down on a Murphy bed. We see them hanging there, in the closet that contains the Murphy bed. In later Boetticher films, Rock Hudson will get tied up in Horizons West, and there are lots of captives in other Boetticher Westerns. Earlier, Blackie had been handcuffed to a chair at the police station by the inspector; and Blackie and the Inspector get tied up a third time, at the film's climax. Blackie himself uses handcuffs on his friend the police inspector, in the taxi.

Overhead Camera Angle

The Murphy bed scene includes an unusual overhead camera angle, something that will recur in later Boetticher films.

The Bullfighter and the Lady

The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951) is the first of three films Boetticher made about bullfighting.

There is a striking camera movement near the end, when the hero moves forward endlessly down the tunnel, on the way to the arena. He passes many other bullfighters. They are a Boetticher group of men dressed alike.

Soon, the matadors enter the arena, in a geometric procession.

There is a striking overhead pan, showing the car leaving the arena. This is one of several Boetticher shots from a steep overhead angle - at its start, at least.

Horizons West

Color

The great beauty of Horizons West (1953) as a color film can not be overemphasized. Both the clothes and the sets are richly colorful. The subtle colors make harmonies with each other. As in the musical, the Western offers a chance to escape into a different world, one in which every color is rich and vibrant. Whether it's Julie Adams' fiery red dress and headdress, or Rock Hudson's purple leather vest, the colors are at the center of visual interest at all times. They are the most important things on the screen at any moment. It is not individual colors alone, but their combination into color harmonies and compositions that is striking.

Civil Rights

Robert Ryan's gray underscores his pride in being a former Confederate officer, a pride the film constantly suggests is misplaced. Boetticher's films offer a consistently liberal commentary on Civil Rights, the most important political and social issue of their day. We see the US Army's prideful, disastrous attack on wronged Native Americans in Seminole, and the discrimination against the young Mexican hero of Buchanan Rides Alone. The fact that villainous Ryan is a product of the Confederacy suggests that there is something wrong with both.

Characters

It is fun to see Dennis Weaver in the role of Dandy, a flashily dressed henchman of Ryan's. Weaver is not the first actor who comes to mind when thinking of screen dudes, after all the naive types he's played on TV shows. But he really goes to town with this role. Boetticher has a fondness for villainous men whose pride causes them to be dressed to the teeth: see Legs Diamond, or the bad guys in Buchanan Rides Alone and Decision at Sundown. The gifted Weaver has appeared in lots of good movies. He starred in one of the best of all TV movies, Ishi: The Last of His Tribe (Robert Ellis Miller, 1978), and he also appeared in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) and Curtis Harrington's What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), both classics.

Horizons West is basically a gangster film, although it is set in the old West. Ryan's character rises to power through illegal means, just like a gangster in 1930's Chicago, and he has a group of henchmen who aid him in his task. As in many gangster films, we see the anguish of the honest family who love him, but who are opposed to his crooked ways. Robert Ryan resembles the later Legs Diamond. Both are well dressed smoothies who both charm and cheat their way to the top.

The Killer Is Loose

The Killer Is Loose (1956) is based on a short story of the same title "The Killer Is Loose" by John and Ward Hawkins, (The Saturday Evening Post, June 13, 1953). It is a fairly faithful adaptation, preserving the essential structure of the plot. The Saturday Evening Post was an enormously popular and prestigious market for fiction in this era, and it is not surprising to see a tale from it adapted for the movies. The story is reprinted in the anthology Best Detective Stories of the Year 1954 edited by David C. Cooke.

The Hawkins' story precedes Joseph Hayes' novel The Desperate Hours (1954), which Hayes made into a play (1955) and film (1955).

Boetticher Subjects

The Killer Is Loose anticipates Seven Men From Now, centering on a man trying to track down his wife's killers. Both men bear guilt for their wife's fate.

Poole the criminal is also an example of a Boetticher trickster character. He enjoys tricking the prison guards and Highway Patrol - although this is much more sinister than the cops tricked by Boston Blackie or Maverick. He uses disguise.

In several Boetticher films, the hero is solitary or has a single sidekick, and the villain has an entourage. In The Killer Is Loose this situation is reversed: the villain is conspicuously a man on the run alone, while the policeman hero has a large supporting team.

The murdered prison guard winds up dead in a ditch, like the victim shot dead in the stream in Comanche Station. This also recalls characters who get submerged in water troughs in The Tall T and Comanche Station.

The rain which engulfs the latter parts of the film, recalls the fog in Escape in the Fog, and the snow in Stopover.

The finale of characters walking around, being suspense targets for a possible shoot-out, anticipates Buchanan Rides Alone.

Cooking and Gender Roles

Much is made of the wife offering her husband and the other cops coffee, on the morning after the killer escapes. Coffee runs through Boetticher, with whole scenes built around it.

In the same scene, the wife and husband are shown cooking breakfast, anticipating the meal preparation in Stopover. While the wife is the primary cook, the husband is shown helping her with both the food, and setting the table. It forms a contrast to The Tall T and War of the Silver Kings, in which cooking is regarded by society as "woman's work", much to the resistance of the characters. As in War of the Silver Kings, the hero is conspicuously uninterested in the food which the heroine tries to provide for him.

The hero in The Killer Is Loose tries to distract the heroine from discussing serious issues, by helping with the cooking. It doesn't work! There is perhaps a suggestion, that by helping in the kitchen, the husband is trying to placate his wife, symbolically offering her support. The husband cooks in a purely voluntary manner, like the good guy men in Stopover, and utterly unlike the villain's henchman who has to be forced into it in The Tall T, who loudly regards it as woman's work.

Later, the villain Poole will force Mrs. Flanders to cook for him. This bad guy is insisting on traditional gender roles in the kitchen. The villains in The Tall T also force the heroine to cook for them, something which plainly makes her uncomfortable.

The bad guy is engulfed in the system of farming and food production. His whole prison escape, and later his passing through the Highway Patrol roadblock, centers on this.

We also see the little boy eating fruit, while watching television. He seems to be feeding himself, rather than having women do it for him.

Technology

The police use a wide range of technology in The Killer Is Loose, as they do in many other non-Boetticher films of the era. Technology also follows Boetticher traditions:

Box-Like Spaces Containing Men

Boetticher films often feature "strange-shaped spaces that contain men". The finale of The Killer Is Loose shows police concealed in box-like spaces all over the neighborhood: garages, trucks, etc. Most of the spaces are fairly simple in shape, however.

The truck cabins are also spaces containing the bad guy.

After the shooting of Poole's wife, Poole is discovered in a space in the corner, behind a chair.

Poles - and Rotating Elements

When the screen (for slides) in the police tech room is folded up, it has the shape of a tall pole, with the folded screen rotating on it.

The murderous hoe used by Poole, is another of the long poles in Boetticher.

Geometry

The hero looks at his bedroom clock in the middle of the night. The clock is hexagonal, like the watch the heroine looks at at the start of Escape in the Fog.

The heroine and hero's kitchen is purely rectilinear, with wallpaper covered in large squares. Boetticher shoots it frontally, which emphasizes this, during the "making the breakfast" scene. The screen becomes a pleasing series of rectilinear regions.

The wall map of the city is divided up into numerous polygonal regions. It adds a striking jigsaw quality to the scenes shot in front of it. There is also a circle on the map, showing a radius where the missing man might be. In this scene, the hero's head is framed by one of the polygonal regions, while his assistant's (Michael Pate) head is located at the join of several line segments on the map. It is standard classical Hollywood procedure to frame characters against regions of the background. Boetticher is following this tradition, but taking advantage of his highly unusual polygonal map to offer a striking variant example of such a composition.

At the Flanders home, Poole is shot in front of wallpaper covered with numerous small squares.

The Flanders house is on a curved road.

Clothes

Boetticher's fondness for leather clothes continues: The policemen in spiffy trenchcoats are also examples of that Boetticher image, a group of men dressed alike. The coats are conspicuously light-colored: examples of the shared colors in clothes that runs through Boetticher.

The uniformed cop Denny is dumb, and does comedy relief. He recalls the equally none-too-swift uniformed cops who get bamboozled by the bad guys in the pawnshop in One Mysterious Night.

The Tall T

Composition

Boetticher's compositions show his predilections for bold, purely geometric patterns. One shot depicts Randolph Scott crouching down and talking, against a landscape background. His thighs make a V pattern. The lines of the V are directly continued in the landscape. On the right of Scott there is an unusual rock formation. Both parts of it exactly match the line of his thigh. Such compositions made up of continued lines are an important part of design in traditional European oil painting. The formation has a spherical boulder on its top. This too is a pure geometric figure. Boetticher's interest in bold geometric figures recalls Sternberg.

An overhead shot of the station shows its architecture as a series of rectilinear forms. The sides of the rectangles are parallel to the frames of the screen.

The Boss as Trickster

The ranch owner Tenvoorde (pronounced "Ten forty") is Scott's former employer. He recalls such trickster figures as Maverick and Legs Diamond. He doesn't look like these handsome types, being plain, middle-aged and conventionally business-like. But he is just as full of sly gambles and schemes. He keeps luring the hero into bad bets. His purpose is to get the hero to come back to work for him.

The ranch owner wants Scott to be his #2 again. In this, he wants Scott to become like Abe Carbo in Buchanan Rides Alone. It also resembles the rich town boss in War of the Silver Kings, trying to hire Maverick as his lieutenant. Just like Maverick, Scott resists. Scott is not smart enough to stay out of the boss' gambles - and maybe he even enjoys being caught in his net. But Scott has the determination, to avoid going back to work for his old boss again.

The Hero as Deadly Trickster

Scott becomes a trickster himself, in the far more deadly and serious encounter with Billy Jack. Scott sets up a sex killing, just like the sexual manipulations performed by Legs Diamond. The fact that this is a matter of life and death, disguises a bit how sleazy such manipulations are. Legs Diamond does such things for power, as do the characters in Point Blank. But Scott does them to survive, which balances out the moral equation.

The actual shooting of Billy Jack, is staged with sexual symbolism. The rifle is positioned like a phallic symbol, and it looks as if the two men are having a sexual encounter. The rifle perhaps becomes another of the long poles in Boetticher.

Billy Jack is the main character in leather clothes in The Tall T, wearing a spectacular pair of chaps that call attention to his body. Earlier we saw Scott's difficulties in getting his black leather boots on.

Spaces

The Tall T involves a number of spaces, box-like areas that contain the characters. Such spaces are a Boetticher tradition: The depot has a covered porch in front, like the ranch to come in Stopover.

The Entry into Town

Scott's ride into town near the start is beautifully staged. The camera tracks along with him. We see many other people in the street, also in motion, that counterpoints that of Scott and the camera. Some of these are moving strictly parallel to Scott. But a horse cart moves across his path at exactly a 90 degree angle. Everyone's motion is staged along a strictly rectilinear grid. It is quite beautiful.

The motion of the cart, at a right angle, anticipates such moving characters in the famed opening camera movement of Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).

Soon, Boetticher stages a nice tracking shot, sticking closely to the hero and Rintoon as they cross the street.

Gender

The heroine is hated by her father, because he is not the boy he wanted. She has spent her whole life, being part of an ambiguous gender situation.

The villains force her into a traditional female task, cooking. She can do it - but it is clearly not at the center of her life. The chief bad guy (Richard Boone) later forces Billy Jack to help her with the cooking, despite his assertions that it's "women's work". Cooking was indeed strongly associated with gender in 1950's America: the number one such activity, after child rearing.

In War of the Silver Kings, the main female character throws herself at hero Maverick, giving a speech saying that education in women is not important. Maverick is completely non-interested in her. She emphasizes her skill with cooking throughout the film, showing she is good at what was viewed then as the traditional female role, even if she has no education. The film does not comment: it neither endorses nor condemns her idea. But she raises no interest in the hero Maverick whatsoever.

The heroine of The Tall T is far less proficient at cooking: we see her having trouble picking up a hot coffee pot. But she interests the hero very much. This is the opposite of the situation in War of the Silver Kings.

Such gender issues are treated with the same spectacular story telling efficiency as everything else in Boetticher and Kennedy. They whiz by so fast, one hardly notices they are there. But they form a subplot running through The Tall T.

The Title

A silly note: despite careful watching of this film, I can't figure out why it is called The Tall T. It's a good name, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plot. (I've since learned this title was reportedly slapped on the film after it was finished by a producer - and that Boetticher and Burt Kennedy were just as bewildered as I was!)

Maverick: War of the Silver Kings

War of the Silver Kings (1957) is the first of three episodes of the TV series Maverick Boetticher directed, and the pilot for the series. It is the most substantial and enjoyable of the three.

Politics

War of the Silver Kings shows the hero reforming and cleaning up a Western town. It is related to such Scott Westerns as Decision at Sundown and Buchanan Rides Alone. All three contain political allegories, suggesting opposition to political dictatorship.

However, War of the Silver Kings is unusually political. It does not restrict itself to allegory, or Western conventions of "the stranger cleaning up the town". It actually delves into the politics and economics of the town, in a detailed, and highly liberal way. American television of the era actually seems to have been sometimes quite remarkably politically liberal. One can compare the TV shows of Joseph H. Lewis, which are also explicitly political.

War of the Silver Kings is also different from the Scott films, in that the hero never uses violence to achieve any goals, not even in self-defense. He is an entirely non-violent hero. However, he never uses Gandhian non-violent mass protest, either.

The Hero: A Sly Smoothie

Bret Maverick is a character who first appears in the three Maverick episodes Boetticher directed. So Boetticher presumably played a role shaping the character.

Slick, sly handsome smoothies like Maverick are more typically villains in Boetticher. We are used to Legs Diamond, who is in many ways a nasty person, despite the character's deceptive leading man charm. Maverick has all of Legs' good looks and skill as a con man. But Maverick uses his talents entirely on the side of good.

Maverick's story snowballs, just as Legs' does, but always in a benevolent direction. Both characters eventually become hugely prominent. While Maverick is successful at his goals in the other two Boetticher episodes, he does not achieve this sort of huge worldly success in them. His rise in War of the Silver Kings is similar in scale to that of Legs Diamond's, or Robert Ryan's in Horizons West.

At the end of the tale, Maverick turns down a chance to be the town boss' lieutenant, running things in Echo Springs. This is exactly the role played by Abe Carbo in Buchanan Rides Alone to come. Maverick has some interesting dialogue, explaining why this would be bad for the town. In the later film, Boetticher will show the real waste of Carbo's impressive abilities, running his dreadful burg.

Maverick is dressed like the town boss in Decision at Sundown: suit, frilled shirt, fancy vest. The town boss in Decision at Sundown is a bad guy, but not entirely bad, and a source of energy. This kind of character is now using his talents for good, in the form of Maverick.

Male Bonding

War of the Silver Kings is perhaps unusual, in that it does not show a romance between the hero Maverick and the heroine. Instead, while she has a crush on him, he does not reciprocate.

Instead, Maverick develops an on-going, male bonding relationship with saloon keeper Big Mike (the ultra-macho Leo Gordon). In some ways, this might - or might not - be viewed as a gay relationship.

The great bulk of the Maverick TV series, after Boetticher left after three episodes, portrays its heroes as heterosexual. There is often a romantic encounter between the hero and a pretty guest star. The series as a whole is notably "straight".

The Barbershop: Symbolism, Lines and Revolving Objects

The barbershop scene is full of what can be read as homoerotic symbolism. Perhaps the gun and the shaving brush are related to Boetticher's pole imagery. They are closely followed by the revolving barbershop chair. Poles and revolving objects are part of this "suite" of Boetticher imagery.

At the end, the crowd is carrying clubs, and Big Mike is holding a shovel, to be used as a weapon. These are also poles used by men in a group. The shovel recalls the hoe also used as a weapon by the convict in The Killer Is Loose.

Crowded Sleep

Maverick wakes up after the attack, to find himself in a strange bedroom. The woman taking care of him promptly crowds him, zooming in on his sleeping space. This is milked for humor. Later, in Stopover, young Mark will have to share his now crowded bedroom with a visiting woman, also causing him embarrassment, as well as excitement.

Media

The hero wages a publicity campaign in the town newspaper. The police ran a publicity campaign about their manhunt in The Killer Is Loose, using television.

The giant diagram of the mine, in the courtroom, recalls the giant wall map in The Killer Is Loose.

Camera Movement

There is a striking long take camera movement, showing people waiting around the saloon on election night. The camera travels all over the room, stopping to focus on one group after another.

The election writing above the bar, recall the signs there for the boss' wedding celebration in Decision at Sundown.

Overhead Shots

When Maverick exits on the street, there is an overhead angle, showing him, the street and the building facade. Soon this is turned into the Point of View of the villain watching him from an upper story window across the street.

Geometry

The town boss wears a fancy tie pin. It consists of a circle of small jewels. These resemble the circle of pin heads on the map in The Killer Is Loose. That map was covered with polygonal lines. The town boss' vest and elaborate collar are also full of polygonal lines and shapes.

Maverick: Point Blank

Point Blank (1957) is the second of three episodes of the TV series Maverick Boetticher directed. This script was reportedly intended to be the pilot of the series. But it was actually shot and broadcast second, after War of the Silver Kings, also directed by Boetticher.

Twisty Relationships

Many of the Scott Westerns feature sexual tension among many men, centering on a beautiful woman. Point Blank is perhaps related, with similar tension over the heroine. But its heroine is a schemer, not an innocent female like those in the Scott films.

Both the heroine and hero Maverick wind up manipulating and playing games with people's lives, like the con-man Legs in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. The games become quite intricate. As in that film, the games involve people's love lives, but are used to gain power in monetary situations.

Some male bonding takes place between the Sheriff and Maverick, who are rivals for the heroine. As in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, sometimes this relationship between men takes precedence over those between the hero and a woman. The hero-woman relationship is twisted and manipulated, to strengthen the male-male tie.

The Hero's Rise - and the Sheriff

Maverick starts out in trouble. But gradually he becomes more successful in the town. This rise is enjoyable to watch. It is more fun than the crime-heroine main plot of the show. It frequently seems to involve Maverick's relationship with the Sheriff.

In some ways, the Sheriff and hero Maverick, are the Boetticher pair of authority figure and reforming crook. The Sheriff makes great show of locking the hero up in jail, and ordering him about. Such attentions often come from the authority figure, but they are often a bit tongue-in-cheek. The Sheriff also gives Maverick support when it counts, like other seemingly stern authority figures. Maverick's "reforming crookedness" is very mild compared to other such Boetticher characters, though: he is a two-bit, non-violent con man, who only runs a dodge when he is hungry.

The Sheriff (Richard Garland) wears a leather vest, making him another Boetticher man dressed in leather. He also has a conspicuous Sheriff's star on it. His deputy is also dressed in a similar leather vest.

Treasure

Point Blank is another Boetticher film, in which intrigue over a treasure is a mainspring of the plot.

Strange Shaped Spaces

There are no strictly box-like areas containing the characters in Point Blank. But there are a few strange-shaped spaces:

Streets

The town street is featured in a number of shots, which often use camera movement. One beautiful shot shows Maverick being ridden out of town. A pan goes by much of the complex, angled architecture of the town buildings.

An earlier shot follows the heroine from the saloon to the bank.

Maverick: According to Hoyle

According to Hoyle (1957) is the last of the three episodes of the TV series Maverick Boetticher directed. It is probably the least interesting of the three.

Links to Boetticher's previous Maverick episodes

According to Hoyle draws on plot ideas of the previous two Boetticher episodes. Like Point Blank, it features a fascinating, sweet acting but manipulative woman, who is up to various schemes. In both, Maverick treats her actions and motivations as a mystery he is trying to solve. However, there are no romantic games in According to Hoyle, unlike Point Blank. In fact there is no romance of any sort in According to Hoyle.

Also like Point Blank, Maverick's skill with poker is featured, specifically, his ability to detect gambling fraud. However, while both Point Blank and War of the Silver Kings open with poker scenes, and then convert to general, non-poker tales, According to Hoyle concentrates on gambling throughout. Perhaps this is a reason I like it less than the other two episodes: gambling just doesn't seem to be that substantial or interesting a subject.

Like War of the Silver Kings, According to Hoyle has a second half, in which Maverick cleans up a crook-run town. His approach also recalls War of the Silver Kings. (SPOILERS) He opens a business that rivals the villain's, one that is more honest, and he distributes literature to advertise it and its honesty. He leads a full scale revolt, something that goes farther than War of the Silver Kings. This finale has political overtones.

The plot events in the second half of are shorter and simpler than those in War of the Silver Kings. They also do not show Maverick rising to prominence, as he did in the earlier show.

The character of Big Mike returns from War of the Silver Kings, once again as Maverick's friend. However, the film takes their friendship as a given, and male bonding is not featured in any substantial way in the plot of According to Hoyle.

Camera Movement

There is a well done, long take camera movement in the casino. It opens with a sign on the wall (recalling Decision at Sundown), and then tracks around, to pick up various characters. It recalls the election night track in War of the Silver Kings. Both tracks have a stop-and-start quality, moving around to various groups in an interior.

Overhead Shots

When Maverick has his confrontation on the street with the villain's henchmen, Boetticher uses an overhead view. It makes all the action very clear.

This crooked boss is indeed another Boetticher villain with an entourage.

Buchanan Rides Alone

A Gay Relationship

Buchanan Rides Alone can be seen as the queerest of Boetticher's Randolph Scott Westerns. Scott was gay in real life, but usually played straight characters on screen. Here, however, he has what is essentially a love relationship with the noble young Mexican, Juan. Both men are instinctively attracted to each other, and they remain loyal and true throughout the rest of the movie.

Abe Carbo: Talent and Waste

Abe Carbo (played by Craig Stevens) is vastly classier than anyone else in Agry Town. As manager of the Judge's estates, he is clearly a much more intelligent and able person than the Agry family, or the other sleazy denizens. He is also the only person in town who is well dressed. He is clearly a person that could have a success in the big world. Unfortunately, he has built his career on these crooks, and is deeply corrupt himself. He recalls the Robert Ryan character in Horizons West, Legs Diamond, and other elegant men in Boetticher who are ambitious crooks. There is also an element of pathos to him. Boetticher's other villains become big wheels, at least temporarily before their inevitable downfall, but Carbo's only reward is to become boss of Agry Town. It is such a two bit little place. There is an element of satire, suggesting that many of the worldly goals toward which we work are pathetically minor and unworthy of our abilities.

Staging: Varied Use of the Sets

The staging in Buchanan Rides Alone shows great respect for real space. The main town area is one huge set, and it is easy to figure out where we are in it at all times. Boetticher often moves his camera around the town, making it clear exactly where everything is. He gets tremendous amount of visual variety from this one location.

Similarly, Boetticher uses great ingenuity with his interiors, photographing them from every possible angle and direction. The bar is used in repeated contexts. First it is the location of the killing. Later, the awful trial is staged there.

Ride Lonesome

The Opening: Boetticher approaches

Ride Lonesome (1959) shows a number of Boetticher's characteristic approaches in its opening.

Strange Shaped Spaces. Scott appears, riding through a narrow canyon or passage in the rocks. Later, at the station, he rests at night between the stagecoach wheel, and the passenger coach: an odd shaped, narrow space.

The heroine is introduced in the doorway of the station. The small doorway is just big enough to contain her.

Elevated camera angles, to show geometric layouts. The opening overhead shot of the canyon is a classic example.

Pans. Boetticher pans vertically in the ravine to follow Scott, then moves up and to the right, to reveal the bad guy. This is an outstandingly complex shot.

There are soon many other pans and occasional tracks to follow Boetticher's characters through the landscape. These are usually left-to-right or right-to-left, in the Boetticher tradition.

Leather clothes. The hero wears a buckskin shirt. He also wears a leather gun belt that is an exact match for the buckskin shirt, in terms of color. It is a fancy outfit, one whose bright color calls attention to it. The shirt looks like it is a bit hard and time consuming to put on or take off, like the stiffly buttoned-up leather jacket worn by the hero of One Mysterious Night.

Wind keeps blowing, ruffling the fringe on Scott's shirt. This calls further attention to the outfit.

Color coordinated clothes. The hero wears a reddish-brown shirt and gun belt: a color harmony. He is immediately contrasted to James Best's bad guy, who wears a green top. Soon, they are joined by two more men. Parnell Roberts' green shirt links him to Best: a color coordination between the two men's costumes, like the paired black outfits worn by the heroine and Adam West in Stopover. And Parnell's sidekick (James Coburn) is in a red shirt, that echoes Scott, although much less dressily.

Red and green color contrasts are found in Fritz Lang's color films, such as Rancho Notorious (1952) and The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959).

Handcuffs. Bounty hunter Scott is soon handcuffing crook Best. Best enjoys it, laughing, and urging Scott to put on the cuffs. It is a game the two men enjoy playing.

Crooks going straight. Parnell Roberts and his sidekick are crooks trying to reform, go straight, and get fixed with the law, hoping to win an amnesty. They recall Boston Blackie and his sidekick in One Mysterious Night, also reformed crooks turned detectives. Roberts is glib, comic and charming, also like Blackie. Scott has the role of "authority figure of the law" to them, a bit like the police Inspector in One Mysterious Night. Like the Inspector, he gives them a hard time through the film, then supports them at the end, where it counts. There are hints that Scott's seemingly harsh and demanding treatment of reforming crook Roberts is a game the two men are playing, just like the Inspector and Blackie - and one that both men are enjoying. Roberts seems to really like and admire Scott.

Thirsty men. Best offers Scott coffee, not altogether sincerely (it's a trap). Soon, the heroine is offering Scott coffee, for real.

Long poles. This is more gruesome in Ride Lonesome than elsewhere in Boetticher: the long spear is sticking out of the stagecoach driver's chest.

Later, a second spear will be thrust into the ground, as the start of the negotiation.

A burial - and a prayer that does not quite happen. Roberts and sidekick have to bury the victims of the stagecoach attack. They say it's a shame that no prayers are said over the internment. Boetticher has prayer scenes elsewhere: this is one that does not quite happen. The dialogue has comic overtones, common in Boetticher's communal prayer scenes.

Working class characters. Everyone in Ride Lonesome seems to be working for a living. They are all explicitly people without money - no big shots.

The villain's entourage. Villain James Best has four men in his entourage, hidden in the hills.

Action staged with tiny figures in long shot, embedded in a landscape. We see Best's four entourage members emerging one by one, in long shots. They are small figures in the rocky landscape.

Westbound

Curved Shapes

Boetticher shows a predilection for curvilinear forms. In Westbound (1959), there are numerous shots of winding roads through the California hills. The hills are curved, and the roads are complex 3D curved paths, running on curved hills, and themselves twisting and turning. Boetticher includes many stable shots, showing the stagecoach moving along the roads.

In The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), there is a restaurant with many curved arches. These low, wide arches are constantly kept in the background of the shots, adding to the composition. Other shots show the circular corrida itself. The arches seem parabolic; the angled shots of the corrida form an ellipse on the screen. This fondness for conic sections is a structural motif of the film.

Boetticher's Characters

Both The Bullfighter and the Lady and Westbound open with the hero trying to make friends with another man. In both cases, the friendship seems preparatory to the hero going into business with the new friend, or at least sharing a profession.

Boetticher characters often have entourages. These are bands of men who follow him around and support him. They are usually seated all around the character during our first meeting with him. They are in a subordinate position, either seated at his feet, or below him at the head of the table. Boetticher carefully composes the men in the entourage. They form a detailed geometric pattern. Their gestures and body postures exude arrogance. They are only tough because they are part of this team however: it is clear that without their leader they would be pretty two bit. It is only villains and second leads who have entourages - never the hero. And never rich, respectable characters. It is men who specialize in machismo who have the entourage. The men in the entourage also wear the same sort of clothes as the hero. It is not a uniform - the clothes are all varied - but they clearly all follow the same dress code.

Protagonists in Boetticher are often motivated by a hatred of routine work. This is often symbolized by farming, which probably requires the toughest effort of any profession. Robert Ryan in Horizons West (1953) and Michael Dante in Westbound both come to mind. Both end up dead, as does the gangster in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960). These are all characters who want a more adventurous life, but who reach too far.

Boetticher's characters are often tempted by women who are married to rich, somewhat older men. Sometimes these are former loves of the heroes. These women often look like the most expensive possessions of their wealthy husbands, all dolled up in elaborate clothes to match their husbands' fancy houses.

Comanche Station

Comanche Station (1960) is the last of the Boetticher-Kennedy Randolph Scott Westerns.

Camera Movement

Comanche Station is full of pans. They are largely slow and stately, following the slow progress of the riders through the Western landscape. They follow Boetticher traditions, in being: The film also has a number of tracking shots. These also tend to follow the characters' movements. They start out right in front of the column of moving riders, and gradually move towards the viewer along with the riders. The riders tend to be arrayed in a diagonal line in such shots, with the camera also moving back along this diagonal.

Strange Shaped Spaces

Comanche Station largely takes place outdoors, and there is little opportunity for the box-like spaces that often contain characters in Boetticher. But the trough into which Scott pushes the heroine to protect her during the Indian attack certainly qualifies. This trough is trapezoidal, making it exactly the sort of odd-shaped space that Boetticher loves. It is connected by an odd angled overflow arrangement to a square well, which further emphasizes the unique geometry of the construction. Like the alleys in One Mysterious Night and The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, this space is connected to the rest of the world through an angle that is not 90 degrees.

Much bigger than Boetticher's usual spaces are two fenced-in regions. One is at Comanche Station. The other is the front yard of the heroine's home, at the end. Both of the spaces are used to block off people, with people standing inside or outside of the fence also being separated in terms of the plot. Both regions look like pathetic attempts by humans to build something, in a huge, indifferent desert landscape.

Male Groups: The Indians

The Indians are largely seen as a male group, like the policemen in One Mysterious Night. The have special costumes marking them off as a group, like the police. And just as the police in One Mysterious Night were often linked to phallic symbols of poles and nightsticks, so are in the Indians in Comanche Station constantly associated with phallic symbols: spears, the rifle, arrows, standards, even the horned helmet worn by one man.

Male Groups: The Entourage

Dobey (Richard Rust) and Frank (Skip Homeier) are the entourage of the bad guy. In some ways, they are the sort of young punks that fall in with the villain, and come to a bad end: a common type in Boetticher films. But Dobey also has an idealistic side, that lifts him above this level. He and Frank also form the sympathetic male pair, that one found in Boston Blackie and Runt in One Mysterious Night. Like that pair, Dobey and Frank are shown sleeping near each other. Also like Boston Blackie, Dobey and Frank dress in leather, wearing sets of fancy chaps.

There is a comedy scene in which Dobey reads the stage coach schedule, with great difficulty. He is both pathetic in his lack of skill, and admirable in his persistence and determination to read. Boetticher will return to this subject, with the admiration he has for the schoolteacher in Stopover. This was the era just after Sputnik, when Americans became deeply concerned with improving educational levels. Both of these films reflect that milieu.

The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond

Strange Shaped Spaces

The hero of The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) shows an affinity for odd-shaped spaces. The hero shows a propensity for movement, in all of these spaces.

In the film's second shot, he moves under a gigantic, jutting portico on a city street, a cubical area jutting out at an odd angle. Soon, he is pushing his brother into a strange region behind a newsstand, out of the way of a robbers' shoot-out. Later, he will use a roof to commit a robbery. The strange trapezoidal skylight through which Legs descends is featured. And he will retrieve the jewels from his girlfriend's purse while in a curtained kitchenette. We also see Legs inside a grilled cage in the prison visiting room.

When he is waiting by the elevator at Rothstein's, he takes up a polygonally shaped angle of the room, different from the other henchmen. (Shades of Fritz Lang, who loved polygonal regions.) And soon Legs is inside the elevator, another space that is always shown from outside, making it look both more complex, and emphasizing its spatial, box like properties as a whole.

When going to kill henchman Moran on the fire escape, Boetticher gives an overhead view of the alley. The alley turns at a polygonal corner. The whole alley image forms an irregularly shaped, giant box. This is one of the most striking images in the film.

When attacking Jesse White, Legs emerges unexpectedly out of the dumb waiter, another unusual containing space. When Legs is shot and recuperating in bed, we see the cavity of the Murphy bed behind him - Legs is essentially in a different space from everyone else in the room - and an unusual one.

The Rifleman: Stopover

Stopover (1961) is a Boetticher Western about which nobody seems to know. It is the only episode of The Rifleman TV series directed by Boetticher. The show is around 25 minutes long, like most episodes of the series. Joseph H. Lewis directed 52 episodes of The Rifleman, many first rate. One wishes there were a similar huge body of Boetticher TV films.

An Ensemble: Meals, Drink, and Prayer

Like other Boetticher movies, Stopover is an ensemble piece, about a group of characters. Series regulars Lucas and his son Mark are less central here than they are in other Rifleman episodes. The meal, with six people around Lucas' table, is the biggest crowd I've ever seen at Lucas' ranch. Such a communal experience is typical of Boetticher.

Young Mark says Grace before the meal. Like the funeral prayers in Buchanan Rides Alone, this comments in a revealing, and slightly comic way, on the characters and the story.

People in Stopover are always drinking: coffee, liquor, water, medicine. Boetticher characters are really thirsty. One recalls the coffee always being served by women in Seven Men From Now, and the saloons in Decision at Sundown and Buchanan Rides Alone.

Boetticher Traditions: Links to Seven Men From Now

Stopover shows many typical Boetticher situations. It is about a group of people thrown together in isolated quarters, while traveling out West. A group that is riven by sexual tension over one sophisticated, strong woman in their midst. And by greed over an alleged treasure, and by tension between good guys and outlaws. And with trouble stirred up by a bitingly sarcastic man who knows how to push everyone's psychological hot buttons, by telling unpleasant truths. In short, it's right in the tradition of Seven Men From Now, The Tall T and Comanche Station.

However, there are big differences. There are no demons inside these characters, and no one who is essentially a gangster. This leads to a complete different resolution from any of the Ranown cycle of Westerns.

The casting of Adam West also subverts Boetticher traditions: maybe in a good way, and certainly in ways understood by the director. West is a man who oddly embodies class. He was ideally cast both as the heroic Batman and his secret identity, millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne. West has a gentlemanly, intellectual way of speaking, that serves his character here well. While tall, handsome smoothies like West tend to be corrupt gangster types in Boetticher - Robert Ryan in Horizons West, Craig Stevens in Buchanan Rides Alone, Legs Diamond - the noble West suggests something very different. West also reverses imagery and outcomes associated with Michael Dante in Westbound. And his back-story has links to some Randolph Scott characters in the Ranown films. Since much of the film is about the mystery of West's character, I will not say anything more or spoil the plot.

Sexual Ambiguity

The sarcastic man makes a big deal about how the heroine failed to arouse interest in Adam West's character during the stage coach ride, even though she flirted with him relentlessly. This leads to the question: is this character gay or straight? Later, the heroine and West become friends. But West's character never in fact expresses sexual interest in the heroine. There is no actual "signal of desire", to borrow a phrase from Andrew Sarris. This is in contrast to Lucas and Mark, both of whom show explicit, unmistakable signs of being attracted to the heroine sexually. West's character in fact remains ambiguous to the end of the show. Such ambiguity about male characters, not clearly shown to be gay or straight, is found elsewhere in Boetticher.

Color

This whole characterization and mystery of West is helped by the pure black clothes costume designer Robert B. Harris has for West. These were usually reserved for gunslingers and desperadoes, both on The Rifleman, and in Westerns generally. Later, West will sleep in Lucas' black leather chair, keeping to his color scheme. When West gets out of the chair, Boetticher gives us a close-up of the lower part of West's body, both front and back, highlighting many details of his costume.

The heroine is also in black clothes, something unusual for a Western, and which serves to link her to West. Such coordinated outfits in Boetticher are typically worn by an outlaw and his henchmen: all-male groups. Here, both West and the heroine are social outsiders. Are they bad people? That is part of the mystery of the show.

The whiteness of the snow that is everywhere is also striking. Boetticher gets a great deal of mileage out of it in his images.

Even though this film is in black and white, not color, Boetticher puts emphasis on colors that viewers can see, like the intense black of the costumes, and white of the snow.

Overhead Camera Angles

Boetticher includes two overhead angles showing the stagecoach outside the McCain ranch: one at the start of the show, the other near the end. I do not recall seeing such overhead angles at the ranch in any other episode of the series. Similarly, there is a high angle at one point inside the living room, also atypical.

Strange Shaped Spaces

At the beginning, there is talk when Mark nearly goes under a tilted ladder in the barn. This forms a triangular region, one of the "strange shaped spaces" one sees in Boetticher. These are large, oddly shaped, three-dimensional regions in which the characters move. Such spaces are part of Boetticher's visual style.

Mark sleeps behind a hanging blanket, through whose open bottom he can see the heroine disrobing (just her feet - this is a family show!). His half of the bedroom behind the blanket is a tight space in which he is placed.

West and Melford wind up standing on top of the stagecoach at the end. This recalls the way Legs Diamond is up near the skylight. A slanting barn roof is above them, creating another strange shaped space.

The overhead angles in front of the ranch emphasize the box-like nature of the porch: we see its roof and pillars that support it. The steep angle also makes the stagecoach look like a box. The overhead angle recalls the similar high angle on the box-like alley in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond.

Recommended Reading

Horizons West (1969) by Jim Kitses is a landmark study of the Western, focusing on the films of Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher and Sam Peckinpah.