3:10 to Yuma

 The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently performed an experiment. In one night we

·       Watched the movie 3:10 to Yuma (original 1957 version)

·       Watched 3:10 to Yuma (2007 remake)

·       Read Elmore Leonard’s short story

 

What we discovered was interesting. (Be forewarned. Spoilers abound.)

 

First, the 2007 movie is a remake of the 1957 original, not a re-visiting of the source material as the

Coen Brothers did with True Grit. The 2007 version tracks the 1957 version closely, particularly when it came to bits in the movie that weren’t in the book. The biggest difference is in the ending, and an expanded part for Dan Evans’s son, William.

 

Differences from the book that were in both movies:

·       The main characters’ names, though the same in both movies. The lawman in the story is named Paul Scallen; the movies use Dan Evans. The prisoner in the book is Jim Kidd; in the movies he’s Ben Wade. (I wonder if this had anything to do with a screenplay Leonard later wrote for Clint Eastwood, Joe Kidd.

·       Scallen’s a marshal who’s doing his job; both versions of Dan Evans portray him as a rancher down on his luck who takes the job because he needs the money. I think the story works better. Scallen has the same doubts and fears as Evans, but he makes sure Kidd gets on the train because it’s his job. There’s a dignity to that, just as much as the rancher risking his life to save the ranch.

·       Evans’s family play a much larger role in the films. In the remake, Evans’s son even tags along to enrich the plot. The primary role of the family scenes is to humanize Wade through his interactions with the wife and children. More on Wade’s character below.

·       The original film shows Wade to be ruthless but thoughtful. He kills one of his own in cold blood in order to create a shot at the stage driver who held a gun to his man’s head, which he also does in the remake.

·       Both films add extended backstory to show why Wade is wanted; Leonard’s story begins with him already in custody.

·      

The movies differ in how they leaven Wade’s character. In the original, he and the gang stop into town to misdirect the local marshal. The gang goes off and Wade seduces the barmaid. He treats her well by “two ships passing in the night” standards.

·       The remake goes adds two elements to Wade character. He’s a pretty good artist, given to sketching birds and a picture of Evans as he stands guard. He also makes it clear to young William that he (Wade) is just as bad as any of the rest of his gang, or he couldn’t lead them.

·       That last points out the biggest difference in the films: their eras. The 1957 version is what I call a “good haircut” Western. Everyone is well groomed, and the worst of their conduct is only hinted at. (Except for shooting people. American films have never had a problem with showing that.) The remake is of the modern revisionist school, much grittier, with villains who come across as ruthless as they would likely have been in 1880s Arizona.

·       The casting and acting in both are excellent. The original cast Van Heflin as Evans and Glenn Ford as Wade. No one was better than Heflin at playing the ordinary man carrying a burden. Ford plays Wade with an understated menace that is made more effective through its lack of histrionics. The remake had Christian Bale playing Evans, outstanding and believable as always; and Russell Crowe a Wade, displaying with ease the multiple facets of the personality this screenplay gives him. Who’s better? Depends on the style of acting you prefer. I like the less declamatory style, so I side with the 2007 edition, but both are excellent. A special shoutout to Ben Foster as 2007 Wade’s Number Two, Charlie Prince. I’m a Richard Jaeckel fan, but Foster provided a level of menace and insanity that helped drive the entire picture.

So which did I prefer better? The story is cleaner and far more straightforward, but it had the advantage of brevity. The movies need to provide an evening’s entertainment. I prefer the 2007 version, due to its revisionist elements and the bits that were added in getting Wade from Bisbee to Contention to catch the train, as they brought depth and realism to the story while exploring characters in more detail. The remake has a dramatically different ending (which I’ll not spoil) that I don’t have a good explanation for. I don’t think it makes the movie any worse or better. It’s just different.

We had a lot of fun doing this. A short story as source material made the process easier (I read it aloud to TBS after the viewings), but I see potential for a few nights a year with similar double features. True Grit. The Magnificent Seven. The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.  It’s a quick and entertaining way to study variations in storytelling, which is never a bad thing.

Band of Brothers

The Beloved Spouse and I watched Band of Brothers last weekend, cramming all ten episodes into three days. This is not recommended, watching as many as four episodes in a sitting; way too intense.

What I liked best about my initial viewing twelve years ago was the casting. Aside from David Schwimmer, I’d heard of none of them at the time. (That’s right, I didn’t catch Ron Livingston in Office Space until later.) Now that we know who a lot of the actors are from subsequent work, it’s fun to call out what we’ve seen them in since. (“The DOJ lawyer in Justified!” “Southland!” “That’s the guy who killed Phil Leotardi in The Sopranos!”) The first time, when everyone was new, the deaths of the characters were more affecting, as the viewer thought of them as the person, not the actor. The cumulative effect of feeling characters’ deaths more than actors’, along with not knowing who might be next, helped keep the suspense level high without resorting to melodrama.

On the other hand, it’s a war movie that doesn’t glorify war; a certain amount of melodrama is unavoidable. How it’s handled makes all the difference. A key scene takes place when Easy Company is returned to England for replacements and training after the Normandy invasion. Donald Malarkey stops by to pick up his laundry, and the English women who’s working there calls him back on his way out to ask if he can also take Lieutenant Meehan’s. We know Meehan’s plane was presumed lost over the English Channel. Rather than show some maudlin flashback, or look inside Malarkey’s mind, we see him pay her for the laundry, to spare her feelings. This leads to Malarkey picking up the laundry for half a dozen dead mates. The scene doesn’t linger any longer than necessary; the point has been made.

I haven’t seen The Pacific, but I can’t imagine the battle scenes can be done any better. Each scene is able to present a panorama that allows the viewer to know where he is, no matter the point of view. The rare exceptions are those times when the characters don’t know themselves. (TBS asked during the “Bastogne” episode, “How do they know where their own foxholes are?” Watching the soldiers’ reactions during an artillery attack, it’s clear they don’t, not precisely, and several are killed or badly wounded running around looking for a hole.) I didn’t hold the relative authenticity of the violence and its results against The Longest Day yesterday, but this ability to set place was available in 1962, as was shown by the wide shots of the attack on the Ouistreham casino.

The manner of conveying expository information is also far more seamless in Band of Brothers. Some of this is helped by the broader canvas afforded by an eleven-hour production. We pick up Easy Company in training, where scenes between recruits affords opportunities to show what’s going on, not tell. The writers also trust the intelligence of their audience more. This is a telling point, as most of their audience was not around for the Normandy invasion, while almost everyone who saw The Longest Day could tell you where they were when they heard about it.

Something else that struck me near the end of Band of Brothers occurred during Episode 9, when Easy Company discovers a concentration camp and I realized almost everyone with personal experience of the Holocaust is gone. This makes it more imperative than ever for their eyewitness accounts to remain in circulation. Holocaust deniers are bad enough now; they will only become emboldened when no one is left to directly refute their lies.

Watching Band of Brothers and The Longest Day back-to-back was an enlightening experience for me as a writer, though I’d recommend anyone who wants to try it watch The Longest Day first. The juxtaposition of different styles of storytelling and point of view will open your eyes to some things we may take for granted now. If you’ve seen neither, you owe it to yourself to do so. You’ll learn a lot more than just about writing.

The Longest Day

One of my proudest achievements as a father was introducing The Sole Heir to The Longest Day. It was Memorial Day weekend, 2003. She was twelve and I’d decided she needed to know a little more of what the holiday was about. She might like it, might not, but I thought it was important.

A year later was the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy landings, and the American Film Institute Silver Theater showed The Longest Day on a big screen, one show only, Sunday afternoon, June 6. There were fewer than thirty people there. We were two of them; she’d asked me to take her. The ticket taker, an elderly gentleman of probably Korean War vintage, motioned me over when TSH went to the ladies’ room.

“This is a good thing you’re doing, bringing your daughter like this.”

“It’s better than you know, buddy,” I said. “She asked to come.”

HDNet movies is showing The Longest Day in February, so I watched it again. A bittersweet viewing, as I made the mistake of watching it a few days after The Beloved Spouse and I binge watched Band of brothers over the previous weekend. As powerful as it is, The Longest Day doesn’t hold up to a comparison.

Leave aside the special effects, bloodless violence, and sanitary language. Those are the state of what moviemakers could do, and get away with, in 1962, and aren’t the problem, anyway. What doesn’t hold up are the things that could have been done better and had been done better at the time.

The first hour is basically an exposition dump, characters talking to other characters about things both of them already know, or pretending to speak to another character when they’re really speaking to the audience to make damn sure we get it. I could almost understand it today, nearly seventy years after the event, but almost everyone who saw the movie when it came out would have been familiar with the circumstances. It had happened only eighteen years in the past, well within their personal experience. Several of the key characters worked on the filming. This was not ancient history. Even if it had been, it could have been handled in a less ham-handed fashion than to have John Wayne tell a junior officer, “I don't think I have to remind you that this war has been going on for almost 5 years. Over half of Europe has been overrun and occupied. We're comparative newcomers. England's gone through a blitz with a knife at her throat since 1940. I'm quite sure that they, too, are impatient and itching to go. Do I make myself clear?” followed by, “Three million men penned up on this island all over England in staging areas like this. We're on the threshold of the most crucial day of our times. Three million men out there, keyed up, just waiting for that big step-off. We aren't exactly alone.” Please.

The other issue should probably qualify as forgivable under the caveat two paragraphs above—sign of the times—but it’s still jarring to see the upbeat music and spirit at the end. Deaths are shown, but glossed over, forgotten as soon as the camera moves away. Yes, it’s only one day and time is of the essence, but the only sign anyone feels something for a dead comrade is when Robert Mitchum sees Jeffrey Hunter shot while trying to blow up a roadblock. Even then he moves directly on to encouraging the next man. He has to, it’s not a big deal, but at least Mitchum does it with a little melancholy. One can sense his eyes wanting to drift back in the direction of Hunter’s body.

Maybe I would not have noticed these things so much had we not seen Band of Brothers so recently. Next time we’ll examine the differences.