In 1955, John Wayne purchased the script for Seven Men From Now from first-time writer Burt Kennedy. He had originally planned to star, but he was locked into starring in The Searchers for John Ford and gave the role to Randolph Scott who then recommended Budd Boetticher to direct. Scott and Boetticher made six subsequent films together. Collectively these films are known as the Ranown Cycle (Ranown being the name of Scott’s production which is a mix of his first name and the last name of Harry Joe Brown who co-produced). The name is slightly misleading because Seven Men From Now was produced by Wayne’s company Batjac and the sixth film in the cycle, Westbound was made for Warner Bros. (Scott owed them a film) and was neither written by Burt Kennedy nor produced by Harry Joe Brown. Kennedy did write the other films, though, this too gets complicated. Buchanan Rides Alone began as a script from Charles Lang, but it was deemed unsuitable for film by Boetticher. Kennedy did extensive rewrites but because Lang’s wife was ill and needed the money Kennedy allowed him to keep his name on the film.
All of this is a little Inside baseball and none of it matters because every one of the films is terrific. A couple of years back the Criterion Channel had all seven films on their streaming service and I watched them all in order. Up to that point I’d never heard of the films, Budd Boetticher, or Randolph Scott. I now consider myself a big fan of every one of them.
I’d never call Randolph Scott the world’s greatest actor, but he inhabits a certain type of character – tall and lean, righteous and craggy, a tough man but with a good moral center – to perfection. He plays variations on the same character in all of these films. The scripts are morally ambiguous and ambitious in scope. Scott’s characters are never white-hat heroes and the antagonists are rarely black-hearted villains. The men and women in these films are just ordinary people trying to survive in a hard, vicious world.
The Criterion Collection is releasing a new boxed set of these films this week (well, they are releasing five of the seven films – The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station – the five that are truly and technically part of the Renown Cycle). Each film comes with new 4K restorations and the usual plethora of extras.
Also, out this week that looks interesting:
The Last of Us: The Complete First Season: This HBO series about a man (Pedro Pascal) and a girl (Bella Ramsey) trying to survive a post-apocalyptic zombie universe is one of my favorite series of the last several years.
Hugo (Arrow Video 4K UHD): This underrated Martin Scorsese film is a love letter to the earliest days of cinema. It also contains some of the best use of 3-D that I’ve ever seen in a cinema. Luckily for some of us, this 3-disk set from Arrow includes a 3-D transfer.
Fool’s Paradise (Lionsgate): Charlie Day wrote, directed, and stars in this comedy about a mute man who is asked to become a stand-in for a difficult method actor because they look exactly like each other.
Breathless (Criterion 4K UHD): Jean Luc Godard’s wonderful French New Wave classic gets the 4K treatment from Criterion.
Land of the Pharaohs (Warner Archive): Howard Hawks directed this historical drama about an architect who designs a pyramid for a self-absorbed pharaoh.
Gloria (Kino Lorber): John Cassavetes directed this drama about an ex-gun moll/showgirl suddenly forced to protect a kid whose parents have been rubbed out by the mob.
Audie Murphy Collection II (Kino Lorber): Audie Murphy was a war hero turned movie star. This collection includes three films: Sierra, Kansas Raiders, and Destry.
Michael (Kino Lorber): This silent film from Carl Theodor Dreyer about a painter who falls in love with one of his models is considered a landmark of gay cinema.
