Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 20 November

The Long Riders (Hill, 1980)

Back in 1979, United Artists were in production on two western movies at the same time. In Montana, Michael Cimino was shooting Heaven’s Gate while Georgia was standing in for mid-western Missouri and Minnesota on Walter Hill’s The Long Riders.

Heaven’s Gate was an out-of-control epic that would eventually sprawl to three and a half hours and bankrupt the studio amid scathing reviews. The Long Riders was a much more commercial hour and forty minutes and was the first western screened in competition at Cannes.

So, why is Heaven’s Gate now acknowledged as a masterpiece and The Long Riders all but forgotten?

One reason why The Long Riders has a diminished reputation is that it is the story of the James-Younger outlaw gang – a story that had already been told more than a dozen times on screen and that would eventually inspire the great The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

The neat trick of The Long Riders is that all the brothers in the story are played by real-life brothers: James and Stacy Keach play Jesse and Frank James; the Carradine brothers (David, Keith and Robert) play Cole, Jim and Bob Younger; Dennis and Randy Quaid are Ed and Clell Miller; and Christopher and (younger) brother Nicholas Guest are Charley and Robert Ford respectively.

The film was the brainchild of the Keaches, originally planned as off-Broadway musical of all things, and the Fords were going to be played by Beau and Jeff Bridges until Jeff signed on to make Heaven’s Gate (see above) and Beau decided that he hated the script.

The Keach brothers had written a draft of a script and would co-produce with the son of High Noon director Fred Zinnemann, Ted. Ted brought in the great action director Walter Hill who was hot after The Warriors became a smash hit.

The film follows the Civil War veteran bank and train robbers as they parlay their successes into something approaching fame (they were shielded effectively from the law by a community that thought of them as contemporary Robin Hoods) but eventually their greed and the approaching Pinkertons Detective Agency put an end to their adventures.

The film is stylish and well acted (as you might expect) and the action set-pieces are monuments to stunties and squibbs. Indeed, the final showdown with the law after they find the Northfield, Minnesota, bank job has been a setup, is particularly bloody.

The Long Riders is also notable for being the first film soundtrack by Ry Cooder, who would go on to collaborate with hill several more times. The music is spare and authentic and does a great job of setting the scene.

Watching the detailed ‘making of’ documentary that’s part of the “Directed by Walter Hill” box set from Imprint, I learned a couple of new things. Firstly, that Cole Younger and Frank James ended their days as a vaudeville act – a shabby version of the fame and fortune they had sought long before – and that Hill had taken on board top costuming advice from Raul Walsh: Always let the actors choose their own hats.

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Where to watch The Long Riders