Blue (USA, 1968) 113 min color DIR: Silvio Narizzano. PROD: Judd Bernard, Irwin Winkler. SCR: Meade Roberts and Ronald M. Cohen, based on a story by Cohen. MUSIC: Manos Hatzidakis. DOP: Stanley Cortez. CAST: Terence Stamp, Joanna Pettet, Karl Malden, Ricardo Montalban, Joe De Santis, Kevin Corcoran, Wes Bishop, Sally Kirkland, Peggy Lipton, Jerry Gatlin, Michael Nader. (Paramount Pictures)
Blue baffled most upon its initial release, and perhaps understandably, but time has been rather kind to this bizarre opus. Terence Stamp is the titular character, a gringo also referred to as “Azul” (the Mexican translation) by his surrogate father Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) who is a revolutionary leader. During another of his customary raids on the “Yanquis”, Blue shoots one of the bandidos who tries to have his way with the fetching Joanna Pettet. Her father (Karl Malden) is the doctor who nurses him back to health, and much to Ortega’s chagrin, Blue has rather adopted them as the next surrogate family. And despite the scorn Blue receives from the Yanqui settlers, they realize he is their greatest hope against Ortega’s impending revenge.
Casting a British actor as a cowboy is a bizarre choice, but this actually compliments the material. Stamp doesn’t completely hide his English accent, but however intentionally or not, this, plus his fair skin and bleached hair, adds to his character’s displacement from his surroundings. He is a man without a country: owing much to his American and Mexican heritage, yet similarly being ostracized from both. Stanley Cortez’s magnificent cinematography, often filming the characters as specks on landscape, with its saturated colours and wide vistas, further accentuates the otherworldly aspect of the scenario. The music by Manos Hatzidakis, with its thick Greek chords sounding unlike a traditional frontier score, are also evocative of a man from a different world.
This oddball film was a critic’s joke in 1968 (its director, Silvio Narizzano, had just completed Georgy Girl!), and while it doesn’t always work (for instance, Blue doesn’t speak for the first half of the film- a gimmick more contrived than symbolic), it is certainly interesting. There were many “existential cowboys” in the 1960s, perhaps none more than Blue.
The 1968 movie Fade In (also known on video as Iron Cowboy) was shot concurrently with Blue, on the same location, and yet features a separate story. Burt Reynolds and Barbara Loden star as two people working on the film Blue who start a romance. Some of Blue‘s cast members play themselves in various scenes about making the movie. Fade In (which did not have a theatrical release, but was later sold to a TV package) is an oddity like its sister film, and worth a look.