The Ballad of Cable Hogue (USA, 1970) 121 min color DIR-PROD: Sam Peckinpah. SCR: John Crawford, Edmund Penney. MUSIC: Jerry Goldsmith, Richard Gillis. DOP: Lucien Ballard. CAST: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, Gene Evans, Kathleen Freeman, Victor Izay. (Warner Bros.)
Although Sam Peckinpah is best remembered today for his cinematic bloodbaths, his filmography also shows a gentler side, especially in this delightfully low-key “old man western”, made between The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs, the two films which ushered in the new cinema of violence. Ride the High Country, Junior Bonner and even The Wild Bunch portray macho men’s attempts to assimilate into the modern (ie – “civilized”) world. This film could be read as a “what if”, had Jason Robards’ character decided to settle down after all with Claudia Cardinale’s Jill at the end of Once Upon a Time in the West.
In the beginning of this movie, Robards as Cable Hogue is betrayed by his partners, and he is left to die in the desert. (We of course knew at the start they were no good, because they’re played by Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones!) In true capitalist fashion, Hogue discovers that there is water just underneath his fated resting place, and then decides to open a rest stop in that very spot, as it is the only place this far from civilization where travellers will be able to get water.
This ensemble movie has its share of oddball characters, none more than (it figures) David Warner, as a “fire and brimstone” priest who still chases everything in a skirt. This film is also noteworthy for featuring perhaps the strongest female character in all of Peckinpah’s movies. Granted, Stella Stevens’ role as Hildy, who settles down with Hogue, is of a prostitute, but it makes sense. They are both societal outcasts, so it is only natural that they would build a world together. The film is best in its outstanding final quarter, when the two varmints who ambushed him come back to his homestead wanting a piece of the action, because he’d never have discovered this waterhole if they hadn’t betrayed him in the first place! In this version of the Wild West, the villains also present their victims a bill for services rendered.