Day of the Outlaw (1959, Andre De Toth) (Patreon)

67/100

Arguably too complex for its own good, in that it made me hungry for a full-bore art film that 1959 Hollywood (even in the form of Philip Yordan's UA shingle, Security Pictures) couldn't realistically deliver. This is a "problem" that I'm likewise experiencing as I revisit Boetticher's oeuvre—films that are often just thorny enough to make me wish they were less beholden to genre templates. That's just the nature of classic auteurism, I suppose. Anyway, the initial setup here, with Robert Ryan's cattleman deploying a minor fence-related skirmish as a convenient excuse to kill the husband of the woman he loves (Tina Louise, strong enough to expel all memory of Ginger), while she basically pleads with him to wreck her marriage the traditional way, establishes a dynamic that I was quite excited to see explored at length. Then comes that magnificent tracking shot following the bottle as it rolls along the bar, only to be interrupted by surprise villain Burl Ives before it can hit the floor and unleash mayhem. This intrusion creates a broad moral spectrum, from pure sadists like Tex and Pace to sensitive new kid Gene ("He's a fresh recruit, but he's learning fast"), with Starrett and Bruhn battling contradictory impulses in the middle. The intensity never lets up, and few films of that era boast a setpiece as uncomfortable to watch as is Outlaw's Saturday night "dance," which skirts as close to symbolic rape as the Hays Code then allowed. And just when I’d thought the film had forgotten about Starrett's illicit desire, he chooses to suppress that longing in the most irrevocable way possible, persuading Bruhn and Gene to join him in honorable sacrifice (though Bruhn's a goner regardless). 

Thing is, though, that joint decision effectively concludes every character's emotional journey. Heading into near-certain death for the sake of Bitters' women and children (with Starrett and Gene specifically thinking of Helen and Ernine, respectively, alongside a redemption angle for all three men) represents a culmination; what actually happens along Starrett's imaginary "way" through the mountains is fundamentally irrelevant, and arguably better unseen. Granted, the somewhat inconclusive arthouse ending I'm demanding would deprive us of De Toth's formidable skill in staging arduous treks (see also Play Dirty), as well as some spectacular snowy vistas. But Day of the Outlaw's finale felt largely superfluous to me, playing mostly like a frozen Sierra Madre riff (with one dude who doesn't care about the gold). Ably executed, to be sure, and plenty enjoyable for its own sake—Tex's fate deftly sidesteps our expectations—but the movie was already more or less over in my own head, as I'd mistakenly assumed, on the basis of how satisfying it would be and how comparatively cheesy the alternative would be, that nobody who leaves town would survive. That the two quasi-redeemable characters do make it back to Bitters makes their ostensible altruism less meaningful, and it's downright weird that the film simply ends there without in any way addressing what Starrett's return signifies vis-à-vis Helen and her husband. We're meant to accept his earlier remarks on the subject (made when he thought he was committing gallant suicide) as still applicable, I guess—won't be a problem anymore, even though he's still around. Again, I acknowledge that it's in a sense unfair to expect something less neatly bow-tied from this period in cinema history: "Why isn't this a Kelly Reichardt film?" Just as getting close but not close enough to representing the human form creates an uncanny-valley effect, though, near-complexity can be uniquely frustrating.