Rewriting the gendered territory of the Western
Introduction
“I ain’t like that no more.”
It can be argued that what makes up the defining image of the Western is not the physical setting but rather the figures that inhabit and in many ways mould it to their own image. That the majority of these figures are male and that their masculinity is constructed in such a way that it leaves little room for the female is something that has thankfully not gone unnoticed.
In 1964 Clint Eastwood reinvented his own on-screen persona as he moved away from television’s Rawhide and helped to carve a new figure into the Western landscape with Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollarsafter ten years of bit parts and six seasons of Rawhide Eastwood revitalised his career by taking a gamble on an Italian western and the rest is history. Over the next thirty years Eastwood became as much an American icon of the West as John Wayne had been before him, through films such as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Hang ‘Em High, High Plains Drifter and The Outlaw Josey Wales. At the time of writing Eastwood, despite his reputation as a Western star, had only made ten films in that genre. The last one was as decisive a movie as his first foray into the Western.
In 1992 Eastwood released his 16th film as a director; Unforgiven. Gone was the sure footed Eastwood that had been precedent in all of his Westerns right up to Pale Rider, the character of William Munny was getting old, could hardly stay on a horse or shoot straight – the ‘man with no name’ had become the man with no aim. Audiences were at first shocked by this new interpretation of Eastwood’s onscreen persona, coupled as it was with a reinvention of the West as well; in Unforgiven guns are liable to misfire, legends are built on lies and everything is wet, filthy or both. Despite these attacks on audience preconceptions (or perhaps because of them) Unforgiven became both a commercial and critical success winning four academy awards in 1992 including Best Picture and Director.
Martin Scorsese was asked why he had never directed a Western. He replied there was no point; the definitive western had already been made with Unforgiven. Yet in his 1996 study Westerns Lee Clark Mitchell states that
“Unforgiven is less revisionist than its 1990s audience assumed, adding little to the cinematic innovations introduced by Leone and Peckinpah a generation before (or by Ford, a generation earlier in turn).” (1)
This is a reading of the movie that is very hard to accept after multiple screenings of the film. It seems to me that Unforgiven not only adds to Peckinpah’s, Leone’s and Ford’s vision of the Western but also brings to a close the spectacle of the Western as retold in the twentieth century. Along the way it also manages to redefine the myth of the Western ‘hero’ and has a lot to say about the role of women in the genre yet still retains the beauty and violent power that have made Western’s such a staple part of American film history.
Origins: The William Munny Killings
The script for Unforgiven languished in Hollywood for some twenty years before Eastwood agreed to make the film; it had been shown to him years ago but he had rejected the piece as he didn’t feel old enough to play Munny – likewise Gene Hackman had also seen the script and passed it over until Eastwood persuaded him to take the role of Sherrif Little Bill Daggett.
I think it relevant to pause over the original working title of the movie at the beginning 1992: The William Munny Killings. As with 1976’s The Outlaw Josey Wales the title would have not only featured Eastwood’s character but also emphasised that character’s place in the film. Just as Josey Wales was defined by his ‘outlaw’ tag while struggling to do the correct thing so to is William Munny endeavouring to get out from under his reputation as a killer;
“Uncle Pete says you was the meanest goddamn son of a bitch alive. And if I wanted a partner for a killing you were the worst one. Meaning the best. On account as you’re as cold as snow and don’t have no weak nerve nor fear.” (2)
The original title just as its successor works on multiple levels. The killings that Munny commits in the past before the film even begins feature large throughout; as Munny himself says
“I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed just about every thing that walks or crawls.”
But the title also focuses on the killings that Munny will commit as the film unfolds – it seems obvious that in the hands of dime novelist W.W. Beauchamp what has occurred at Big Whiskey by the end of the movie will become known as The William Munny Killings, even the killing of Quick Mike actually carried out by the Schofield Kid will undoubtedly be accredited to Munny. As well as The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven has links with other Westerns, not least of which are The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Shootist and again Eastwood’s own Pale Rider. (3). This then was never intended to be a truly original story but rather a classic tale that an audience would be quick to respond to and have a series of preconceived ideas about. It is also a swansong for Eastwood’s role in the Western genre and one or two scenes are filmed with the intention of mirroring earlier Eastwood roles. For example, after Munny is beaten to the floor by Little Bill he crawls from the saloon and across the street in exactly the same manner as ‘Noname’ in A Fistful of Dollars. After the climatic shootout Beauchamp asks Munny about the order in which he killed the five men – this is not simply a reference to the earlier scene in which Little Bill had instructed Beauchamp on the art of gunfighting but also harks back to a scene in The Outlaw Josey Wales; Wales has just killed four soldiers and when asked by Chief Dan George about the order Eastwood gives him a lengthy insight regarding opponents’ eyes and holsters. Sixteen years later and Eastwood’s reply is far simpler:
“I was lucky in the order. I’m always lucky when it comes to killing folks.”
In Pale Rider an ability to kill has nothing to do with Eastwood’s character being ‘lucky’ but relies more on the Preacher being an instrument of divine retribution, literally answering the prayers of struggling miners. This had been Eastwood’s first Western since Josey Wales and in retrospect seems to be an attempt to mythologise even further not only Eastwood’s characterisation but also the genre’s love of ‘The Stranger’. Ultimately Pale Rider fails for borrowing a little too much from Shane and did little to breathe new life in the tired Western genre – audiences had seen a stranger ride into town and clean up once too often. It took seven years for Eastwood to have the confidence not only to return to the genre that made him a star but also to add something new to the canon that had spawned him.
The final title then of Unforgiven is slightly more ambiguous than its original moniker. It was obviously important to Eastwood and the writer (4) for them to chose it despite possible comparison and confusion with John Huston’s 1960 film The Unforgiven. William Munny, despite his best efforts, can not be forgiven for his deeds of the past and it is in this reading of the title that Munny’s wife features large in the plot despite her being dead even before the film opens.
The women’s role
“I can’t on account of my wife.”
Visually, the term ‘Western’ brings up a cascade of images; Monument Valley, a single stagecoach thundering across the screen pursued by ‘injuns’ or perhaps a ring of wagons themselves being encircled by the same, but out of these images some have achieved iconic status; the Ringo Kid, rifle held high halting the stage, Marshall Will Kane walking into the street as the clockhands near noon, Ethan Edward‘s silhouette framed in a doorway and of course a man with no name squinting into the camera as he chews on an unlit cheroot. Add to this fictional list those ‘real’ Western icons that have been revisited time and time again; Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and the Clantons, Buffalo Bill, Generals Lee, Grant and Custer, Sitting Bull, Geronimo… both lists can be added to but it is more difficult to add female icons to either list; perhaps Rio in The Outlaw or Calamity Jane but then perhaps their longevity has more to do with Doris Day’s performance in the musical and Jane Russell’s wardrobe than the genre’s tolerance of women.
Unforgiven is framed between two almost identical shots of Claudia Munny’s grave, situated under a tree next to the home that she and William built together. It is the spectre of the dead woman that hangs over Munny’s actions throughout. The opening shot is of Munny in silhouette digging the grave as the movie’s epigraph is written over the scene:
“She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have expected but of smallpox. That was 1878.”
That Munny’s past is recalled through the eyes of his dead wife’s mother is very telling; it would have been easy to create a collage of images and clippings as was done for the opening of John Wayne’s final movie The Shootist but this tale is keen to show itself as more than another masculine Western. By showing that at least one woman had believed in the goodness within William Munny it is possible for the audience to read between any possible headlines; thief and murderer he may have been but husband and father too.
Unforgiven manages to present real women rather than the stereotypes that the Hollywood Western was well known for. Rather than the kind of prostitute alluded to by Claire Trevor as Dallas in Stagecoach i.e. ‘the whore with a heart of gold’ we have the likes of Strawberry Alice and Silky who to Munny, Ned and the Kid are ‘whores with a bag of gold’.
Eastwood’s first Spaghetti Western had a noticeable lack of female stars, something that did not go unnoticed at the time of its release:
“After one screening, the owner of a chain of cinemas in Tuscany congratulated Bob Robertson (Sergio Leone):
I enjoyed your film a lot. Lots of new things. Bravo.
So you’ll take it then? enquired Leone.
No. It can’t possibly be a success, because there are no women in it.
Leone then tried to persuade the distributor that some of the most successful American Westerns (Gunfight at the OK Corral or High Noon) had been ruined by the Rhonda Flemings or Grace Kellys of this world:
Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be ‘had’ by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which is going on in your head, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the woman just holds up the story.” (5)
Unforgiven then does not banish women but does not use them as padding either; rather it is the female characters in the film who initiate the action but only after ‘male’ justice treats them like a commodity which even to a ‘whore’ is unacceptable. The exchange between Little Bill and the cut girl’s ‘employer’ Skinny Dubois is not about an assault or attempted murder at all:
Skinny: Here’s a contract between me and Delilah Fitzgerald, the cut whore. I brought her from Boston, paid all her expenses and all. I got a contract that represents an investment of capital.
Little Bill: Property.
Skinny: Damaged property. Like if I hamstrung one of their ponies.
The women in Big Whiskey are treated like ponies – each time we see them they seem to be corralled as such but the leader of the women, Alice, is not prepared to let this continue
“Just because we let them smelly fools ride us like horses doesn’t mean we let them brand us like horses. Maybe we ain’t nothing but whores, but, by God, we ain’t horses.”
That the women in Big Whiskey are prostitutes leaves no doubt in the audiences mind, after years of seeing ‘saloon girls’ waving from balconies or baring their underskirts as they climb the stairs followed by eager cowboys, we see one of the women ‘at work’ in the first scene. Unforgiven banishes forever the ideal of John Ford’s Dallas as Eastwood pays much attention to detail right down to Strawberry Alice quickly wiping herself clean before going to the aid of her friend. No metaphors are needed in Big Whiskey – the women are whores and worth no more than their ability to be used as such; “You think nobody’ll fuck her now?” asks Little Bill after Delilah’s mutilation. Normally there are some scenes that a Western cannot show, take The Searchers for example:
Ethan: What you saw wasn’t Lucy…What you saw was a buck wearin’ Lucy’s dress. I found Lucy back in the canyon. Wrapped her in my coat, buried her with my own hands, I thought it best to keep it from ya.
Brad: Did they…? Was she…?
Ethan: What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don’t ever ask me! Long as you live, don’t ever ask me more.
Unforgiven then is more than happy to break Western taboos – even when the ‘good guys’ ride into town they hesitate to start avenging straight away in order to grab some “free ones”.
It is these women that finally bring an end to the township by calling William Munny down upon it, but in avenging a ‘cut whore’ Munny must betray the oath he has made to his wife. As Ned points out to him early on “You know, Will, if Claudia was alive you wouldn’t be doing this.” This echoes the reason that Munny had previously given to the Kid as to why he couldn’t join him, “My wife, she cured me of all that. Cured me of drinking and wickedness.”
This cure can only last as long as other older bonds are not broken – Munny justifies the initial plan to kill the cowboys for monetary reasons and to see a woman avenged, but by the end of the movie he has gone much further than this – by killing the five men at the close of the film Munny has not only reinforced his previous reputation but actually added to it, thereby destroying the work his wife had put into his reformation.
The fact that Ned has been killed by Little Bill has overrode any promise to his wife and causes Munny to revert back to form – now it is Little Bill’s crime that can not be forgiven as easily as the earlier beating. Little Bill speaks for the audience when he exclaims at Munny’s despatch of Dubois
“You just shot an unarmed man.”
But Munny’s reply seems justified,
“He should have armed himself if he’s gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.”
Redemption or condemnation?
“A man who’ll keep his head, not get rattled under fire like as not he’ll kill you.”
Professor Mitchell argues in his reading of Unforgiven that the film is “structured to redeem, not condemn… electrifying violence.” (6) He cites examples of the Kid’s “adolescent enthusiasm” at killing and the fact that despite Ned’s statement that “It’s not easy killing a man” Munny goes on to kill easily not one man but five at the finale.
Again, I think this argument is flawed.
Firstly the Kid’s quoted lines are obviously delivered in a final attempt at bravado as he drinks hard from the bottle, the kid is visibly shaken by what he has done and as he recounts the killing he begins to break down – firstly revealing that he had earlier lied about the number of men he had killed before breaking down into tears. “It don’t seem real… all on account of pulling a trigger” he sobs to which Munny replies
“Hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got and he’s ever gonna have.”
This is a very different statement from Ned’s. Munny can rationalise the killing of a man in a way that Ned and the Kid cannot:
“We all got it comin’.”
At the start of the movie Munny tells Ned that killing the cowboys “should be easy” and he sticks by that line as his friends do not. Ned cannot kill Davey Bunting despite him being the better shot – Munny, eventually, can. The killing of Quick Mike proves that killing a man is easy – the hard part comes later – Munny is prepared to sit back and listen to Davey die just as he can control his emotions after the second killing as the Kid crumbles. In an earlier Eastwood outing, High Plains Drifter Mordecai asks the Stranger “What do we do when its over?” to which the mythic Eastwood replies “Then you live with it.” The Schofield Kid leaves wanting no more killing to live with and none of the money, as far as the film is concerned he never kills again. Ned attempts to escape his past but eventually it catches up with him – whether in the form of Little Bill or Munny himself depends on your reading of the film but it is very telling that Ned’s wife touches the stock of Munny’s shotgun as she passes his horse; she seems to know what Munny’s return means to Ned who has definitely faired better in retirement than his partner.
As for the final saloon scene in which Munny takes on the “aura of a Freischutz whose bullets never miss”, the whole thing only erupts after Munny’s ‘misfire’ (which by definition is a bullet that misses). Prior to that he had walked in on the men he subsequently kills unawares, they being too occupied in the next day’s posse. This is not one gunslinger facing down men face to face in the street as in many mythic gun battles, even in the legendary gunfight at the OK corral both parties were forewarned that the shooting was about to take place. Munny’s surprise entrance is more of a ‘bushwack’ than a gunfight. When the bullets start flying Munny really is ‘lucky’ in the order of events – everyone but Little Bill and himself panic and he only gets the better of Little Bill after throwing his rifle at him. Watching closely reveals that the first deputy is only winged in the ear with the first shot and Munny’s second shot misses completely. The third and fourth shots however kill two deputies, but the fourth shot only kills when the man turns to run and Munny shoots him in the back! He only finishes Little Bill off when he is in no position to fight back and almost as an afterthought kills the first wounded deputy as he walks past on his way to the door. As gunfights go this was hardly a reprisal of Will Kane’s myth making in High Noon.
It seems hard to follow through on Mitchell’s argument that this is a film that does not present a radical re-representation of the Western. William Munny is simply not like any other character portrayed in the genre. As Little Bill lies at his mercy he has the courage to give a last scornful “I’ll see you in hell, William Munny!” to which Munny simply agrees “Yeah.” before taking his head off with the shotgun.
As stated before Munny is a character more than prepared to live with his actions – the consequences may be harsh but in his own mind so was the provocation. There will be no blaming whiskey for ‘The William Munny Killings’ that have now taken place – the blame lays solely on Big Whiskey or rather its patriarchal figure Little Bill Daggart.
At the time of its release Clint Eastward remarked that Unforgiven may have been his last time in front of a camera and although that did not prove true it has been the last Western he has made either in front of or behind the camera. He said to The Los Angeles Times that “The movie summarised everything I feel about the Western.” and its conception moved him enough to dedicate the movie to the two men who helped create the ‘Eastwood’ myth, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. Despite one or two voices of dissent Unforgiven seems to be truly a classic movie that represented a farewell to the genre as all the subsequent Westerns that followed in its footsteps did little either original or lasting.
In the closing shot of the film we see William again in silhouette, this time taking his hat in his hands and standing over Claudia’s grave – whether he is explaining his actions, begging forgiveness or simply saying goodbye is never revealed. As the epigraph rolls William Munny simply fades away.
Notes
- Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns, The University of Chicago Press 1996, p263.
- Unforgiven (1992) written by David Webb Peoples and directed by Clint Eastwood. All references to and quotes from the Warner Brothers film Unforgiven are based on the 1998 Region 2 DVD version of the movie.
- William Munny’s children are named Will and Penny – a possible nod to Will Penny (1968) starring Charlton Heston. The children could also represent the two choices that Munny has before him; do as his wife wished (will) or follow the money (penny).
- Unforgiven‘s writer Davis Webb Peoples was also responsible for another script concerning an anti-hero coming out of retirement to do one last job – Blade Runner.
- Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death 2000 Faber and Faber p163 Originally from Spaghetti Westerns pp129-130 by the same author.
- Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns, The University of Chicago Press 1996, p261