Daily Breakdowns 012 - Bite The Beatles

OK, so I read the new Rolling Stone while watching Richard Brooks' 1975 Western, Bite The Bullet. I mean, who hasn't? I didn't read all the magazine, mainly the opening piece on The Beatles from Jann S. Wenner, followed by the Mikal Gilmore article on their breakup, which is what I came for. Gilmore's good, but I have to say Wenner did at least as well in his editorial, drawing from his own personal account of John and Yoko visiting the RS offices in 1970 and then the Lennons and Wenners seeing a screening of Let It Be, the legendary documentary of their fractious sessions that would soon signal the end of the group. As much as The Beatles have marketed themselves for the past 39 years after their breakup, the film remains unavailable on dvd, probably due to its unsettling, myth-busting nature. Wenner was fortunate enough to be there at the moment he realized The Beatles were over, and he remembered it artfully for a nice essay. Gilmore drew on tons of research, and it's a fine article, but I can't say I learned anything new, although he does give much-needed emphasis on how Lennon essentially broke up the band once he felt it was no longer his, but that his act was to a large extent a challenge he didn't expect Paul to accept. He founded the band and expected to end them, and Paul beat him to it, though probably with more of a broken heart than John. I could read variations of the same basic story endlessly, but again, there's nothing especially new here.

Bite the Bullet also deals with two old friends on a journey together, but here they're Gene Hackman and James Coburn, both entered in a 700 mile horse race, against another half-dozen competitors such as Candice Bergen--looking for the chance to free her husband from a chain gang along the way--and Jan-Michael Vincent, who represents impetuous youth and arrogance to contrast the hard-fought wisdom and resignation of Hackman and Coburn. It's a typical Western theme, and indeed Brooks appears to have modeled a fair amount of his Western on Peckinpah's superior The Wild Bunch. Two grizzled guys with a code of honor, a young psycho who won't listen and who serves as a reminder that their time is coming to an end. Brooks (Blackboard Jungle, The Professionals, In Cold Blood) keeps the filming more naturalistic than Peckinpah, but makes great use of the hot sun and white sandy dirt (it could be gypsum) to set the crusty Hackman and Coburn against, with Bergen almost a mirage of serene beauty. She can handle herself physically, but for the most part she she smiles off the indignities before her on this long ride with rough men. I suppose Paul Giamatti is this generation's Hackman, huh? Hackman, with his bristly moustache, receding hair and potato face, is like you or your brother-in-law, only with dignity. There are some nice scenes where we see just how much he cares for horses, which becomes a burden to him later, because of course a 700 mile race is bound to be hard on one's steed, and what do they benefit if you win? There's a great scene early on when he rescues a foal and throws it on the back of his horse, later giving it to a young boy with the advice to never treat her bad. Ironically, this film was before the days when animals were monitored to protect them from harm during filming, so we have several scenes where tripwires appear to be used to represent the horses (or their riders) being shot. One even falls off a cliff into a river, apparently unharmed, but who knows? It's pretty dramatic.

The film clearly hasn't been restored, and at times the corners are fuzzy as if the light behind it is circular and not illuminating all of the widescreen dimensions, and it's very hard to hear a lot of the dialogue. Still, the entire cast acquits itself well and Brooks achieves some poignance in the final scene, pulling out the Peckinpah-style slow motion he'd held in reserve, and then finishing with more simply composed and edited frames of friendship and decency. The DVR guide gave this one three stars, and I'm inclined to agree.

Christopher Allen
August 28th, 2009