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| Blake Edwards: Wild Rovers (US 1971) with Karl Malden (Walter Buckman), William Holden (Ross Bodine) and Ryan O'Neal (Frank Post). La Cinémathèque française. |
Deux hommes dans l'Ouest / Lännen miehet – Ross ja Frank / Ross och Frank – västerns män (Swedish title in Finland) / Två red ut (Swedish title in Sweden).
US © 1971 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.
Blake Edwards / États-Unis / 1971 / 133 min / 35 mm / VOSTF / Metrocolor / Panavision
Avec William Holden, Ryan O'Neal, Karl Malden.
Générique
Réalisateur : Blake Edwards
Réalisateur seconde équipe : Dick Crockett
Assistants réalisateurs : Alan Callow, Lorin B. Salob
Scénariste : Blake Edwards
Sociétés de production : Geoffrey Productions, MGM - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Producteurs : Blake Edwards, Ken Wales
Directeur de production : Ridgeway Callow
Distributeur d'origine : MGM - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer France
Directeur de la photographie : Philip H. Lathrop
Cadreur : Duke Callaghan
Ingénieurs du son : Bruce Wright, Harry W. Tetrick
Compositeur de la musique originale : Jerry Goldsmith
Auteur des chansons originales : Ernie Sheldon "Wild Rover"
Compositeur des chansons originales : Jerry Goldsmith "Wild Rover"
Interprète des chansons originales : Sheb Wooley "Wild Rover"
Soundtrack: "Goodbye Old Paint" (Charley Willis, late 1800s).
Directeurs artistiques : George W. Davis, Addison Hehr
Décorateurs : Robert R. Benton, Reg Allen
Costumier : Jack Bear
Maquilleurs : Tom Tuttle, Bill Turner
Coiffeur : Cherie
Monteur : John F. Burnett
Script : Marie Kenney
Directeur de casting : Joe D'Agosta
Coordinateurs des effets spéciaux : Earl McCoy, Charles Schulthies
Photographe de plateau : Eric Carpenter
Interprètes : William Holden (Ross Bodine), Ryan O'Neal (Frank Post), Karl Malden (Walter Buckman), Lynn Carlin (Sada Billings), Tom Skerritt (John Buckman), Joe Don Baker (Paul Buckman), James Olson (Joe Billings), Leora Dana (Neil Buckman), Moses Gunn (Ben), Victor French (le shérif Bill Jackson), Rachel Roberts (Maybell Tucker), Sam Gilman (Hansen), Charles H. Gray (Savage), William Bryant (Hereford), Jack Garner (Cap Swilling), Caitlin Wyles (la petite amie de Bodine), Mary Jackson (la mère de Sada), William Lucking (Ruff), Ed Bakey (le joueur), Ted Gehring (le shérif de Tucson), Alan Carney (le barman du palace), Ed Long (Cassidy), Patrick Sullivan Burke (le ténor du palace), Hal Lynch (Mack), Bennie E. Dobbins (l'éleveur de moutons), Bob Beck (l'employé des bains-douches), Geoffrey Edwards (le fils de l'employé des bains-douches), Studs Tanney (le pianiste), Bruno VeSota (le barman de la cantina), Dick Crockett (le shérif adjoint)
Loc:
Arizona: – Red Rock Crossing, Sedona – Nogales – Patagonia (San Rafael Ranch State Park) – Flagstaff – Old Tucson – Empire Ranch, Sonoita – Arches National Park.
Utah: – Moab – Monument Valley.
US premiere: 19 June 1971
Finnish premiere: 19 Nov 1971 Boston – released by Filmipaja Oy – 138 min
French premiere: 29 Dec 1971
E-sous-titres français: Scéna-Media.
Séance présentée par Jean-François Rauger
Vu jeudi 24 avril 2025 2025, La Cinémathèque française, Rétrospective Le Western, en 25 films indispensables, Salle Henri Langlois, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6
La Cinémathèque française: "En quête d'une autre vie, deux cowboys se lancent dans le braquage de banques. Pour son unique incursion dans le genre, Blake Edwards signe un western à la beauté crépusculaire, coupé et remonté par la MGM avant d'être restauré, des années plus tard. Un récit d'amitié filiale, poignant, formidablement interprété par William Holden et Ryan O'Neal."
AA: "My best film" said Blake Edwards about his only Western* Wild Rovers - in its original cut before James T. Aubrey, President of MGM, butchered it, an experience so traumatic that Edwards needed to make another movie, S.O.B., to heal.
In the context of La Cinémathèque française's "Rétrospective Le Western, en 25 films indispensables", Wild Rovers represents the Revisionist Western that became dominant in the late 1960s.
It was nothing less than eine Umwertung aller Werte - a revaluation of all values.
Wild Rovers is anti-heroic, anti-glamorous and anti-bravado. Its way with classic landscapes is anti-sublime.
Wild Rovers is prosaic, elegiac and humoristic, but as distinct from other revisionist Westerns, it is not cynical or nihilistic. There is a lot of realistic violence, but it is not gratuitous, sadistic or prolonged for sensation.
Wild Rovers is a tragicomedy with affinities with the picaresque. It is a humanistic Western.
The protagonists are not mean or evil. They are idiots. There is no tragic grandeur when they perish, but a lingering ache about their unfulfilled potential, a sense of loss.
Vitality and mortality are inseparable. Animals matter, from dog puppies to wild broncos. A cougar attacks the banker's home, complicating the amateur robbers' plan.
THE BUDDY MOVIE
Wild Rovers is a buddy movie. Easy Rider and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had launched the popular new trend.
Wild Rovers was also inspired by The Wild Bunch and on the other hand Love Story which had made a film star of Ryan O'Neal (previously popular on tv as Rodney Harrington in Peyton Place).
The original cut of Wild Rovers was chided at MGM as a homosexual Western. Those were the days. After Brokeback Mountain, should it not be celebrated for the same reason?
But although there is the original poster of Ryan O'Neal on horseback behind William Holden, and a double bath scene in which O'Neal is stark naked, et cetera, and although Wild Rovers can be called a love story among men, that is only in the same sense as Howard Hawks said about his films. There is no sexual love affair between men.
But in Delphine Seyrig's Sois belle et tais-toi! / Be Pretty and Shut Up (FR 1976/1981), actresses lament the buddy movie as a new step in patriarchal cinema. Previously, leading roles were shared by men and women. Now, only by men. The actresses sensed in the cinema of that period something close to homosexuality (gay only). There are always two men.
Among the films I have seen at the Cinémathèque's Western retrospective, in only one (Colorado Territory) the main relationship has been between a man and a woman, in all others, between two men. Like in Ulzana's Raid, there is a veteran mentoring a newcomer in Wild Rovers. It is a love story between men - like father and son.
...
William Holden gives one of his greatest performances in Wild Rovers. There are those who find it the greatest. He got better with age.
...
The cinematographer is Philip H. Lathrop in his eighth and last movie with Edwards. Lathrop was adventurous and experimental, willing to try something new, here conveying the power of natural light from sunrise to nighttime on the ranch, in the town and on the desert trek, in sunshine and in snowy winter landscapes. Familiar landscapes and situations look different in the curious eyes of Blake Edwards and Philip Lathrop.
The immaculate 35 mm print of the 1986 MGM restoration looked grandiose on the Salle Henri Langlois screen in Panavision. Metrocolor seems to have the look of an oil painting. The print is integral, clean and complete. But a lingering question remains: was the film meant to look quite this soft and blurry?
* Blake Edwards started as a screenwriter for Lesley Selander in Panhandle (US 1948) and Stampede (US 1949), both starring Rod Cameron.
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