I watched 3:10 to Yuma last week. Excellent. I didn’t know much about it, and I’m starting to think I prefer reading and watching things knowing very little of the story, which isn’t conducive to blogging about them. Anyway, I didn’t know going in (and was told early on) that the story dealt with what they later called the myth of the noble outlaw.
In a DVD documentary, the historians interviewed on film said the American Wild West was not as simple as some have explained it and that the myths far outweighed reality, but there were outlaws who robbed stagecoaches, banks, and railroads for reasons beyond criminal gain. And several famous men were rather civil about it.
For example, Black Bart robbed 28 stagecoaches at night, on foot, without a gun. He didn’t rob passengers, apparently, only the stagecoach company itself, and according to a man on the DVD, he carried a stick carved to look like a gun. At night, no one could tell it wasn’t a firearm and they could not follow him through the canyon in the dead of night because he knew the terrain far better than they did.
The movie didn’t have anything to do with Bart, but it was still good. What do you think of westerns in general? Actor Ben Foster, who played the right hand man to Russell Crowe’s character, said he thought the men in westerns were larger than life, like the men and gods in Greek myths. He said the Greeks had their myths about gods and godlike men, and Americans have their westerns with men who never give up their principles, shoot pistols out of other men’s hands, or draw and fire faster than sight. Do you think that’s a fair comparison?
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