JamesHitchcock

"Hang 'Em High" was Clint Eastwood's first American Western as a major star. (He had already made three "spaghetti Westerns" for Sergio Leone, and had had supporting roles in a couple of Westerns in the fifties). The film is ostensibly set in Oklahoma, but was actually shot in New Mexico.

Eastwood plays Jed Cooper, a former lawman who is wrongly suspected of cattle rustling and murder. A lynch mob attempt to hang him, but he survives when a U. S. Marshal intervenes. The Marshal takes him to the nearest town, Fort Grant, where the local judge, Adam Fenton, has just sentenced the real murderer to hang for his crime. Knowing that Cooper is innocent, Fenton sets him free and offers him a job as a Marshal. Cooper accepts because he will be able to use his position to hunt down and arrest the men who tried to kill him. The film then shows just how Cooper sets about doing just that. A sub-plot deals with Cooper's romance with Rachel Warren, a young widow who is looking for revenge against the men who murdered her husband.

The film is more than just a tale of revenge; it is one of a number of Westerns from this period which ask difficult questions about the nature of justice. (Michael Winner's "Lawman" from three years later is another). Pat Hingle only received fourth billing, but his Judge Fenton is a key figure in this story. (He is said to be based upon a real "hanging judge" named Isaac Parker). At first Fenton seems relatively liberal, at least by the standards of the Wild West judiciary. He not only sets Cooper free, but also warns him not to seek private revenge against the members of the lynch mob. As the film progresses, however, it becomes clear that Fenton's liberalism is a façade. He observes the letter of the law, but not the spirit. He is opposed to lynchings because he believes that lynch law brings a bad reputation to the Oklahoma Territory and hinders its chance of achieving statehood. He runs his court, however, as a legally sanctioned lynch mob. Fenton does not really care whether the men he sentences to hang are guilty or innocent; all that matters is that they have been sentenced by a court of competent jurisdiction. He refuses to show mercy to the accused, no matter what extenuating circumstances might exist.

Cooper is a more complex character. After the attempt to hang him he is full of burning indignation, anxious to hunt down all those involved. As the film progresses, however, his views gradually mellow, particularly after Fenton hangs two teenage brothers who are guilty of rustling but not of murder. He comes to realise what Sheriff Maddox, Burt Lancaster's character in "Lawman", failed to see, namely that crime and punishment is not a simple matter of black and white and that there might be situations in which the spirit of justice would be better served by showing mercy than by enforcing the strict letter of the law. As St Paul says, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

Variety magazine called the film"a poor American-made imitation of a poor Italian-made imitation of an American-made western", a verdict which perhaps reflects a certain American snippiness about the spaghetti Western phenomenon. ("How dare those Italians try and take over our territory!") It was probably the presence of Eastwood which prompted this reaction; apart from Dominic Frontiere's musical score, which does sound like an imitation of Ennio Morricone, there is little specifically "Italian" about the film. Yes, it presents a "revisionist" view of the West, blurring the boundaries between good and evil, a view similar to that found in Leone's "Dollars Trilogy", but this feature was not unique to "spaghetti Westerns" but was also found in many American Westerns of the period, such as "Lawman", "Soldier Blue" or Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch". Indeed, one could argue that revisionism had been present within the genre since the Mann/Stewart Westerns of the fifties, and even earlier.

I would rate "Hang 'Em High" as Eastwood's best Western from his earlier period, perhaps his best of all apart from "Pale Rider" and "Unforgiven". There are two fine performances from Eastwood as Cooper and Pat Hingle (an actor I had not previously come across) as Fenton. The film is well photographed and well written, with an intelligent script exploring some important social issues, as relevant in the 1960s as they were in the 1880s. And, indeed, they remain relevant in the 2020s, making this a film which still repays watching today. 8/10.

The Duchy of Grand Fenwick is a European microstate, some 15 square miles in area, set in the French Alps but nevertheless English-speaking on account of its foundation in the Middle Ages by an English knight, Sir Roger Fenwick. The local economy depends upon the export of the local wine, but when a Californian company starts producing a cheap imitation, the Duchy is threatened with bankruptcy. In retaliation the country's Hereditary Prime Minister, Count Rupert Mountjoy, declare war on the United States, not in the expectation of victory but with the intention of surrendering as quickly as possible. The idea is that America, famously generous towards its defeated enemies, will pour money into Grand Fenwick to rebuild its economy. (This plotline reflects the fact that America, during the late forties and fifties, was pouring billions of dollars of aid into the German and Japanese economies while doing nothing to assist its former ally, something which caused considerable resentment in Britain).

The film explores the complications which arise when Mountjoy's plan goes awry when Grand Fenwick's army of only twenty soldiers, dressed in mediaeval armour, win an unlikely victory over the Americans when they manage to acquire a powerful new bomb, capable of destroying entire continents. This being a satirical comedy, we need not worry ourselves with questions like "why was a top-secret military research project being carried out with so little security?". (Or, for that matter, "How did an English-speaking state manage to survive in France for over five hundred years?")

The film was designed as a vehicle for the talents of Peter Sellers, who in 1959 was already a household name in Britain, but little-known in America. Sellers plays three roles- Duchess Gloriana XII, the ruler of Grand Fenwick, Count Mountjoy and Tully Bascomb, a meek, bumbling and rather cowardly forester who, as the Hereditary Field Marshal of Grand Fenwick, is reluctantly compelled to assume command of the Grand Fenwick expeditionary force charged with invading America. In the novel on which the film is based, Gloriana was a beautiful young woman based upon Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Grace, but here Sellers plays her in drag as a parody of the elderly Queen Victoria; Mountjoy appears to be based upon Disraeli. In all three roles Sellars shows his gift for creating comic characters, and receives good support from Leo McKern as the Hereditary Leader of the Opposition in the Grand Fenwick Parliament and David Kossoff as Doctor Alfred Kokintz (a parody of Albert Einstein), the inventor of the "Q-Bomb". I was less taken with Jean Seberg as Helen, Kokintz's daughter and Tully's love interest. Director Jack Arnold wanted to use another actress, but the studio insisted on Seberg. She was regarded as a rising star in the late fifties, but, although she had the looks of a Hollywood goddess, to me she never really seemed to have the necessary talent or charisma.

Hollywood tended to steer clear of political satire in the fifties, especially political satire directed at America's cherished institutions, so a British film like "The Mouse That Roared" must have come as something of a surprise in America. Apart from its clear "Ban the Bomb" message, it is a film about plucky little Brits- the Grand Fenwickians are essentially Brits in disguise- putting one over on the Yanks. Apart from Helen (who is presumably originally from Europe) the American characters are often the targets of the film's satire, such as the laid-back State Department officials who assume that Grand Fenwick's declaration of war is someone playing a prank, or the gung-ho but incompetent General Snippett. And yet the film actually did better at the box office in America than it did in Britain. Perhaps the Yanks can take a joke aimed at themselves better than we Brits sometimes imagine.

I first saw the film about thirty years ago, when it struck me as a relic of the then recently ended Cold War. Watching it again recently I was surprised how well its humour stands up today. Indeed, with the recent increase in international tension, the war in the Ukraine, the current confrontation between India and Pakistan and the election of a US President whose every move makes him seem more and more like a character from a satirical comedy, perhaps its theme is actually more relevant to the 2020s than it was in the 1990s. 8/10

Some goofs. We are told that Grand Fenwick is the "smallest country in the world". In fact, at around fifteen square miles it would be considerably larger than either Monaco or the Vatican City, both of which have an area of less than one square mile. (Today it would also be larger than Nauru or Tuvalu, but neither of those countries existed as an independent state in 1959). The narrator tells us that Sir Roger founded Grand Fenwick in 1430, but the Declaration of War refers to its foundation in 1370.

On 10th July 1973 J. Paul Getty III, the teenage grandson of the oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped by Italian gangsters in Rome. "All the Money in the World" tells the story of this kidnapping and the efforts of Paul's family to negotiate the payment of a ransom with the kidnappers. The leading figure in the negotiations was the boy's mother, Gail; his father, J. Paul Getty II, at this time hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol, played little part. (In fairness I should point out that J. Paul Getty II later overcame his addiction problems, became a noted philanthropist and died a respected figure in his adopted country, Britain, after being knighted by the Queen).

Gail's main problem is that she had little money of her own; when she divorced Paul's father she gave up all claims to alimony in exchange for custody of her children. She is therefore dependent upon Paul's grandfather. Old Getty may have been famous as the Richest Man in the World- his only rival for that title was Howard Hughes- but he was also famous for his meanness. He could easily afford to pay many times over the seventeen million dollars demanded by the kidnappers, but he initially refuses to pay, arguing that by doing so he would only be encouraging further kidnappings of his family members. He does, however, instruct one of his advisers, the former CIA agent Fletcher Chace, to enter into secret negotiations.

Shortly after filming was completed, the film-makers were faced with a potential PR disaster. Its star, Kevin Spacey, who played Getty, faced allegations of sexual misconduct. Again, in the interests of fairness I should point out that Spacey was eventually acquitted, both in the criminal and civil courts, of these allegations, but the filmmakers could not afford to await the outcome of these cases. The decision was taken to reshoot all the scenes in which Spacey had appeared, with Christopher Plummer in the role.

We have no way of knowing what the completed film would have looked like with Spacey, but Plummer gives a masterly performance. He was one of those actors who never retired; indeed, he seemed to make more films in his seventies and eighties than he had done in his younger days. He was 88 when he made "All the Money in the World", older than the character he was playing; Getty would have been 80 in 1973. (Spacey was only 58 in 2017). The Getty we see in this film is the living embodiment of the old saying that money can't buy you happiness. Outwardly he seems a dignified old gentleman, but inwardly he is deeply unhappy, embittered and misanthropic. Apart from his money, his one great passion in life is collecting works of art, because he knows that inanimate objects will never disappoint him in the way that people have done. He seems more concerned to haggle over the latest acquisition for his collection than he does to bargain for his grandson's release. In the end he only contributes a million dollars to the ransom money- by this time the kidnappers have reduced their demand to four million- and he contributes it in the form of a loan to his son because in this way it will be tax-deductible. Despite Plummer's advancing years, this was not his last film; he was to give another fine performance in "Knives Out" two years later.

There are also fine performances from Michelle Williams as the tormented Gail, caught between the ruthlessness of the kidnappers and the flint-hearted avarice of her former father-in-law, from Romain Duris as Cinquanta, the one kidnapper who still has a spark of humanity, and Mark Wahlberg as Chace, who finally finds the courage to stand up to his employer and tell him a few home truths.

Like Plummer, director Ridley Scott seems in no hurry to require. He was eighty when he made this film, and has made three more since. Although much of the film takes place in Italy, this is not the "Sunny Italy" familiar to us from the tourist brochures. Some of the characters show us human nature at its darkest, and the look of the film is correspondingly dark, shot in a neo-noir style. Although it is in colour rather than monochrome, it is visually closer to the traditional noir of the forties and fifties, with many scenes taking place in darkened rooms and a similar emphasis on chiaroscuro lighting effects. With "All the Money in the World" Scott has made another fine film, worthy to stand alongside earlier efforts such as "The Duellists", "Alien" and "Gladiator". It is both a gripping crime story and a moving human drama. 8/10.