WILL PENNY (1968)
WILL PENNY video artwork
Released: 1968
Production: FRED ENGEL and WALTER SELTZER for Paramount
Direction: TOM GRIES
Screenplay: TOM GRIES
Cinematography: LUCIEN BALLARD
Editing: WARREN LOW
Music: DAVID RAKSIN
Running Time: 108 minutes
Principal Characters:
CHARLTON HESTON.....Will Penny
JOAN HACKETT.....Catherine Allen
DONALD PLEASENCE.....Preacher Quint
LEE MAJORS.....Blue
BRUCE DERN.....Rafe Quint
ANTHONY ZERBE.....Dutchy
BEN JOHNSON.....Alex
JON FRANCIS.....Horace Greeley Allen
WILLIAM SCHALLERT.....Doctor Fraker
ESSAY BY GAY STUDLAR
Will Penny is a film that hardly anyone seems to have heard of, much less seen. Although it received critical praise when it first appeared in 1968, the rather quiet, sensitive approach to the Western that Will Penny represented was completely overlooked by audiences.
Will Penny approaches the Western with slimplicity, directness, and an eye for the authentic details of frontier life that are often forgotten in a genre that tends to emphasize action at the expense of characterization. Although the film loses the center of its focus and begins to depend upon cliched Western formula about halfway through its narrative, for the most part, Will Penny offers an unusual character study of a cowboy who is not a creature of leisure, not a graceful man with a sixgun, but a lonely, illiterate, aging man with few comforting memories and even fewer hopes for the future.
The opening scene establishes what will be two of the film's main strengths---the evocation of the frontier West through the cinematography of Lucien Ballard, and an uncommonly sensitive portrayal of the title character by Charlton Heston. Against an early morning, cold, blue landscarpe in the Sierra, Will Penny, a grizzled cowboy, rides herd on some cattle. He emerges as a man who is good at his job, but who is fighting the onslaught of age in a changing world. The cattle drive reaches its destination in Montana, but that destination is not even a town as the men expect, but a railhead that literally stops in the middle of nowhere. The cowboys on the drive are paid, but the boss offers Will the job of bull nurse and the opportunity to ride the train to Kansas City. Will gives the job to another hand and sets off for the nearest town with two younger cowboys, Blue (Lee Majors) and Dutchy (Anthony Zerbe).
With such an opening, the film begins as an exercise in nonheroics that centers on the aimless life of the cowboys---the boredom of riding herd, the pointless fighting among themselves, the passive acceptance of hardship and even death. Death occurs not as the glorious finale to heroic deeds, but as an everyday, cruel, meaningless occurrence. Will's friend Dutchy is horribly wounded when the three men defend an elk that Blue has found against a motley family of scavengers headed by Preacher Quint (Donald Pleasence) who also claim the kill. Dutchy is shot accidently by himself when he attempts to pull his gun from his coat pocket. Blue and Will take him to a doctor, but en route they leave Dutchy lying in the freezing cold of an open wagon while they stop for a little fortifying drink at a roadside bar. At another point in the film, Will happens upon a dead cowboy lying beside the trail. Will takes the body back to the ranch where the cowboy had worked, but he does not do so to assure the man a Christian burial. Will hopes to get the dead man's job. Will Penny shows that on the frontier, the necessities of survival take precedence over the comforts of sentiment.
The doctor (William Schallert) who finally does take care of Dutchy calls his patient and his two companions "dangerous children." This is an important commentary on director Tom Gries's vision of men who are like children, men whose lives reflect their lack of preparedness for, and refusal to accept, responsibility. Essential losers, these cowboys are caught up in a transient existence that requires little responsibility and offers little fulfillment in return.
Unfortunately, the plot of Will Penny seems to reflect Gries's discomfort with maintaining the narrative of the film at this sort of picaresque level. He introduces a refined woman, Catheine Allen (Joan Hackett), and her son (Jon Francis) who are en route to California to join her husband. They briefly meet Will and his two friends when the latter stop at the roadside bar. Later Mrs. Allen and her son "happen" to be squatters in the cabin that Will is supposed to occupy as he rides as the line man in his new job at Flatiron Ranch. Will tries to evict Mrs. Allen, but as he is looking for strays he is viciously attacked by the Quint family, who seek revenge against Will for killing one of the Quints in the fight over the elk. Will crawls back to the cabin and is nursed back to health by Mrs. Allen.
Their growing affection for each other, and Will's adaptation to the first home life he has ever known, are handled with great tenderness by Gries, but the obvious contrivance embodied in the situation is difficult to overcome. The performances by Heston and Hackett are almost enough to rid the material of its overfamiliarity, but the softening of the Will Penny character and the plot contrivance are difficult to accept. Heston's own intelligence begins to steal through his portrayal of Penny and results in robbing the charcter of some of the depth of ignorance and crudity that initially make him such an unusual and fascinating protagonist. The abrupt redirection of the plot from the wanderings of the cowboys to Will's domestication is nevertheless given some preparation in the earlier scenes of the film. Will's shame at not being able to read or write and his embarrassment at letting a man with a hard luck story have his bull nurse job establish the more sensitive side of the man that Gries chooses to emphasize in the second half of the film.
Gratefully, even when the plot turns to the relationship between Will and Catherine, the necessities of survival on the frontier are not forgotten. The Quints interrupt Will and Catherine's domestic tranquility on Christmas Eve, and screenwriter Gries inserts the deus ex machina of Blue and Dutchy to rescue Will and his surrogate family. Catherine wants Will to marry her, but the difficulties of survival are what Will uses as his excuse for the impossibility of starting a new life with her. He tells her they would starve if he were ranching and happened to get hurt. Catherine suggets farming, but Will protests that it would not work, that he is too old and knows nothing but cowboying. Will rides off with his buddies rather than take a chance for something better. What is especially right about this ending is that it confirms the image of the man that was established in the beginning, but which has become clouded by the workings of the plot. Will's age and the difficult prospects of starting life over with a wife and child are not the main issues. Will is incapable of accepting the demands and responsibilities of commitment. He has spent his life passively accepting what comes to him rather than risking what he has in order to achieve something more than mere survival.
Will Penny is not an unflawed work, but it does offer a fresh viewpoint in a well-worn genre. In attempting to balance the realism of frontier life with the expectations of the Western formula, Will Penny offers an enticing glimpse of promising aspects of the Western that has yet to be fully exploited.
From MAGILL'S SURVEY OF CINEMA.
Essay © 1981 SALEM PRESS. All Rights Reserved.
Video artwork © 1989 PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO. All Rights Reserved.
Title and logo designed by Karen Rappaport
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