Hombre

A movie that FXM pulled out of its vault to show for the first time in years is Hombre. It's going to be on FXM tomorrow at 11:15 AM, again on Tuesday, and a couple more times next week.

The movie starts off in the mountains of Arizona, where some Apache who aren't living on the reservation are making a living rounding up horses for the stage company to use. Except that the stage line, run by Mendez (Martin Balsam), is going to be shutting down since the railroad is coming to town. Mendez wanted to see one of the Apache, too, except that this is actually a white man who was raised by the Apache. John Russell (Paul Newman) had a foster father in town, and Mendez informs him that Dad died and left him an inheritance. Perhaps this would be a good time to rejoin white society.

Russell learns that he's inherited a boarding house managed by Jessie (Diane Cilento) who lives there with her lover, the town sheriff Braden (Cameron Mitchell). It's not anything you'll get rich off of, but it'll provide a living. Except that Russell doesn't want to be burdened by it, so he plans to sell, and since the will made no provisions for Jessie, she's out of luck too.

Meanwhile, the Favors (Fredric March and Barbara Rush) show up at the stage line, looking for the next stage to Bisbee. Mendez informs them that the stage is closed, and nothing is available, but Mrs. Favor keeps insisting that she'll go to great lengths to make certain they get a stage and they're on it, even buying it and the horses if necessary. Eventually, Mendez relents. He and his assistant Billy are on the stage, along with Billy's wife, Russell, Jessie, the Favors, and Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone), who has wangled his way onto the coach by being a complete jerk.

Of course, Grimes has good reason for wanting to be on that stage, which is that he plans to rob it with the help of some men on the outside. He knows that Favor has a bunch of money on him. Favor, it turns out, is the Interior Department Indian agent who administered the Apache reservation, and has a whole bunch of money that he embezzled from underdelivering on the Apache's meat rations. He's planning to abscond to Mexico with that money. Russell, having been raised by the Apache and having seen what federal mismanagement did to the Apache, really doesn't like Favor.

But once the stage has been held up and the passengers are left there stranded, Russell is pretty much the only one who has any competence in getting everybody out of the situation alive. He's willing to set off alone, but the others at least have the sense to realize they need his help and thus follow him.

There's really nothing wrong with Hombre, although because of my predisposition against westerns, I'm sure that other people will rate it even higher than I would. I find it good, if not great, with a relatively slow build up: it runs 110 minutes and probably could have been done in 90. Newman is quite good, even if he in now way could pass as anything but white. Cilento also does well as a woman whose life experiences have inured her to the hardship of life in the old west: it's just the way things are that you're going to have to scratch and claw to make your way in life. Balsam is even more miscast as a Mexican but does the best he can, and Boone is thoroughly slimy and nasty.

Hombre is out of print on DVD as far as I can tell, so you're going to have to catch the cable showings. I recorded it off of StarzEncore Westerns, and their print had an oddity. The credits were in something close to the Cinemascope aspect ratio, although this one was filmed in Panavision. After the credits, however, the print is slightly less rectangular, but with an aspect ratio greater than the 16:9 (about 1.78:1) of today's TVs, since the print is still letterboxed. It just that the top and bottom bars are narrower than during the credits. The picture looked slightly less crisp on my TV, but I've also got a 10-year-old TV. I have no idea what the print FXM is using will look like.