This afternoon, we consider
how water rights still affect the state of California and its citizens. As the
endless and complicated debates over water, and the complicated rules that
govern their use, continue, we point to the “big guys” versus “little guys” dichotomy
found in a variety of Westerns made from the 1930s to the present day. These
westerns do not only focus on cattle ranching and mining, as do Open Range (2003) and Pale Rider (1976). They also highlight a
battle over flood control or water rights.
Definitions of the western as
a genre tend to promote the transformation of the desert lands of the West into
a garden, pointing to water rights and irrigation as mechanisms of a prosperous
West, so it comes as no surprise that many western films foreground
consequences of “big guys” controlling water use, so that “little guys” must
either pay exorbitant prices or suffer drought conditions and thirst.
In John Wayne’s Riders of Destiny (1933), for example,
the antagonist in the film, James Kincaid (Forest Taylor) has one of the only
sources of water in the area, and is charging area farmers outrageous prices to
use it. Small farmers and ranchers, then, are forced to sell their land because
they cannot afford Kincaid’s prices until a government agent (Wayne playing
Singin’ Sandy) ensures that area farmers have free access to water. This plot
was repeated fifteen years later in Wayne’s The
Angel and the Badman and is familiar for anyone who watched the most recent
3:10 to Yuma (2007).
Seemingly resting on water
rights issues, the remake of 3:10 to Yuma
highlights Dan Evans (played by Christian Bale) and his family’s struggles to
survive on an Arizona farm when the local land baron, Glen Hollander, played by
Lennie Loftin, attempts to force them out for his railroad by damming the
stream that goes by their farm, stopping it completely. With little rain in the
past two years to replenish the lost water, Evans cannot make the profit from
his crops necessary to pay his mortgage. In such a desperate position, when the
railroad (not the stagecoach line, as in the original 1957 film) offers him two
hundred dollars, Evans agrees to accompany the desperado Ben Wade (Russell
Crowe) to Contention where they wait for the 3:10 to Yuma that will take Ben to
jail. The rest of the film highlights Evans’ attempt to bring Ben to justice,
with no further mention of the water issues that prompted Evans’ journey.
The 1957 version from
director Daves, on the other hand, places water rights and
drought at the forefront.
Although the Daves film also maintains conventions of the traditional Western,
because it places water at its center, it more accurately highlights the
environmental impact of both progressive and populist versions of progress. The
2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma, on the
other hand, mentions the drought only in reference to a debt Dan Evans
(Christian Bale) owes for three months of water rights and medicine for his
youngest son’s (Ben Petry) tuberculosis
That is one of the main
reasons we chose The Ballad of Cable
Hogue (1970) for today’s screening. Here is a Western that clearly
illustrates the effects land acquisition laws had on development and,
ultimately, environmental damage in the West. The Ballad of Cable Hogue demonstrates the negative consequences of
progress, whether for the few (progressive) or the many (populist). As a
powerless individual, Cable constructs an empire for himself based on ownership
of water, a commodity he sells for profit. The water sustains him but is doled
out to travelers by the cup for a fee. Commerce underpins Cable’s use of
resources and highlights the consequences of progress as empire building in the
West: environmental degradation and loss of community.
Director Sam Peckinpah
claimed The Ballad of Cable Hogue was
his favorite film, even though it nearly ruined his career and terminated his
tenure with Warner Brothers, since the film wrapped nineteen days over schedule
and cost $3 million over budget. His departure from Warner Brothers left him
with a limited number of directing jobs, forcing him to do a 180-degree turn
from this film, and travel to England to direct Straw Dogs (1971), one of his darkest and most psychologically
disturbing films.
Still, most reviews of Cable
Hogue were strong. Roger Ebert calls the film a “splendid example of the
New Western” and “a fine movie, a wonderfully comic tale we didn't quite expect
from a director who seems more at home with violence than with humor.” Roger
Greenspun of The New York Times calls
it “Peckinpah’s gentlest, boldest, and perhaps most likable film to date.” For
us, The Ballad of Cable Hogue also
succeeds because it reveals the environmental history behind the narratives of
many western
films.
