Cat Ballou
Elliot Silverstein (1965)
I saw Cat Ballou at the time it was first released – something that can’t be said about many films made before I was ten years old. I don’t remember who I saw it with but it must have been someone else’s idea/treat – even then I wouldn’t have been keen on going to a Western, even a comedy Western. All I really recall is that Cat Ballou got on my nerves. Nearly half a century later, and without my seeing it again in the meantime, it repeated the trick. Elliot Silverstein’s movie spoofs Western types and tropes but it’s not a thoroughgoing parody like Blazing Saddles. (Walter Newman and Frank Pierson’s screenplay is adapted from a book by Roy Chanslor which is a straight Western story.) There’s nothing parodic about the death of the heroine’s father (played rather uncomfortably by that good actor John Marley). When the drunken Kid Shelleen wanders into the funeral parlour where Frankie Ballou is laid out, mistakes the candles for anniversary ones and blows them out after singing happy birthday beside the coffin, it’s one of the better jokes in the film. But, since there wasn’t anything funny about Frankie’s death a few screen moments earlier, you smile uneasily. It’s her father’s murder by the black-clad hired gun Tim Strawn that turns Catherine Ballou, who was planning to be a schoolteacher, into an outlaw. She seeks revenge on the corrupt powers-that-be of Wolf City, Wyoming, who wanted to get their hands on Frankie’s ranch and, when he resisted, wanted rid of him. In other words, there’s nothing either comical or satirical about the main motor for the story, for all the movie’s rambunctious fights and foolery.
Cat Ballou is remembered for Lee Marvin’s celebrated performance as the legendary but broken-down gunfighter Kid Shelleen – Marvin also doubles up as the baddie Strawn, Shelleen’s brother. There’s some very skilful physical comedy in what Marvin does and he has a good partner in his horse. In one famous shot, Shelleen is blind drunk and his leaning mount stands cross-forelegged and equally zonked. Lee Marvin’s relish at playing an unusually extrovert, comic role is somewhat infectious but the film is a mess. It’s also strenuously zany – Elliot Silverstein’s direction and the music by Frank DeVol keep digging you in the ribs to notice how amusing things are meant to be. At one point, there’s speeded-up, silent comedy action – often a telltale sign that film-makers are desperate to be funny but not sure how to be. In the circumstances, it’s amazing how vivid and true Jane Fonda manages to stay as Cat. Until they appeared in the same shot together, I got confused between the likeable but bland Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman as two of the other outlaws. The theme song – ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou’ by Jerry Livingston and Mack David – is jolly enough but there’s an awful lot of it. The use of Nat King Cole (who died shortly before the film was released) and Stubby Kaye as a black-and-white-minstrel Greek chorus of two gets surprisingly tiresome.
21 February 2014