When was the first comic Western written? Beats me, but in this sparse category surely one of the best put on film is the 1969 Support Your Local Sheriff!, directed by Burt Kennedy and penned by William Bowers.

The movie stars James Garner as a fast-drawing drifter—eager to see Australia—who accepts temporarily the job of sheriff in a developing little town. There, he meets Prudy (Joan Hackett), a love interest, and trouble in the form of a family of blackguards. Swiftly rising prices in the town would have meant something to audiences in 1969 who witnessed frustrating inflation. Bowers’s script is frequently amusing and does not seem like a thrown-off item, as movie scripts today often do. It takes a lot of jabs at human behavior too: the town mayor and the council members, for example, are cowardly whoremongers. The film is nothing spectacular but it entertains—all it is meant to do.

In Kazuo Ishiguro‘s great novel, The Remains of the Day (1988), not much goes on between the butler Stevens and the housekeeper Miss Kenton. They are friends, yes, but there is still a breakdown here in social interaction, human connectedness, which coincides with a larger moral breakdown in the characters’ milieu. Stevens’s employer, Lord Darlington, the rich host of gatherings for world officials, is deceived enough by pre-World War II Germans to become anti-Semitic and anti-democracy. He wants two Jewish staff members to be dismissed from their jobs. Miss Kenton is appalled, Stevens is not—for he is perfectly loyal to Lord Darlington.

The subject, the question, of “dignity” in the novel is no longer very interesting, though I think the subject of loyalty still is. Fresher, even so, is the theme of the passage of time which produces for both an individual and a nation “the remains of the day” (before the day dies). Be careful of a coming remains of the day—a message I give to America as it too displays Leftist anti-Semitism (ignored by the media) and other unfortunate things.

In Kazuo Ishiguro‘s great novel, The Remains of the Day (1988), not much goes on between the butler Stevens and the housekeeper Miss Kenton. They are friends, yes, but there is still a breakdown here in social interaction, human connectedness, which coincides with a larger moral breakdown in the characters’ milieu. Stevens’s employer, Lord Darlington, the rich host of gatherings for world officials, is deceived enough by pre-World War II Germans to become anti-Semitic and anti-democracy. He wants two Jewish staff members to be dismissed from their jobs. Miss Kenton is appalled, Stevens is not—for he is perfectly loyal to Lord Darlington.

The subject, the question, of “dignity” in the novel is no longer very interesting, though I think the subject of loyalty still is. Fresher, even so, is the theme of the passage of time which produces for both an individual and a nation “the remains of the day” (before the day dies). Be careful of a coming remains of the day—a message I give to America as it too displays Leftist anti-Semitism (ignored by the media) and other unfortunate things.

Arthur Bishop in the Michael Winner picture, The Mechanic (1972), is a hitman and a moral eunuch. The flick is a Charles Bronson vehicle but, regrettably, he and Jan-Michael Vincent act their parts poorly. Further, the thing makes little sense, which is a shame given how plainly enjoyable it often is, as witness a lively motorcycle chase. Or the assassination and shoot-out action in Naples, Italy. The film, to sum it up, is a tastefully made failure about hard-nosed men.

In Roman Polanski‘s 1962 Polish feature, Knife in the Water, a painful tension exists between a vain sportswriter (Leon Niemczyk) and his wife (Jolante Umecka), who nevertheless wish to entertain themselves on a sailboat outing.  To be sure, theirs can often be called an adult marriage, for they can be good to each other, whereas the unexpected game the sportswriter plays with a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) he invites to the outing is merely childish.  The sportswriter sees the chap as a challenge to his manhood.  Out of envy, they try to outdo each other in manliness, and a secret understanding exists that if the hitchhiker ever gets the chance to make love to the sportswriter’s wife, the sportswriter will be instantly UNmanned.  The Niemczyk character has no reason to suspect the youth of wanting to do this, and yet . . . suppose it’s true.

Despite some filler, Knife in the Water is artistically solid.  Its script was written originally for the screen and its cast is soundly fine.  Both shots and editing look great in a sequence such as that in which the sportswriter punches the hitchhiker and he stumbles back onto the boat’s sail.  The Jolante Umecka character anxiously but futilely tries the save the youth from the water, for he has falsely told the married couple he cannot swim.  Into the lake he goes, with Umecka crying out to her husband and Krzysztof Komeda‘s insinuating music arising.  Here we have an example of written and directorial splendor.

(In Polish with English subtitles)

Cover of Knife in the Water: Essential Art House