JORY

US, 1972, 97 minutes, Colour.
John Marley, B. J. Thomas, Robby Benson, Brad Dexter, Claudio Brook.
Directed by Jorge Fons.

Jory shows an effective way for helping audiences to look again at the West: portray it through the eyes of a child or to show its effect on someone who elicits audience sympathy. This Western takes a 15 year old boy and makes him a victim of the violence and arbitrary death that marked the ways of the West. The film also suggests that this is the American heritage and part of the style of U.S. life. To this extent the film is an anti-violence Western and a Western of the critical 70s. The film is competent - and might be effective for discussion work with adolescent audiences who might take their Westerns for granted.

1. Was this a good western? What were the particular features of the western that it employed well? The cattle men, the fights, the suspense and the shooting?

2. How did the film focus on Jory as the central figure? The song. the introduction of the boy. the following of his fortunes and misfortunes? How was he a typical American boy of last century? As a boy growing up to be the America of the future? Was this an important theme?

3. How did this film show Jory as a victim of the West? How much did he have to suffer? Suffer so innocently? The unnecessary deaths and brawls in which his father died, Jocko, Roy? The background of his father's death, his father as an ordinary weak alcoholic, playing the piano, wanting a drink. provoked and suddenly dead? Jocko and his showing off, his guns his provoking gun-fighters. his not wanting to fight. to save Jory his sudden death? Roy and his preaching against violence, his trying the boy and the girl by violence, his sudden death? The clash between ideals and realism in a violent west?

4. The picture of death in the film as so arbitrary? The suddenness of it? What impact did this have on response to these events?

5. Was revenge credible in the west? With the guns so available? Jory's feelings about the murderer of his father, his taunting of him and his killing in self-defence; what was your response to his shooting of Jocko's killer? Your response to Thatcher's men as they killed Roy? What did Jory feel in terms of revenge during the film? Did he learn to purge his revenge?

6. How did this contrast with the hospitality of the west: the boarding house in the town. Roy's kindness in taking him on, Jocko's friendship, Roy's lessons about violence, Barron and his welcoming him into his home, Amy and her friendship?

7. What did Jory learn throughout the film about guns and violence, about being a cowboy, the moral of Roy's story, the violence of Thatcher's men and his saving the herd, the change in Jory at the end?

8. What did Amy contribute to the film? Her flirting, her girlishness, emotional response in Jory, the sharing of danger together?

9. Did the climax, with Thatcher's men shooting, almost change the moral of the film? Roy's shooting in death? Why did he shoot when he was a man against violence? What did Jory learn from this?

10. What future would Jory have? As a lawyer? Would he stay in the west?

11. How much did this film rely on western conventions? How much did it criticise them? How much of the film was anti-western?