THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE

US, 1970, 119 minutes, Colour.
Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner.
Directed by Sam Peckinpah.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a Sam Peckinpah western and worth seeing for another facet of his views on the west and the myths of the west. His other westerns are Ride the High Country, Major Dundee and the Wild Bunch.

This film describes itself as a ballad and focuses attention on its hero. He is less than romantic, although a hero of the west. His exploits are presented and extolled with a chorus composed of a blonde with a heart of gold and an eccentric rascal of a self-ordained minister of religion.

But the west of Peckinpah's films is the ageing west, the period of the turn of the century when legends of the west live on and men tried to emulate them. But it is too late. The legends were really legends. The heroes were generally dirty heroes and the west was a tough place for survival. And this kind of west is over: the twentieth century with its new ideas and machinery is taking over the old. Who wants a horse? Who needs water? Who even needs a gun when a man has a car? The new west is arriving and it kills off the old. These are some c the themes of Cable Hogue1 s ballad. Butch Cassidy, Willie Boy and the Wild Bunch were three films of 1969-70 which questioned the old myths. Cable Hogue joins them and the films of 1970 which question the myths of the Cowboys and Indians, Little Big Man, Soldier Blue and the Last Warrior.

Not an action-packed film, but a reflective western comedy.

1. The film describes itself as a ballad - a song about a hero and legendary events, magnifying him in verse and repeated choruses. How does 'ballad structure' help you to appreciate the film?

2. Why is Cable Hogue a 'hero' of the west?

3. What legendary events are told about him?

4. What myths of the west does the film use? Does it break any of the traditional myths of the west?

5. How strong an atmosphere of cruelty and revenge was there about the film?

6. What role did water - part of the myths of the desert - play in the film -in Hogue's survival, his shrewd enterprises and in his- becoming outdated?

7. Taking Hogue, the Preacher and the Prostitute as people of the west, and the main representatives of human nature in the film, what picture of the comm. man emerges? Did the film look down on this kind of 'ordinary humanity'? What attitudes did it take?

8. The preacher - an eccentric; how seriously should he have been taken? Hot typical of the weak and hypocritical man on the make was he? (His own religion for his own purposes?).

9. How were the old themes of success, greed, revenge and forgiveness present at the end of the ballad?

10. The setting of the film was the turn of the century. How did the film show the end of an era and the passing of the old west? How important was the car (substituting for the coach and horse) and gasoline (substituting for water)?

11. What was the symbolism of Hogue dying because he had been run over by a car? What kind of influence does the past have in forming the present?

12. What was the symbolism of the religious man, in black, on the back of a bike?

13. Was the film much more than a conventional western? Why?