Director: Elliot Silverstein
Year: 1965
Rating: 6.0
Cat Ballou is a musical? What the hell. It has been around almost as long as I have and is a pretty well-known film, but I had no clue that it was a musical. Sort of. There is a two-man Greek Chorus who narrate the film by song from time to time. It shouldn't work but it does mainly because one of them is Nat King Cole. Such a pleasure to see him. But unknown to everyone in the film, he was dying from lung cancer. But he could still sing.
Cat Ballou
Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou
She's mean and evil through and through
There really isn't much to the film. A strong breeze would blow it away. But it has its charms, some light-hearted humor and Jane Fonda is as fresh as newly baked cookies. She returns home to Wyoming from school in the east and finds out her father is under pressure to sell his ranch to a corporation. They have hired a professional killer. She she does too - but he turns out to be a drunk. So, she decides to rob a train. Fonda's career took off after this with Barefoot in the Park, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Barbarella and Klute. Here she is just so darn pretty. She is teamed up with the grizzled veteran Lee Marvin. Marvin had made a career playing sadists and killers and this was a nice switch for him. Playing a drunk killer. And another killer with no nose. He is great in this - apparently, he liked his role so much that he would go to cocktail parties and recite his dialogue. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor which might seem odd as three other men in the cast have more screen time than he does. It wasn't a strong year though with his competition being:
Richard Burton in The Spy who Came from the Cold
Laurence Olivier in Othello
Rod Steiger in–The Pawnbroker
Oskar Werner – Ship of Fools
Burton should have gotten it. But Marvin gives a bravura performance. And those Hollywood cocktail parties.
Perhaps more controversial is this film's inclusion as number 10 in the AFI's Top Ten Westerns. I can't argue with most of these:
• The Searchers (1956)
• High Noon (1952)
• Shane (1953)
• Unforgiven (1992)
• Red River (1948)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
• Stagecoach (1939)
• Cat Ballou (1965)
But Cat Ballou doesn't belong in the same area code as most of these. Butch Cassidy and McCabe are also questionable in my mind. Clearly, Spaghetti Westerns are not being included but basically any Western directed by Ford, Mann, Hawks, Peckinpah or Budd Boetticher would be more deserving not to mention The Magnificent Seven, Ox Bow Incident, Tombstone, Pale Rider. But this film goes down fine.
Cat Ballou
Cat Ballou
Fonda is adorable
Through and through
Year: 1965
Rating: 6.0
Cat Ballou is a musical? What the hell. It has been around almost as long as I have and is a pretty well-known film, but I had no clue that it was a musical. Sort of. There is a two-man Greek Chorus who narrate the film by song from time to time. It shouldn't work but it does mainly because one of them is Nat King Cole. Such a pleasure to see him. But unknown to everyone in the film, he was dying from lung cancer. But he could still sing.
Cat Ballou
Cat Ball-ou-ou-ou
She's mean and evil through and through
There really isn't much to the film. A strong breeze would blow it away. But it has its charms, some light-hearted humor and Jane Fonda is as fresh as newly baked cookies. She returns home to Wyoming from school in the east and finds out her father is under pressure to sell his ranch to a corporation. They have hired a professional killer. She she does too - but he turns out to be a drunk. So, she decides to rob a train. Fonda's career took off after this with Barefoot in the Park, They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Barbarella and Klute. Here she is just so darn pretty. She is teamed up with the grizzled veteran Lee Marvin. Marvin had made a career playing sadists and killers and this was a nice switch for him. Playing a drunk killer. And another killer with no nose. He is great in this - apparently, he liked his role so much that he would go to cocktail parties and recite his dialogue. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor which might seem odd as three other men in the cast have more screen time than he does. It wasn't a strong year though with his competition being:
Richard Burton in The Spy who Came from the Cold
Laurence Olivier in Othello
Rod Steiger in–The Pawnbroker
Oskar Werner – Ship of Fools
Burton should have gotten it. But Marvin gives a bravura performance. And those Hollywood cocktail parties.
Perhaps more controversial is this film's inclusion as number 10 in the AFI's Top Ten Westerns. I can't argue with most of these:
• The Searchers (1956)
• High Noon (1952)
• Shane (1953)
• Unforgiven (1992)
• Red River (1948)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
• Stagecoach (1939)
• Cat Ballou (1965)
But Cat Ballou doesn't belong in the same area code as most of these. Butch Cassidy and McCabe are also questionable in my mind. Clearly, Spaghetti Westerns are not being included but basically any Western directed by Ford, Mann, Hawks, Peckinpah or Budd Boetticher would be more deserving not to mention The Magnificent Seven, Ox Bow Incident, Tombstone, Pale Rider. But this film goes down fine.
Cat Ballou
Cat Ballou
Fonda is adorable
Through and through