OK, I love film noir, but I have to confess that prior to
Criterion's announcement of
Ride the Pink Horse I had never heard of it. Shame on me. As of last night, that mistake has been remedied. There is a line of dialogue early on where the moll of a New Mexican gangster, referring to the anti-hero lead character played by Robert Montgomery, says "I'm afraid that Mr. Gagin cannot be seduced". I can attest that the same assessment does not apply to this film.
Ride the Pink Horse seduces, wraps itself around you, pulls you in, and does not let you go. Welcome to film noir done Southwestern style, and I am here to tell you, amigos, this dark little tale of money, murder, and mayhem, as well as a haunted man accidentally rediscovering his humanity, is
muy muy bueno.
We know we are in for a different noir experience right from the opening credits, when we see a bus approaching the camera along a panoramic New Mexican highway to the uplifting strains of Latin-infused orchestral music. Robert Montgomery does double duty here as star and director, and he handles both roles superbly. Prior to this film, I only knew Montgomery as the father of Elizabeth Montgomery, future star of classic 1960’s sitcom Bewitched. Here, Montgomery plays a disillusioned tough-as-nails WWII vet named Gagin on a mission to find a New Mexico ganglord named Frank Hugo. What that mission is doesn’t become clear until later in the film. The bus deposits Gagin in a city named San Pablo (a fictional name representing most likely Santa Fe). The air surrounding him is electric, filled with music and laughter as hordes of tourists flock the streets to celebrate the annual Fiesta, all of which appears lost on Gagin.
Gagin comes out of nowhere and remains a mystery, what we see is what we get…..a lot of anger and rude behavior with little indication of his background, where he came from or where he is going. All we know is that he had a war buddy best friend who is now dead, and that somehow Hugo is involved. As the film proceeds, he comes into contact with the local New Mexican culture and his softer side begins to appear. He is befriended by Pancho, the poor operator of an antique carousel, played outstandingly by Thomas Gomez whose performance in this role earned him the first ever Oscar nomination for a Hispanic American. Another local who crosses paths with Gagin and proves integral to the story is a girl named Pila (an 18-year old Wanda Hendrix, future wife of Audie Murphy), a Native American from a pueblo many miles away who has recently moved to San Pablo and is experiencing the big city for the first time. As it turns out, this dichotomy of Gagin’s character - one foot in the world of the Anglos where gangsters, dreams of money as the ticket to the good life, and the increasing threat of violence are ever present, and the other in the easy-going culture of New Mexican Hispanics and Native Americans where, as movingly explained by Pancho, friendship is more important than money and that as long as a man has his pride and strong back there is no shame in being poor – becomes one of the central themes of the film.
What makes
Ride the Pink Horse so watchable is how it doesn’t play to expectations. Just when we think we understand what is about to happen, the film goes in unexpected directions. There is a lot of symbolism in the story, represented most obviously by the fairy tale world of Pancho’s old carousel going round and round with its assortment of multi-colored horses (or so we are told; it is a black and white film after all), one of which is pink. There is a key scene when, after a night of drinking in a local saloon, Gagin convinces Pancho to open his carousel after-hours so that Pila can experience a childhood thrill for the first time in her life. The meaning of this small kindness represents something deeper that only becomes clear later. Gagin is experiencing new things too; we learn that he suffers from post-traumatic stress from years spent fighting in the steaming jungles of the South Pacific, that he still carries the war in him and is doing battle with himself as much as with the outside world, and that cervezas and tequilas with friendly locals can lead an angry man down paths he never thought for himself to travel.
The viewer is never sure where things will go and therefore the story creates the suspense that anything can happen at any moment. We get the distinct feeling a part of Gagin died in those jungles of his past. He is damn tough, as events will reveal, but is that enough? Is Gagin in over his head? Is he a walking corpse and just doesn’t know it? Is the FBI agent hanging out on the periphery of events more than just a kindly older fella watching everyone else? What is the meaning of a check Gagin places in a bus station locker at the beginning of the film? What is Hugo's angle, an oddity of a mob boss with a gift for smooth talk and a hearing aid? Is Hugo’s moll Marjorie a kept woman looking for a way out, and what does it mean for Pila, who attaches herself to Gagin like a lost puppy and in one of the film’s eerie moments gives him a talisman to protect him because she has had a vision of his pale dead face?
Ride the Pink Horse is a multi-layered story as deadly as any classic noir, and yet has something uplifting in its fabric like the effigy of the god of bad luck burned at the climax of the Fiesta, a road to rebirth and redemption that isn’t clearly marked, either a ticket to hell or a way out that may be just beyond reach. As usual,
Criterion has done a masterful job with the transfer of a black and white film that, for many years, was apparently not easy to find. The cinematography by Russell Metty is outstandingly stylish and evocative, with Gagin often shot over-the-shoulder and some scenes done in one long continuous take that accentuates the menace of the moment. In one chilling scene, a brutal beating is witnessed from the point of view of children riding the carousel; the viewer is therefore a trapped witness, circling repeatedly past the violence and unable to get off. If the name Russell Metty doesn’t ring any bells, then a partial sampling of his many other films will give you some idea of what to expect here, films like
Touch of Evil,
Magnificent Obsession,
Written in the Wind,
Arch of Triumph,
Spartacus, and
The Misfits. And what great noir would be complete without some chewy dialogue so important to driving the narrative.
Ride the Pink Horse has lots of that. Gagin delivers a particularly juicy monologue on the evils of women wearing diamonds, who are man-traps and have “a dead fish where her heart ought to be”. I could watch this film over and over just to relish the well written screenplay and roll around in all that dialogue like a man on a bed full of money. Wearing a fedora, of course. As it should be.
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