The following notes on Sam Peckinpah’s The Battle of Cable Hogue were written by Josh Martin, PhD student in the Department of Communication Arts at UW – Madison. Cable Hogue screens in an original Technicolor release print from the Chicago Film Society on Saturday, March 15, part of our Centennial salute to Peckinpah. The screening begins at 7 p.m. at 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. Admission is Free!
By Josh Martin
In 1969, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch violently disemboweled the classical Western, destabilizing the genre and leaving a trail of gore and guts in its wake. Enabled by the collapse of the strict Hollywood Production Code and the genre’s own tentative dabbling with revisionism throughout the 1960s, the man colloquially known as “Bloody Sam” crafted a new vision of what the contemporary Western could be, littered with ruthless anti-heroes and detonated squibs of blood. After making such a key film in Hollywood’s period of reinvention, how could Peckinpah follow up this landmark?
In the opening minutes of The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), which debuted nine months after his Oscar-nominated sensation, it appears that we might be in for a similarly unforgiving experience. The film begins with an image of a large lizard, crawling around on a rock. Seconds later, the poor devil is obliterated by a gunshot, much to the surprise of Cable Hogue (Jason Robards), our rapscallion protagonist. The shot was fired by one of Hogue’s ne’er-do-well compatriots, who reveal their malicious plot to steal his mule and horse, leaving him to die in the desert. The helpless Hogue begs them to leave him just a little something to keep him alive, but they refuse, simply riding off into the distance. Peckinpah cuts to a shot of the landscape as Hogue confronts his near-apocalyptic Mojave surroundings: desolate emptiness, with no water or civilization in sight. In contrast to the abrupt demises in Peckinpah’s previous film, Cable Hogue seems fated to confront a more protracted, yet no less brutal, end.
However, the bleak finality of Cable Hogue’s opening scene almost immediately gives way to an unexpected tone, a wistful sense of play that is firmly at odds with our Peckinpah priors. The guitar strumming in Jerry Goldsmith & Richard Gillis’ song, “Tomorrow is the Song I Sing,” emerges in conjunction with the title card; suddenly, Peckinpah offers more dynamic experimentation with split-screen frames that showcase his hero’s travails through the desert. During this montage, Hogue occasionally offers comic commentary in his own sly, self-aware manner. “Ain’t had no water since yesterday, Lord,” the parched Hogue muses to the sky, “getting a little thirsty… Just thought I’d mention it.” Yet he keeps trudging along in the desert, hoping for a miracle.
After four long days without refreshment, salvation – spiritual, financial, and corporeal – eventually arrives when Hogue discovers water on the wagon route. Thrilled by his unexpected finding, the wily-but-illiterate Hogue transforms into a shrewd businessman, acquiring the deed for this little patch of land known as Jackass Flats, once thought barren but now constructed into Cable Springs, a key outpost for travelers headed west. Hogue has two key allies as he embarks on this new venture: the Reverend Joshua (David Warner), a lascivious phony who uses his purported godliness to prey on women, and Hildy (Stella Stevens), a sex worker who becomes Hogue’s great love. His relationship with the latter forms, in many ways, the crux of the narrative, with a testy flirtation growing into a genuine sense of companionship. If the lighter tone is the film’s defining quality, such warmth is embodied by Robards and Stevens’ respective turns, the perfect pair for a more emotionally resonant rendition of Peckinpah’s style.
It has become old hat to suggest that a Peckinpah film is unjustly overlooked, with everything from the revenge tragedy Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) to the recently reconstructed Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) receiving later praise and canonization. Cable Hogue is surely no exception – yet it still retains some of its sparkle as the hidden gem of Peckinpah’s filmography. Part of the film’s historical neglect can be attributed to its tumultuous production. In Garner Simmons’ Peckinpah: A Portrait in Motion, he offers a robust chronicle of on-set nightmares based on interviews with key personnel involved. Produced by Phil Feldman at Warner Bros., the film was shot in the early months of 1969 while editing on Wild Bunch was finalized. Filming in the Valley of Fire in Nevada posed immediate problems, with “overcast” environments forcing delays. To make matters worse, several individuals within the cast and crew simultaneously fell ill with influenza and pneumonia. Well, at least those who weren’t fired: Peckinpah also infamously dismissed several key crew members (or deputized others to do the firing for him).
Even more pertinently, the production woes overlapped with regime pivots at Warner Bros., as David Weddle notes in his robust volume on Peckinpah’s films. With Ted Ashley and John Calley now in charge and uninterested in collaborating with the volatile Peckinpah, the studio functionally abandoned Cable Hogue, tossing it “into second-rate theaters with barely a ripple of publicity.” Put in particularly direct terms by Stella Stevens to Weddle: “Warner Bros. didn’t release it. They flushed it.” The film’s botched release seemed to weigh heavily on Peckinpah. “It was really a shame,” Peckinpah recalled to Simmons, “Cable Hogue is possibly my best film. A real love story. I am always criticized for putting violence in my films, but it seems that when I leave it out nobody bothers to see the picture.”
Despite the sense of financial failure and personal disappointment that clouded the film’s aftermath, reviews were by no means unkind. Many critics expressed fondness for the tonal shift in Peckinpah’s approach: Roger Ebert called it a “comic tale we didn’t quite expect from a director who seems more at home with violence than with humor.” Such affection for a more playful Peckinpah continues to endure: in a retrospective review, Dave Kehr noted the film’s affinities with The Wild Bunch (the times they are-a-changin’, indeed) but similarly praised the “soft, regretful mode.”
Though Peckinpah and his cast indulge this sweet and earnest romance, laced with zany detours, the film retains the no-nonsense attitude of its protagonist. As the conclusion nears, technology makes a sudden incursion in the Western landscape, with a car driving through the dust and dirt as the awestruck characters watch on, befuddled. Cable, upon seeing the vehicle, instantly realizes there’s no need for the wagon route any longer, that time is passing him by. Yet in The Ballad of Cable Hogue, the changing times are not a prompt for bloody revenge or a mournful lament. Instead, our easy-going protagonist can only respond with acceptance: “Well,” Cable sighs, “that’s gonna be the next fella’s worry.” Whether asking God for a drop of water to survive or shrugging off the crumbling of his beloved “ways of living,” Cable stays witty and indefatigable until the bitter end. It is an attitude of endurance and defiance that colors Peckinpah’s most idiosyncratic achievement, a film that continues to find new audiences appreciative of its unexpected charms.