Description
Ride Lonesome, the fifth film in the "Ranown cycle," is both the best and most representative of the whole series, which has been called "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking." Director Bud Boetticher captures the alienation and loneliness of an America faced with the Cold War and the daily threat of nuclear annihilation. Shot in seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism.Veteran screenwriter Kirk Ellis brilliantly unpacks the themes, narrative, visual language, and editing in this seminal film. In Ride Lonesome Ellis not only shows how this one film embodies a turning point for the Western, but he also explores the unique vision and contributions of director Boetticher and his writing partner Burt Kennedy.
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"Loners. Drifters. Men bent on vengeance. Laconic in manner, economical in gesture, slow to anger but deadly when provoked. Begun unofficially in 1956 with Seven Men From Now, made under the auspices of John Wayne's Batjac Productions, director Budd Boettinger and actor Randolph Scott's "Ranown Cycle"would eventually encompass six films, of which Ride Lonesome is both the best, and representative of the whole cycle. Visually and aesthetically, Ride Lonesome more than justifies New York Times critic Richard T. Jameson's assessment of the entire Ranown cycle as "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking (rivaled only by Val Lewton's 1940s horror films for RKO)." Shot in a mere seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism, at once epic and austere. Running a tight 73 minutes, Boetticher turns traditional Western tropes into rituals of re-enactment and revenge"--
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