The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher
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Synopsis
The five briskly entertaining, vividly performed westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and strapping star Randolph Scott in the second half of the 1950s transcend their B-movie origins to become rich, unexpectedly profound explorations of loyalty, greed, honor, and revenge. Often grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) and colorfully scripted by Burt Kennedy and Charles Lang, these films seem to unfold in a world unto themselves, staking a claim between traditional westerns and the subversive genre revisionism of the 1960s—and representing the crowning achievement of the underappreciated auteur Boetticher.
Picture 9/10
The Criterion Collection’s latest box set, The Ranown Westerns, presents five films from Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott: The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone (all three shown in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1), Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station (both in the ratio of 2.39:1). The films are delivered in 4K 2160p/24hz ultra high-definition with Dolby Vision over three UHD discs, The Tall T on a BD-66 disc, the other four spread equally over two BD-100 discs. The set also includes two standard dual-layer Blu-ray discs presenting the films in 1080p/24hz. All five films were restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Entertainment and were primarily taken from scans of the 35mm original camera negative.
The 4K presentations look extraordinary, far surpassing any expectations I may have already laid out beforehand. All five films look vibrant and sharp, rendering an incredible level of detail within every frame, right down to the pebbles in the barren landscapes that appear throughout each film. The fine film grain is also rendered cleanly across the films, retaining a clean, natural look.
HDR and Dolby Vision further enhance the presentations, helping pull out more details in the landscape and from the clouds that occasionally appear in the open sky. Shadows that appear on daylit landscapes look brilliant, with a clear division from light to dark, and foreground silhouettes remain deep and dark against the brighter backgrounds. Textures look cleaner (leather vests and the like look natural), smoke and dust are rendered perfectly, and the light reflecting off metallic surfaces and water looks sharp. It all looks just marvelous.
The wider contrast also helps with those pesky day-for-night shots, which usually look off on home video. Though the sequences are still very dark (and still obviously day-for-night), the finer details don’t get lost or crushed out in the shadows. The image is effortless to see, and some nice highlights help further distinguish things. On the other hand, the standard high-definition presentations found on the accompanying Blu-rays don’t handle these scenes as well, with blacks still getting a bit heavy and erasing those fine details found in the 4K presentations, leading to a far flatter-looking image.
Outside of that, the high-definition presentations still look excellent: they’re sharp and clean with decent range and impressive detail. The encodes are fine, though grain can sometimes look buzzy against the sky and some landscapes. That said, these presentations still provide a sharp improvement over Indicator’s, which were sourced from older masters. The 4K presentations blow both high-def ones away, in any case.
All five films have also been cleaned up significantly, and I don’t recall any notable or significant issues. The only things that do impact the presentations are credits and some of the transitions between scenes, which have more than likely been sourced from another print. The jump between sources is pronounced (and this holds true with Indicator’s as well), but this is to be expected and not a significant concern in the end. The 4K presentations look brilliant otherwise, and they’re about as perfect as I think can be expected.
Blu-rays: 8/10, 4K UHDs: 9/10
Audio 7/10
All five films have been given lossless single-channel PCM monaural soundtracks. They all sound great, showing impressive range and fidelity, and filtering doesn’t sound to be an issue. There can be some background noise, and some of the music may come off a bit edgy here and there, but the soundtracks are clean otherwise, with no heavy or significant damage present. They all sound great, their age not presenting any issue.
Extras 8/10
This release has the potential to be my favorite release of the year, just on presentations alone, but if the set disappoints in one area, it’s in the area of supplements. They fall far short of Indicator’s releases, which were jam-packed with new academic material, and Criterion has only produced one new feature for this edition: a new interview with film critic Farran Nehme Smith, found on the third standard Blu-ray hosting the bulk of the set’s supplements. Smith’s contribution provides the sole overview of actor Randolph Scott, and she does a fantastic job walking us through his career with a focus on his Westerns and Ranown work. She even takes the time to highlight his range as a performer, bringing up his comedies, roles where he was a romantic lead, and the films he did with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. At only 26 minutes, it’s admittedly not a complete piece on the actor, but as an introduction to Scott’s work, it’s excellent.
The remaining material is all archival in nature, dug up from the archives, or ported over from other editions of the film. When it comes to director Budd Boetticher Criterion has found a wealth of material, including the 84-minute documentary Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That, which initially appeared on Sony’s 2008 DVD box set. Narrated by Ed Harris, the documentary covers the expected ground, going over his early life before looking at how he got into the film industry and eventually became a director. It digs up archival interviews with the filmmaker (some of which appear in full in the supplements), provides new ones with those that knew or worked with him (Clint Eastwood and Taylor Hackford included), or just admired his work (like Quentin Tarantino), and looks at his body of work before sadly falling out of favor with Hollywood (and spending time in a Mexican jail, which gets covered in-depth elsewhere in the release).
It is a solid profile of the man, though it only touches the surface, especially regarding his passion for (and aversion to) bullfighting. That particular topic receives its focus in Budd Boetticher: A Study in Self-Determination, a 60-minute interview with the director conducted by Hackford in 1971. His film work comes up (including his last film, A Time for Dying), but as mentioned, the focus is placed on how he discovered bullfighting and trained, even providing demonstrations for moves sans bull. This is also where he gets into more detail about his failed film involving bullfighter Carlos Arruza and how he came to find himself broke in Mexico (apparently, he had $16 to his name) and eventually in jail.
It's an incredibly engaging interview, with Boetticher being very forthcoming with a good sense of humor, and that carries on to another interview with the director conducted in 1995 for an episode of the French television program Cinéma de notre temps. Apparently, Boetticher was hesitant to do the interview at first, but he eventually takes his guests to see some of the locations he used for his films and then talks to them about his work and his popularity in France. At the time, he was also working on a new film, A Horse for Mr. Barnum (the production of which eventually fell apart following Warner Bros. pulling back financing), and he talks a little about that. His wife Mary and actor Robert Stack—who appeared in his first hit, The Bullfighter and the Lady—even pop up to talk about him. A standout moment, though, is when the director, in a very straightforward manner, talks about how he directs and how he was entirely self-taught, seeming offended by the suggestion he learned from John Ford (though it’s pointed out constantly throughout the features the two were friends, despite Ford being the one that cut 42 minutes out of Bullfighter). Annoyingly, many clips from the Ranown films are shown on a portable television for some “stylistic” reason, but the meat of the episode is terrific.
The archival interviews don’t end there, however. There is a 63-minute audio recording from a Q&A session between him and Jim Kitses (audio only), following what sounds to have been a screening of his work. It does cover some of the same ground covered in the other features, but he talks more about how much he enjoyed working with Randolph Scott (or “Randy” as he calls him), and he takes some great questions near the end, even bringing up some of his favorite films and filmmakers. Interestingly, one of his favorite films is Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, which he claims taught him a lot and affectionately calls a “Western” in spirit. Following that are excerpts from interviews filmed for the unfinished documentary Visiting Budd Boetticher, where the director again talks about his work but gets a bit more into his earlier work before sharing his thoughts on how filmmaking has changed now that there are schools that teach it. At the same time, television makes it easier for newcomers to see older films. Altogether the interviews run for 37 minutes.
All of this material can be found on the included bonus disc, but Criterion also includes film-specific supplements that have been spread out across the other discs with their respective films. That includes three audio commentaries carried over from the Sony DVDs: one by Jeanine Basinger for The Tall T, another by Jeremy Arnold for Ride Lonesome, and then finally, one for Comanche Station by Taylor Hackford. Hackford’s is fine but ends up being more like an appreciation than an academic track, with the filmmaker/producer talking about Boetticher’s style and the film’s strengths when it comes to writing and dialogue. As an “appreciation,” it’s perfectly fine, but I preferred the other two tracks, Basinger’s probably being the stronger one. She does an admirable job in examining the story structure of The Tall T (which can also carry on to the other films), Boetticher’s style, and the complexity of the characters, none of which is impacted by the short running times for the movies (all are 80 minutes or less).
The tracks can be found on both the 4K discs and the standard Blu-rays, but the remaining features are only found on the Blu-ray discs for the 1080p presentations of the films. This includes a trailer for each film, and then 2008 introductions for all of the films—except Comanche Station—featuring Martin Scorsese (for The Tall T and Ride Lonesome) and Hackford (for Buchanan Rides Alone and Decision at Sundown) talking about the respective films’ strengths. The Sony DVD set (and Indicator’s Blu-ray set) also featured an introduction to Comanche Station by Clint Eastwood, which is oddly missing from this edition. In its place, Criterion includes the Super 8 version of the film. Sold for home viewing purposes (before home video), the Super 8 version is cut down to fit on one reel for a running time of 16 minutes. A third of it is spent on the opening sequence (with narration filling in holes) before quickly moving on to setting up Claude Akins’ scheme and drawing to the film’s conclusion. As with other Super 8 versions, it proves to be more of an interesting curiosity than anything else, but I do get a kick out of these (Indicator has been especially good at including these on their releases).
The set then closes with a 32-page booklet featuring a synopsis for each film, an essay on the Ranown Cycle by Tom Gunning, and an article on the film’s villains written by Glenn Kenny.
In the end, Criterion’s set delivers a solid set of supplements; it just ends up being a bit underwhelming due to the lack of new academic material outside of Smith’s contribution.
Closing
Despite the supplements leaving much to be desired, I have no doubt Criterion’s new set will be one of my favorite releases this year, all thanks to the new 4K presentations.
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