Hearts of the West

This film is pure and timeless gold, as out of character with its time as it is with present times. Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, Blythe Danner and Andy Griffith are perfectly cast in a comedy that spoofs both American innocence and American cynicism about that innocence. If "The Great Gatsby" is a classic story of the American Dream gone wrong, "Hearts of the West" is a classic rendering of the American Dream gone right in spite of itself.

This film is deceptively artful (e.g., the coherence provided by the leitmotif of the bad guys' increasingly dusty and dented automobile). Its "simplicity" is the "simplicity" of all great comedy, which deals with the essences as well as the particular manifestations of situations. (Moliere would have liked this one!) It's a film that makes you want to rewind it immediately and watch it again.

Five minutes into "Hearts of the West," I decided I had to own a copy. Funny, redemptive, and to be watched again and again. The laughs will not stale.

What I wonder is this: did Howard Zieff also intend it as a critique of the mindset and films of the mid-seventies? Because it is that.

Don't miss this one. It will brighten even the dreariest day!

This is one of the best of 1975 without a lot of heavy issues. It's about innocence and the American Dream with the perfect guy in the lead - a young Jeff Bridges. Alan Arkin is the perfect uptight East Coast director in Hollywood and the lovely Blythe Danner shows qualities that her daughter became famous for. Zieff's film Slither with James Caan is also very much underrated. Andy Griffith is well-cast for only the second time (A Face in the Crowd being the other) and Donald Pleasance is an added treasure, all too briefly.

If you're in a normal mood this is the movie for you. A definite 8 out of 10 and nobody's seen it.

"Hearts of the West" is not a great film...but it is interesting and fun. And it looks nothing like any other film I've seen!

The story begins in the Midwest in the early 1930s. Lewis Tater (Jeff Bridges) is an incredibly naive and dim young man who wants to write western novels. So he does what any naive person would do in this situation...he enrolls in a correspondence school for western fiction writers! It is hard to imagine such a specific program could exist...and it's not surprising that it's all a scam. But as I said, he is naive and dim and decides to travel to Nevada to see the school in person...and it turns out to be just a mailbox. But he does end up meeting with the two scumbags behind the scam...and they turn out to be very violent jerks who chase him into the desert. In the process, Tater wanders onto a movie shoot...with cowboys! Where does it go from there? See the film and find out for yourself.

The film is light and enjoyable...and not especially believable. But as I said, it's enjoyable and a nice homage to the B-westerns of the era.

The mid-70's saw a misguided false nostalgia for early Hollywood. I'd like to think it was on account of the last few octogenarian (and up) moguls dying off (Samuel Goldwyn died at 94 in '74, Jack L. Warner passed in the fall of '78 at 86, Darryl F. Zanuck, ill with Alzheimer's, dying in '79) and that the younger turks sensed something. Unfortunately what spewed forth was mostly crap: Gable and Lombard, W.C. Fields and Me, the dull interpretations of The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, and the cinematic nadir: Won Ton Ton the Dog that Saved Hollywood... a film so utterly awful that they must've thought Rin Tin Tin would sue. Nickelodeon belongs in there somewhere too. But along the way there were a few minor gems, namely, underrated The Day of the Locust (particularly for Burgess Meredith's performance) and Hearts of the West, which I saw in a theater in Portland it's brief release. I don't think it rated a week's screen time. Inarguably, the plot's thin stuff, but Jeff Bridges' Lewis Tater ranks as his best pre-Starman turn as an actor. He took naiveté to an entirely new plateau. Andy Griffith delivers a nice performance as an amiable, if duplicitous character actor who's descended into a life in poverty row oaters. The then-50-year old Griffith had just recovered from a serious medical condition and hadn't been seen in a feature film since a 1969 flop, Angel in My Pocket. Griffith here is far, far removed from anyone's image of Sheriff Andy Taylor. The supporting cast is superb, especially Alan Arkin who captures the essential cheapness of a Gower Gulch producer/director... he seems to be based on Mascot's Nat Levine. Don't look for the picture to go much of anywhere, just enjoy the ride. I liken the experience very similar to 1982's Cannery Row; you know you've seen better pictures, but you never somehow enjoyed one more and you don't exactly know why.

What a likable farm galoot Jeff Bridges makes. His Lewis Tater wants to be a Western writer and by golly neither pursuing crooks, nor double-crossing buddies, nor phony correspondence schools are going to stop him. Like his literary alter-ego The Kid, he's just too eager to get discouraged. Across burning deserts and thundering hoofs, he soldiers on toward fame and fortune and Hollywood and Vine.

And what a hoot his purple prose is. Like an amiable Walter Mitty, minor events get spun into major events for "The Kid" in such deathless passages as, "Twirling, The Kid fired with all he had into the phantom riders", or " A Colt in either hand, he scattered lead at the retreating dust."

What a great sleeper movie this is, thanks to the comical Bridges and some unerring light touches. Take for example the cheap Western they're filming. Catch how a groaning Lewis steps on the big romantic clinch, or how his curtain-chewing death throes put the director (Arkin) into a murderous tizzy. But I especially like that awkward little turn on the sidewalk where he brushes against the potted palm and wins the affection of Miss Trout (Danner).

The movie's also a telling look at the making of matinée Westerns, a staple of kids' viewing in the 1930's and 40's. As a former Front Row kid, I viewed those parts with mixed emotions. I guess I still want those guys to be real cowboys and not the shrewd businessmen-actors they likely were.

Anyhow, in my little book, this is a little gem from beginning to end, with scarcely a misstep along the way. It never ceases to amaze me that the Hollywood-bred Bridges (his dad was veteran actor Lloyd Bridges) can play such a convincing hayseed, but he can. Speaking of hayseeds, watch for a very unMayberry Andy Griffith, again showing what a fine, versatile actor he is. I'm just sorry this style of clever low-key comedy has given way to today's frantic bathroom kind. Maybe Hollywood needs to hire more Lewis Tater's, after all.