La Kermesse de l'Ouest

Is the movie great? No, but it is a good one. If it were great, it would not suffer from it's long running time. A wider audience would no doubt warm to a shorter version. More is the pity, too, because the movie has much to offer. The scenery is beautiful; the sets reconstructions are first rate. Listen to the lyrics of some of the songs ('Gold Fever' and 'The First Thing You Know' are two good examples) and you can appreciate the wordsmithing skill of Alan Jay Lerner. If you like a large all-male chorus, the film offers some of the best singing of that kind you are likely to hear. Listen especially during 'There's a Coach Coming In'.

I must confess a guilty admiration for characters who are unapologetically amoral and corrupt, at least as defined by 'respectable society'. I wouldn't necessarily want one for a neighbor or even a friend (well .. maybe), but they are fascinating on film or stage. If the film is a comedy, they can be hilarious and often steal the show. All you need is the right actor to fill the role. Paint Your Wagon offers one of the most uproariously amoral characters on film, brought to amazing life by Lee Marvin. He delivers Ben Rumson's imminently quotable home-spun philosophy of life with great relish and comedic timing. Can he sing? No. But then would a somewhat dissipated Gold Rush miner likely be a good singer? His non-singing actually fits.

The rest of the cast is good but not exceptional. Ray Walston is memorable as Mad Jack. I still find it hard to spot the actor I am used to behind the beard and accent. He also has some great lines. Harve Presnell is the only truly major-league singer in the cast and delivers the most memorable song. The remaining actors are adequate. Eastwood is good but replaceable. Jean Seaberg is not Meryl Streep but is certainly easy on the eyes. The townsfolk are solid.

An enjoyable movie, with Lee Marvin's performance worth the price of admission. It is too bad it requires such a long time commitment to experience it all.

paint your wagon is, in a lot of ways, the end of an era that I cherished the most (my teen years) the musicals were always there as a kid even though I didn't really like them in the fifties (except 7 brides) ....but there is something about the orchestration of those musical movies that sounded so similar....and true to its genre, paint your wagon's soundtrack had a timecapsuled, nostalgic feel reminiscent of those bygone days when musicals ruled.....the negative rap on this film is probably due to the timing of its release...the Vietnam war was hot and perhaps people couldn't accept its bawdy comedy and musical theme....even though it should have been a perfect escape type film...it is considered a major flop....like some others that took on an afterlife that superseded its theatrical run...word of mouth finds favor with the film in almost all venues....except some of the reviews I've read recently.

I love the depth of the dialogue and the nitty gritty reality of the mindsets of those prospectors who took from life what they needed and created their own utopian world (or tried to)...and ironically were sad (inside)even though there was uproarious drinking and carousing...which characterizes man self destructive nature when left to himself to do as he pleases...not unlike ancient rome.

lee marvin played the lead role so well...it was almost as if it had been written for him...even surpassing his clever coolness of a similar character "a #1" (emperor of the north...a film about the great depression hobos)

in paint your wagon so much of man's delemia is characterized in dialogue about growing up, doing what feels good, and paying the price for such behavior later.....the grim reminder of man's struggle with his own self can best be shown in the scene with ben rumson as he takes an assessment of his life in a few brief words to holmbrook (the mediator)...."there are two kinds of people....them going somewhere and them going nowhere....I'm an exodus to nowhere....sometimes I get mighty homesick"....then you hear the profound lyrics to the song "born under a wander star" where even the most blessed place one can get will never be satisfying enough to make these kinds of folk want to stay.

another heady piece is the scene with clint singing "gold fever" and how greed will turn people into a total different character from what they were before the fever hit....

this movie has a lot of heavy thoughts and depth even though it is a great comedy film...it's the reason it is my favorite movie of all times....really cool characters....outrageous comedy....mind provoking dialogue...and a nostalgic soundtrack that will take you back to the fifties....

as for the bad rap on lee marvins singing...just how great would those songs have come off if he had had an operatic baritone with perfect pitch?...in a word...fake.

Joshua Logan's screen version of "Paint your wagon" works a treat, perhaps because the original stage version is so little known and apparently has been given something of a make-over by screen writer Paddy Chayefsky. The fact that the leads (Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg) can't sing matters not a jot; they perform with charisma, (even Seberg is less wan than usual) and bring a touch of realism to the proceedings, their songs seeming to evolve naturally from the action. Other singing duties are performed by the splendid Harve Presnell and a rousing, mostly male, chorus for this is a musical western of a more robust kind than "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". It's plot, which concerns mining for gold, polygamy and the building of a town, fairly races along. Logan handles the whole thing with great aplomb and brings to it some nice, naturalistic touches sadly lacking from his earlier musicals, "South Pacific" and "Camelot". Most critics didn't warm to it, though and it remains largely under-valued.

I once heard a critic state any movie where Clint Eastwood sings should be rated for violence. He must have never actually listened to this movie. Clint may not be the best voice in the cast but he is surely not the worst. As a young man he has a pleasant "everyman" kind of voice I ENJOY. And in addition to that this an outrageously funny and moving movie.

If you're a stuck up type that can't stand any form of irreverence, stay far far away from "Paint Your Wagon".

However, if you have any sense of humor at all and can stand to see fun poked at any and every fixture of polite society, "Paint Your Wagon" is a riot.

Although the movie is a musical, the story and the comedy are the main draws here. In my mind, the teenage farm boy telling his parents, "Unless you've had a strong drink of whiskey and a good cigar, you're missing the 2nd and 3rd best things in life", is one of the funniest lines delivered in a movie, certainly one of the most memorable if you've seen this film.

Lee Marvin is at his best as an unashamed hedonist. On a serious note, the writing of his role and his performance thereof helped me learn to take a good look at both sides of things. Society's status quo might often make sense, but not always. ;-) The modern cliché "Thinking outside the box" applies to this story in spades!