It delves into the life of a failed prospector named Cable Hogue (Jason Robards) as he claws his way through the last vestiges of the American frontier. Hungry, he growls at a lizard, but the lizard explodes just as Cable is about to grab him.
From the shadows, Cable's partners Taggart (LQ Jones) and Bowen (Strother Martin) are practicing target practice with the Lizard.
It's full of biblical imagery, but also features rapid camera pans from face to cleavage and equal parts raunchy and crude humor.
As they emerged from the dust, he aimed his rifle at them. They laughed.
Cable responded: “I appreciate the humor, but I'm starting to think you guys are taking it a bit too far.”
But he hesitated to shoot them, so they beat him up and stole his gun and water.
“Cable is yellow!” they jeer, gliding along and leaving Cable to his death.
So he talks to himself (a lot, throughout the movie).
As he watched them disappear into the dust he cried through gritted teeth. “Yellow!” he cried. “Call me Yellow! Blow me dry! Sing me a song about it! Laugh at old Cable Hogue, okay? I'm out! I'm out! Don't worry about that at all! You just worry about… when I'm out.”
He continues to scream, but now he has no choice but to abandon his humiliation and wander the red rocks of Arizona. He is halfway to hell, crying out for help. And he is thirsty. The sunlight is endless in a picturesque landscape. Two days without water. So he looks up and speaks to God, promising that if he could just get a drop of water he would never sin again.
“Yes, my Lord.”
There's nothing. No water.
Day 2: No water. Just more blisters. He continues to beg for God's mercy.
Then on the fourth day, the sunlight gives way to a sandstorm that dries out completely. He collapses into the growing sand dune. “Lord, you are right. I am completely finished. Amen.”
And on this cruel death bed, water begins to pool from the ground.
And he does something that is repeated countless times by every character in the film, even the non-speaking extras: he doesn't hesitate to abandon high ideals.
In this case, he vaguely mocks his master and claims credit for his survival: “I told you I would survive. This is Cable Hogue speaking. Hogue. Me. Cable Hogue. Hogue. Me. Me. I did it. Cable Hogue. I found it. Me.”
It's a comically somber and cathartic way to start a film: like everything else we encounter, it's elusive, ever-shifting, impossible to pin down; as Cable later says, “We've found water where there was no water.”
The President's Man
Jason Robards, who plays Cable Hogue, is a fascinating character. He discovered Eugene O'Neill's work in the library of the USS Nashville, which marked the beginning of his Hollywood career. Robards played Jamie Tyrone in the film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's somber stage play, “Long Day's Journey Into Night.”
Robards spent much of the 1960s married to Lauren Bacall, but much like his character in O'Neill's masterpiece, his marriage fell apart due to his alcoholism.
In westerns, there was Doc Holliday's performance in Time of the Gun (1967), and who can forget his menacing performance in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)?
He won an Oscar for his role as Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, in All the President's Men (1976), then won another for his cold-hearted performance as detective novelist Dashiell Hammett in Julia (1977). His final film was Magnolia (1999).
When Robards died, then-President Bill Clinton issued Clinton awarded Robards the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors.
His talent is largely the reason why The Ballad of Cable Hogue exists as a thematically and emotionally complex, humorous and oddly relaxing film, soft in tone and leisurely pacing.
Bad Samaritan
“The Ballad of Cable Hogue” stars Slim Pickens and the legendary Kathleen Freeman, who has appeared in a number of blockbuster films and yelled her way through the “Blues Brothers” series.
You may also recognize Strother Martin from our entries on True Grit (1969) and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), and you may also recognize R.G. Armstrong, who played Kevin MacDonald in El Dorado (1967).
But perhaps above all else, the film is known for being the work of Sam Peckinpah.
Peckinpah is a legendary figure in film history and wild even by Hollywood standards: You get to spend some quality time with him in The Wild Bunch entries, and The Ballad of Cable Hogue is the unexpected love affair that follows.
During the 19-day shoot, he was drunk and rowdy. At one point, he fired 34 crew members. Bad weather forced the set to close, forcing the cast to go to a nearby bar. Eventually, the bill ballooned to $70,000. The film itself went $3 million over budget. The whole affair cost him his job at Warner Bros.
“Pay me your dime, you religious bastard, or I'll bury you.”
While God plays a major role in Cable's journey, so does the Devil, and many of the characters casually quote Bible verses in their dialogue, a habit that is also used as a way to expose hypocrisy, such as the impatient bank clerk on the stagecoach.
The Christian message is powerful, but playful and often unclear. Of course, sometimes it's not.
As in the introduction of Reverend Joshua Sloane, Cable surprises him and shoots off the Reverend's hat.
“Peace and good will, brother,” Reverend Sloan pleads. “I come as a friend.” Waving a white handkerchief, he adds, “Watch out, my son. I'm a man of God.”
Cable narrowed his eyes and said, “Yeah, you almost joined him.”
The sudden appearance of water recalls Jacob’s well and the overflowing of Psalm 107:35, “The Lord turns the wilderness into a pool of water, and the dry ground into a spring of water.”
Later in the film, after shooting the “priest” again, Cable roars, “What a blessing religion is, preacher! It touches my heart.”
This ironic theological undercurrent is a convenient way to boldly emphasize the ungodly elements that give the story its luster, thereby heightening the interrelationship between the sacred and the profane, as when Hogue mournfully murmurs to the banker, “I'm worth something, aren't I?”, a sorrow that is, of course, driven by his desire to meet Hildy, The Dead Dog's most highly acclaimed prostitute.
The optics are all distorted, a shoddy portrayal of heaven. Hogue's pale horse is spotted like a Dalmatian. Death is life, and life is violent.
He and the pastor discuss life from a tomb-like pit, the pastor in a white-collared clergyman's robe overseeing a “congregation” made up of photographs of nude people, presumably women.
Or how we reacted to Frank's death? That whole scene is both uncomfortable and hilarious.
After getting drunk together in the tomb, Cable and the Reverend ride to the Dead Dog, having visions of Hildy. After falling off his horse, the Reverend loosens his collar. “If I can't conjure up heaven, I'll conjure up hell.”
twist
Such fluctuations are characteristic of postmodern cinema. Nothing is as it seems. Irony abounds. Up is down and up is down, until suddenly, we are plunged into a reality so vivid that it is almost painful to experience.
“The Ballad of Cable Hogue” is full of these moments, driven by this clever surprise ploy: full of biblical imagery but also equal parts raunchy and vulgar humor, with the camera panning quickly from face to cleavage.
of Implications Gone are the depictions of prostitution, as in, say, Stagecoach (1939). Cable Hogue takes us through the stench of a chicken coop, but just as the steam begins to boil, we cut to a scene full of preachers and crosses in the middle of a sermon: “The devil is using machines to destroy you! Ask me why I know! Inventions are the work of the devil!”
This back-and-forth goes on and on; an entire fight scene between Hildy and Hogue is filled with it. As the choir sings “Let Us Gather Together at the River,” Hogue runs away from a meal with Hildy toward a big tent revival sign that reads, “Save Us, Sinners, Repent.”
And, of course, Hogue deflated his tent and fled from his backroom shenanigans with a bottle of whiskey and his trousers half on.
The townsfolk chase him off Dead Dog, and some of them think it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
Then the film suddenly changes direction and the audience is greeted with a beautiful embrace, a moment so powerful that it overwhelms the audience.
When we are absorbed in a love story, all irreverence disappears, or better yet, is purified.
Then there's a scene midway through the film when Ben (Slim Pickens) dutifully hands Cable the American flag, and you feel the emotion of each of those people, and suddenly you're in the middle of the dangerous desert with them, sweating and feeling anxious, but you're safe and free.
