Guns in Their Hands

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1053, 30 October 1959, Page 10

Guns in Their Hands

NEW series of "western" programmes has been used on page 8 as a starting point for an examination of frontier stories, with special attention to their place in the cinema. The subject has been closely studied in recent years, sometimes by academic gentlemen in pursuit of psychological theories. It can however remain interesting in less portentous ways. Many people of good education enjoy western filmsnot perhaps with the same zest as in their youth, but with traces of the old excitement, and with additional pleasures made possible by greater care and skill in production. They are often the same people who enjoy detective stories. But do they like them for the same reasons, or even in the same way? If theories about our need to relieve inner tensions vicariously are valid, it could be argued that westerns and thrillers have similar functions and equal value. Both are built around a core of violence, and both have swift and dramatic action. Beyond these similarities, however, are some _. notable differences, Western stories have been more successful on the screen than off it. True, a huge demand exists for them as books: the market may be larger than for thrillers. Yet their appeal is mainly to the naive, whereas "detections" are popular with serious readers; and many people who like western films have no wish to read western novels. On .the screen, a frontier story gains life and colour from the background, the movement of horsemen, and the period flavour of border townships. These things are shown faithfully and clearly to an audience; but in a book they can only be sketched in lightly. To make them acceptable to the imagination, good writing is needed; and the action becomes slower as the background grows richer and wider. For these reasons, the western-as a bookhas not developed in any way comparable with the evolution of the thriller. Writers may have become more skilful, but only in tightening the plot and making the dialogue suitably laconic. They remain tied to the stock characters

and situations; and outside the cinema, away from the magnificent landscapes, these properties can appeal only to ingenuous readers, Detective stories have moved in a different direction. They had literary value from the beginning, and their appeal has always been more intellectual, though for a time they were in danger of losing subtlety under the influence of the cinema. The patient unravelling of clues, an agreeable exercise in,an armchair, can be tedious in a theatre. Emphasis began to move from mystery to violence, and the violence had to be sustained to a shattering climax if audiences were to be sent home satisfied. Writers were soon competing with the cinema. Yet even the tough school remained literary, and some of the most robust Americans were more skilful than they seemed: the racy dialogue and a prose made lean for action had their influence in wider reaches of the novel. Inevitably, some of them went too far, cynically exploiting a demand for excitements in which sex and cruelty are closely related. But there was always someone trying to write a good thriller, and the range of material began to widen. The western is archaic; it tries to keep alive a brief chapter of American history which has the romantic interest of horses, gun-play, and the open range. Ingenious efforts have been made to deepen the interest by transferring some of our psychological difficulties to an earlier and uncomplicated setting. But the possibilities become fewer, and must still depend on a limited number of stock characters-sheriffs, ranchers, cow-punchers, gamblers, dancing girls and so on. The thriller, reaching out for variety and richness, can draw upon the changing life of the city, and in doing so can move with the times, As writers feel their way to new perspectives, the story of crime and suspense becomes increasingly a story about ple. The best thrillers today have living characters, and situations which could be interesting without corpses. They hold their readers because they have both action and character, and are therefore in the main stream of story-telling. It is possible, if the present trend continues, that themes of crime and punishment will cease to belong to a separate genre. If that happens, however, the isolation of murder as a subject for fiction may be a literary phenomenon of interest to our descendants long after the last western has been filmed and

forgotten.

M.H.

H.