The Unforgiven

The Unforgiven of 1960 bears no resemblance to Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Unforgiven-minus-the-definite-article. The 1960 western is a bizarrely cast, beautifully photographed race- relations picture, critical of everyone and poseesing no defined point of view. But it also has Audrey Hepburn, which makes it infinitely more interesting than it ever should have been.

John Huston directs this most unusual story featuring Audrey Hepburn donning war paint, Lillian Gish hanging someone, and Burt Lancaster falling in love with his sister. I don't know what I can add to that, other than to say the whole does not add up to the sum of its parts. If such bizarre scenarios contributed to a bizarre film then we would be on to something, but this film has nothing new to say. It ends in a bloody Indian massacre, where at least fifty warriors are apparently not smart enough to figure out how to kill four white people holed up in a cabin.

Any time Audrey wanders into a western you know you're in for a strange ride. She is unbelievably miscast as an Indian raised by a white family, but if you ignore the peculiar accent and flesh-coloured skin her performance is typically terrific. And call me crazy, but she's looking more and more like Jennifer Love Hewitt every day.

I wish Burt Lancaster made more westerns. He has Vengeance Valley, The Kentuckian, and Gunfight at the OK Corral to his credit, but he had the screen presence to be every bit the gunslinger that Stewart or Cooper ever was. Maybe he was allergic to horses.

Music plays an interesting role in this film. In a rather amusing exchange, the Indians play music on flutes (?) which Lancaster explains is part of a ritual which they believe makes them bulletproof. As a rebuttle, the white-folk wheel out a baby-grand piano and Lillian Gish starts bashing out some Mozart, trying to drown out the sound of the flutes. This angers the Indians, who send out a kamikaze mission to smash the piano to smithereens. I guess this exchange is meant to symbolize the massive, irreconcilable differences which will always separate the two cultures. Art is an integral, tangible part of Native culture, while it is for the most part used as a distraction in western culture.

One wonders why a movie capable of intelligent commentary would stoop to the reprehensible lows it does. Although there is much to admire in The Unforgiven, ultimately it must be remembered as one of Huston's weakest efforts.

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