IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

Writer/director Blake Edwards is best remembered for his movie comedies (The Pink Panther, The Party, 10, etc.), but his filmography actually includes films in a variety of genres, including melodrama (Days of Wine and Roses), thriller (Experiment in Terror), mystery (Gunn), and espionage (The Tamarind Seed).  He even began his screenwriting career by co-writing a couple of B-Westerns (Panhandle and Stampede).  In 1971, he returned to the Western genre to write and direct one of his most personal films, Wild Rovers.  It would end up being the only Western he would ever helm, but it is one of his finest films.

The story concerns a couple of mismatched cowboys, aging Ross Bodine (William Holden) and youth Frank Post (Ryan O’Neal), who work on the ranch of cattleman Walter Buckman (Karl Malden).  When Bodine and Post witness the random, accidental death of one of their fellow cowboys, they decide to take their fate into their own hands by robbing a bank.  While not without complications, the holdup is successful, and the pair escape with $36,000.  Cattle boss Buckman is furious that cowhands in his employ would commit the theft (which includes some of his own deposits), so he orders his sons, hot-headed John (Tom Skerritt) and even-tempered Paul (Joe Don Baker), to bring the thieves back to the ranch, come hell or high water.  The bulk of the film depicts the long, slow getaway and pursuit, which focuses on character and relationships, as opposed to action.

Wild Rovers was meant to be an epic, prestige Roadshow release, with an overture, intermission, and exit music.  However, as the film was nearing completion, there was a shakeup of studio management at MGM, and the new studio heads were concerned that the languid pace, length, and darker passages of Wild Rovers would not resonate with audiences.  They ordered the film cut by over twenty minutes, excising slower scenes and changing the ending without Edwards’ knowledge.  When Edwards saw what had been done to his film, he disowned it, feeling that the changes had cut the heart out of the movie.

Happily, in the era of home video, Edwards’ original cut was reconstructed, allowing modern audiences to re-evaluate the film in the format that the director intended.  While I have not seen the abbreviated version, I can easily understand how the cuts would have hampered the narrative.  The deliberate pace allows us to live and breathe with the characters, to understand the motivations that lead to their rash decisions, and to empathize with them as they encounter setbacks.  Without getting into spoiler territory, I also agree that changing the ending would have completely kneecapped the story.

The script and direction of Wild Rovers not only ranks with the best of Blake Edwards’ films; it stands up well against other twilight, revisionist Westerns that were being produced in the late Sixties and early Seventies.  The Panavision cinematography by Philip Lathrop captures the bright, vast landscapes and dingy, dark saloons to perfection.  And the score by Jerry Goldsmith (one of the few times Blake Edwards didn’t team with Henry Mancini) is memorably rousing.

The cast is also fantastic.  Holden, weathered beyond his 52 years, gives one of his strongest performances, and Ryan O’Neal (who can come across as bland in certain roles) brings just the right fresh-faced naivete to the part of Post.  The supporting cast is rounded out by top-notch actors with faces that have tons of character, such as Karl Malden, Joe Don Baker, Tom Skerritt, Moses Gunn, Victor French, and Alan Carney.

On multiple occasions, Blake Edwards described the original Roadshow version of Wild Rovers as his best film.  I’m not sure I’d go that far, as Victor Victoria (1982) is pretty hard to beat in terms of both story and craft.  However, Wild Rovers is a great film, a superior Western, and an overlooked gem that deserves a wider audience.

US/C-137m./Dir: Blake Edwards/Wr: Blake Edwards/Cast: William Holden, Ryan O’Neal, Karl Malden, Lynn Carlin, Tom Skerritt, Joe Don Baker, James Olson, Leora Dana, Moses Gunn, Victor French, Rachel Roberts, Sam Gilman, Alan Carney

For Fans of: If you love William Holden’s performance in The Wild Bunch (and why wouldn’t you), you are almost certain to love the more sensitive, talkative cowboy character that he portrays in Wild Rovers.

Video: The Warner Archive Collection has released Wild Rovers on Blu-ray, featuring a new remastering of the full, restored 137-minute Roadshow version, which includes all of the surviving cut footage, along with the overture, intermission card, entr’acte, and exit music.  Some scenes look beautifully sharp on Blu-ray, while others scenes are a little less so.  However, I think that the image is faithful to the original theatrical look of the film, which was intentionally hazy at times.  Fans of the film will find nothing to complain about, as the Warner Archive Blu-ray release provides the best presentation that the full, restored cut of Wild Rovers has ever received on home video.

Special features:

• “The Movie Makers” – A 12-minute featurette produced in 1971 while the movie was being filmed.  It includes behind-the-scenes footage and brief comments from Edwards, Holden, and O’Neal.
• Theatrical Trailer
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

You can purchase the Blu-ray directly from the Warner Archive or from other online retailers (Amazon link below).

Streaming: At the time of this review, Wild Rovers was not streaming through any of the major subscription services.  It is currently only available for digital rental through iTunes.

More to Explore: While the Wild Rovers (1971) is the only Western that Blake Edwards ever directed, his epic comedy The Great Race (1965) includes an amusing sequence in a Western town, including a beautifully staged barroom brawl.  In addition, Edwards teamed legendary Western lawman Wyatt Earp (James Garner) with cowboy actor Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) to solve a murder in 1929 Hollywood in his movie mystery Sunset (1988).

Trivia: The bad experience that Blake Edwards had with the MGM brass on Wild Rovers and his following film, The Carey Treatment (1972), informed the writing of his scathing satire of Hollywood, S.O.B. (1981), which is also available through the Warner Archive.

For More Info: If you are interested in more information about director Blake Edwards, his career, and his working methods, I suggest the books A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards by Sam Wassan and Blake Edwards: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series) edited by Gabriela Oldham.  Wild Rovers is also one of the 131 offbeat Westerns featured in Renegade Westerns: Movies That Shot Down Frontier Myths by Kevin Grant.