MOVIE CHRONICLE
193
could he want to "get ahead" to? By the time we see him, he is already
"there": he can ride a horse faultlessly, keep his countenance in the
face of death, and draw his gun a little faster and shoot it a little
straighter than anyone he is likely to meet. These are sharply defined
acquirements, giving to the figure of the Westerner an apparent moral
clarity which corresponds to the clarity of his physical image against his
bare landscape; initially, at any rate, the Western movie presents itself
as being without mystery, its whole universe comprehended in what we
see on the screen.
Much of this apparent simplicity arises directly from those "cin–
ematic" elements which have long been understood to give the Western
theme its special appropriateness for the movies : the wide expanses of
land, the free movement of men on horses. As guns constitute the
visible moral center of the Western movie, suggesting continually the
possibility of violence, so land and horses represent the movie's material
basis, its sphere of action. But the land and the horses have also a moral
significance: the physical freedom they represent belongs to the moral
"openness" of the West-corresponding to the fact that guns are carried
where they can be seen. (And, as we shall see, the character of land
and horses changes as the Western film becomes more complex.)
The gangster's world is less open, and his arts not so easily identi–
fiable as the Westerner's. Perhaps he too can keep his countenance, but
the mask he wears is really no mask: its purpose is precisely to make
evident the fact that he desperately wants to "get ahead" and will stop
at nothing. Where the Westerner imposes himself by the appearance of
unshakable control, the gangster's pre-eminence lies in the suggestion
that he may at any moment lose control; his strength is not in being able
to shoot faster or straighter than others, but in being more willing to
shoot. "Do it first," says Scarface expounding his mode of operation,
"and keep on doing it!" With the Westerner, it is a crucial point of
honor
not
to "do it first"; his gun remains in its holster until the moment
of combat.
There is no suggestion, however, that he draws the gun reluctantly.
The Westerner could not fulfill himself if the moment did not finally
come when he can shoot his enemy down. But because that moment is
so thoroughly the expression of his being, it must be kept pure. He will
not violate the accepted forms of combat though by doing so he could
save a city. And he can wait. "When you call me that-smile!"-the
villain smiles weakly, soon he is laughing with horrible joviality, and
the crisis is past. But it is allowed to pass because it must come again:
sooner or later Trampas will "make his play," and the Virginian will
be ready for him.
