Monte Walsh

The winter has just ended when Monte Walsh (Lee Marvin) and his buddy Chet (Jack Palance) return from a job. Back home, many ranches turn out to have closed down because of the extreme cold and the other ranches have been sold to a large cattle company back east. There is unemployment all around, but Monte doesn’t see many problems yet. It is only when an old friend commits suicide, cow hands are sacked everywhere and, in addition, his love from the saloon, Martine (Jeanne Moreau), is fired and gets a job as dishwasher 30 miles away, that the truth begins to dawn on him. Then Chet also stops working cattle and starts a tool business.Despite this misery, Monte Walsh is not a depressing film. There is plenty of room for humour and the two men’s comradeship. The characters do not succumb to the difficult conditions but carry on ? sometimes against their better judgment. Monte Walsh is a beautiful mixture of comic moments and tragic events, captured in an admirable, very realistic form. It was the directing début of Fraker, who was by profession a cameraman. He is to be admired for resisting the temptation to mythologise the Wild West.Monte Walsh is a classic Western without being as well known as other classics. In Go West, Young Man! (see previous entry) Fraker visits the set of Monte Walsh for the first time in years.