Destry Rides Again

 By 1939, the definitive features of the movie Western were established so fully that the conventions of the genre could be satirized, inverted and subverted, and contested on-screen in popular entertainment.  Destry Rides Again is a product of the cinema's Golden Age annum mirabilum 1939.  The comedy Western stars Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich.  The film proceeds at such breakneck pace that the viewer doesn't get a chance to really admire it and, accordingly, the whole thing seems slightly flat -- there's the faint tedium of something perfected to the point that its execution feels perfunctory.  The movie seems to have been largely improvised with the actors required to learn a couple new pages of dialogue each day before shooting.  This sense of improvisation, however, doesn't deter from the film's effect, which is more pronounced in memory than during the actual screening:  it's a picture that improves with thought.  The movie is improvised the way that Louis Armstrong's Hot Five or Hot Seven improvised -- there is a fleet, blithe, interlocking of classic Western tropes that is perfectly phrased and timed and pitch perfect.

Bottleneck is a wild and wooly Western town in which everyone exuberantly shoots their six-guns in the air and brawls.  (This is depicted in a bravura tracking shot disfigured by the film's titles -- the titles obscure the carefully choreographed action and, further, hide some instances of impropriety that might have been problematic in 1939).  The town's main industry is vice, exemplified by a colossal saloon and brothel, "the Last Chance" that is the center of Bottleneck's booze, gambling, and sex industry.  The boss of the saloon is a nasty hombre named Kent, played by Brian Donlevy in the fashion of a moustache twirling villain in an 1890's melodrama.  Kent's moll, Frenchy, played by Marlene Dietrich distracts poker players so that she can tamper with their cards, thus, insuring ill-gotten gains for Kent.  Kent cheats a farmer out of his ranch and farm.  The farmer complains to the sheriff, Keogh, who is, then, murdered by Kent and his gang.  Keogh's body is concealed and Kent, colluding with the corrupt town mayor, appoints Wash, the hapless town drunk as a substitute for the dead man -- hoping, of course, that Wash will be wholly ineffectual as sheriff.  Wash admired a gunman named Destry who cleaned-up the hellhole town of Tombstone and killed many bad guys in the process.  Destry has been ambushed and killed by being shot in the back, but his son, Destry Jr. (I'll call him) is available and comes to Bottleneck on the stagecoach to assume the duties of assistant sheriff.  Destry doesn't make an auspicious first appearance -- he steps off the stagecoach holding a lady's parasol (he's just trying to be helpful to the maiden with whom he has been traveling) and also carrying the young woman's canary in a cage.  Destry doesn't sling guns and is unarmed -- the fate of his father has made him into lawman who refuses to use firearms to pacify tough guys.  He prefers to talk the bad guys out of their criminality by spinning parable-like yarns that generally begin with the phrase:  "I once knew a fellow in Amarillo  (or Omaha or Dodge City etc.)..." -- he's like Abe Lincoln as a lawman.  Of course, Destry is quick with his fists and periodically stuns bad guys or bullies by beating them down.  He's also an ace shot and uses his marksmanship skills to cow would-be villains.  

The town is completely corrupt:  not only Frenchy but the mayor and most of the populace is involved nefarious activities. The plot of the film involves the redemption of the drunk, Wash and Frenchy, the floozy, Wash takes his role as Sheriff seriously to every one's amusement and, then, chagrin.  In fact, the poor old drunk is so loyal to his office that he ends of dying in line of duty.  When Frenchy tries to seduce Destry, he rebukes her and says that she's got a pretty face hiding under her caked make-up, tweaking her on the cheek.  This admonition turns Frenchy into an honest woman and, also, ultimately results in her death.  (Inadvertently, I think, the movie stands for the proposition that if you are redeemed from your vices, death follows immediately.)  Both of the death scenes are well-managed.  Wash is humiliated about being shot in the back; his shirt is untucked as he lays dying on the floor of the jail. Destry tells him that his father was also shot in the back, because the assailant was afraid to face him and, gently tucks  in his shirt.  As Frenchy is dying, she tries to rub the lipstick off  so that she can kiss Destry goodbye with properly purified lips.  When the menfolk in the town prepare to slaughter one another, Frenchy urges the women, all of whom despise her, to stop the battle and, at the climax, an army of women armed with planks of wood and rolling pins marches between the assailants and, then, storms the "Last Chance" saloon, ripping it apart in a fierce spectacle in which they revenge themselves after the manner of Carrie Nation on this den of iniquity.  The film is full of the things that we yearn to see in a Western:  there's a family besieged in a farmhouse, a battle between cattlemen and sodbusters, riproaring bar fights including a protracted "cat fight" between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel, beautiful horses galloping across the chaparral, plenty of gunplay, three great songs including "Little Joe, the Wrangler" and Dietrich's signature "See what the boys in the backroom will have" sung in the actress' throaty baritone, as well as a witty, ingenious script.  In my view, the film's only failing is that Destry is set up to marry the "nice girl" (Frenchy is dead) -- the "nice girl" is the comely sister of a bully cowboy; her part is underwritten to the point of non-existence and the ending seems purely opportunistic and perfunctory.  After pursuing an affair with Frenchy, the audience wonders how Destry could possibly be interested in this pallid, conventional girl.  (Apparently, Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich were involved in a torrid affair when the movie was being made.)