PAINT YOUR WAGON (1969)

During the Gold Rush days in California, grizzled prospector Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) witnesses two men fall down a hill from a wagon train of settlers. One of the two, a young boy, dies, but his older brother (Clint Eastwood) survives. As Rumson helps attend to the man, he finds gold in the dirt and stakes a claim, and insists on sharing it with the man whom he calls Pardner (Clint Eastwood). Ben and Pardner become good friends, sharing money and a cabin, and soon a little town has been built, called No Name City, with an all-male occupancy of prospectors. One day, a Mormon man comes through with his two wives; the townspeople, telling him that "plural marriage" isn't legal in California, get him to auction off one of his wives, the young and lovely Elizabeth (Jean Seberg). A drunken Ben bids enough to claim her, also getting "all her mineral resources," in the words of the auctioneer. Once Elizabeth shows that she's no passive pushover, she and Ben forge a decent marriage until she finds herself attracted to Pardner, and he to her. When Ben figures this out, Elizabeth suggests that the three live together, in a Mormon-like arrangement, and Ben and Pardner agree. When the men of the town hear that a group of "French bawds" is nearby, they hijack the stagecoach and get them to establish a whorehouse for the lonely men. Soon the town is booming, with many cathouses and saloons, and Ben gets the bright idea of digging tunnels under the establishments to collect the substantial amount of gold dust that gets scattered by paying customers. Trouble between Ben and Elizabeth leads to Ben leaving the friendly menage, but more trouble comes when the structural integrity of the secret tunnels threatens the very existence of the town.

This is one of the notorious big movie musical flops of the late 1960s and early 70s (Camelot, Mame, Star!, Doctor Dolittle) that led to the temporary end of the musical as a going concern and gutted the finances of a few studios. But as the excellent book Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s by Matthew Kennedy points out, some of these movies drew respectable crowds. Paint Your Wagon was actually among the top 10 moneymakers of its year, but it still didn't make enough money to cover its huge budget. The real problem wasn’t so much people didn’t go to see these movies, but that the studios spent way too much money trying to come up with another Sound of Music. I'd avoided seeing this, lumping it in with those other bombs, but actually this isn't bad. It would have worked much better as a non-musical, I think, as none of the songs were memorable except perhaps "They Call the Wind Maria," and the songs don't really move the plot along. (What amounts to the title song, actually called "I'm On My Way" is also catchy.) The leads can't sing, which is probably why "Maria" is given to Harve Presnell; his character is minor but he was an actual singer/actor. The menage a trois arrangement works surprisingly well, as a plot device and between the characters, and was a selling point for the times—the film was advertised as bawdy and rebellious. Eastwood, Marvin and Seberg are, singing aside, fine, and Presnell and Ray Walston stand out in support. Largely filmed on location, an entire town was built, mostly so it could be destroyed at the end, and the climax, as the town's buildings all collapse, is impressive. It's not quite a traditional western, and doesn't really work as a traditional musical, but it's worth a viewing. [DVD]