Somewhere in the ending old West. Steve Judd, a grizzled cowboy (Joel McCrea), agrees to ferry a shipment of gold for a bank. To do this, he hires Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), a long-lost accomplice, and a brainless kid full of hormones. We are in 1962: the golden age of Hollywood is only a distant memory, and the classic western, a genre on the way to being obsolete by Italian cinema. Sam Peckinpah, who has not yet signed “the Wild Horde”, is stamped “talent in the making”.
Peckinpah probes America, its foundations, its values and its myths
However, “Shots in the Sierra” seems directed by an old veteran: it is a dark film, come back from everything, which unbolts the future as well as it takes care to glorify the past. Remained famous, the opening of the film testifies to the so particular pessimism of the author, who distinguishes melancholy from nostalgia with a mixture of truculence and affection. On horseback, Steve must move away from the street where a horse race is being won by a rider holding the reins of a camel – figure of a world that is no longer his. Later, he recognizes Gil, made up as Buffalo Bill, animating a rigged shooting range: the scene bears witness to a bygone era now reduced to its own caricature.
The film will continue to decline this theme over a mission that is reorganized at each stage, transforming the hope of carrying out this ultimate job into a series of pure disillusions. From a father crazed with religion crossed at the start of the journey to the horde of degenerate gold diggers, it is the very idea of America, its foundations, its values and its myths, that Peckinpah mercilessly probes.
High point: a forced civil marriage celebrated in a sordid slap. However, “Gunshots in the Sierra” remains riveted to a surreptitiously luminous horizon. Despite their bitterness and their regrets, the characters manage to find a semblance of dignity and redemption, as if the sublime nature they roam offers them a furiously romantic way of inspiration.
Saturday January 14 at 8:50 p.m. on Ciné + Classic. American Western by Sam Peckinpah (1962). With Mariette Hartley, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea. 1h30. (Multicast and On Demand).
