My favorite Lee Marvin role is the title role of the film Monte Walsh. Lee and his friend Jack Palance are a couple of aging cowboys who are proud of the trade they have, but the demands for it are becoming fewer and fewer.
Monte Walsh debuted two years after another film with the same themes, Will Penny brought great critical acclaim to Charlton Heston. Heston and Marvin essayed the same kind of role, the aging cowboys who are finding less and less work for themselves as the years pass.
Both Walsh and Penny practice their trade in the Brokeback Mountain country and you can bet that Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist when they got into town and went to the movies, really identified with both of these guys. Ennis and Jack could easily be the descendants of both Heston and Marvin.
Unlike Will Penny whose greatest challenge was with a bunch of renegade rawhiders, Monte Walsh has to deal with the death of his best friend at the hands of another he considered a friend. Palance gets tired of the cowboy life and settles down and gets married to a widow who owns a hardware store and gets killed in a robbery. The code by which both Marvin and Palance live by would allow for not even the law to mete out justice here.
Lee Marvin was not known for playing the most admirable characters on the screen, but he's positively noble in this role. I've never admired him more on the screen than in Monte Walsh. He invests the title character with humanity, dignity, and pride. Of course that was in an era when one could be proud of your labor and way of life.
Fourteen years earlier Marvin supported Jack Palance in an excellent World War II film, Attack. Now things came full circle as Marvin got to be a star via an Oscar for Cat Ballou and Palance supports him and well. That's the movie business for you.
Western veterans like G.D. Spradlin and Jim Davis support Marvin well. French cinema star Jeanne Moreau is Marvin's consumptive girl friend and Mitchell Ryan is the treacherous Shorty. And this was the farewell performance of Roy Barcroft one of the best western villains that ever sat a saddle.
People who are not necessarily western fans will appreciate the care that went into making this fine film.
Monte Walsh debuted two years after another film with the same themes, Will Penny brought great critical acclaim to Charlton Heston. Heston and Marvin essayed the same kind of role, the aging cowboys who are finding less and less work for themselves as the years pass.
Both Walsh and Penny practice their trade in the Brokeback Mountain country and you can bet that Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist when they got into town and went to the movies, really identified with both of these guys. Ennis and Jack could easily be the descendants of both Heston and Marvin.
Unlike Will Penny whose greatest challenge was with a bunch of renegade rawhiders, Monte Walsh has to deal with the death of his best friend at the hands of another he considered a friend. Palance gets tired of the cowboy life and settles down and gets married to a widow who owns a hardware store and gets killed in a robbery. The code by which both Marvin and Palance live by would allow for not even the law to mete out justice here.
Lee Marvin was not known for playing the most admirable characters on the screen, but he's positively noble in this role. I've never admired him more on the screen than in Monte Walsh. He invests the title character with humanity, dignity, and pride. Of course that was in an era when one could be proud of your labor and way of life.
Fourteen years earlier Marvin supported Jack Palance in an excellent World War II film, Attack. Now things came full circle as Marvin got to be a star via an Oscar for Cat Ballou and Palance supports him and well. That's the movie business for you.
Western veterans like G.D. Spradlin and Jim Davis support Marvin well. French cinema star Jeanne Moreau is Marvin's consumptive girl friend and Mitchell Ryan is the treacherous Shorty. And this was the farewell performance of Roy Barcroft one of the best western villains that ever sat a saddle.
People who are not necessarily western fans will appreciate the care that went into making this fine film.