Hondo (

1953

) ½

I’ll confess, the first time I watched Hondo, I didn’t get it. For me, it was just another John Wayne Western, with sweeping vistas and a few good one-liners. Not bad but why would you ever watch this when Shane (1953) hit the same notes but better? Just more proof that every so often you should revisit films and see if their impact has changed any over the passing years. Somehow, I missed everything in the movie of any substance, from the carefully rendered (and for the 1950s anyway) scandalous romantic subplot to the unusually nuanced conflict between the settlers and Indians to the weighty message on fatherhood. Let’s just chalk this one up to the follies of youth and the short attention span of my adolescent self. Sure, Shane (1953) is still the more entertaining film (Jack Palance makes one of the best Western villains of all time), but Hondo is doubtlessly the more complex, and interesting work, as evidenced by the massive review I’ve managed to write about it.

We open on a windswept prairie, where a young mother, Angie Lowe, and her son Johnny live on a remote ranch. One day, a lone wanderer approaches the desolate farmstead: A tall man with a white hat, he carries a rifle in one hand and his saddle in the other, behind him trails a mean-looking dog with a nasty scar. He’s Hondo Lane, a gunslinger, sometime outlaw, and currently a scout/dispatch rider for the US cavalry. If you look up "cowboy" in the dictionary, you’ll either find a picture of Hondo strolling through the wastelands or a figure that looks just like him. His arrival on the farm stirs up all kinds of emotion in Angie who is at once frightened by the stranger and excited by his arrival. About a month earlier her husband Ed Lowe took off, seemingly abandoning her and Johnny to whatever fate awaited them. With no man to defend her, both her and Johnny are left at the mercy of this stranger. Yet at the same time, Hondo is handsome, tall, rugged, and capable. He’s exactly the kind of man a lonely, scorned woman dreams of meeting. Angie plays it safe, she tells Hondo that her husband is off chasing some stray cattle and keeps her Navy revolver close at hand in case Hondo turns out to be less gallant than he first appears.

Hondo doesn’t have too much time to sit around and play house though, the Apache have risen up in revolt after the US government broke their peace treaty with them. He needs to deliver some vital information to the US cavalry, but the only problem is that his horse has died out from under him while en route. He offers to buy a horse from Lowe in exchange for government script and some help with chores around the ranch. The latter is probably offered because Hondo doesn’t buy Angie’s story about her husband being off looking for cows for a minute. All sorts of jobs around the ranch have been left undone, and curiously they’re all the sorts of jobs you’d expect the man of the house to be handling (shoeing horses, sharpening axes, etc). What’s more, there’s something about Angie that strikes Hondo, something that reminds him of his deceased Indian Squaw, Destarti, and after only a slight hesitation he kisses her. The flirtation of Hondo and Angie is masterfully done, all the more because of the way it works with the romantic deficiencies of the male lead. John Wayne was many things, but seldom did he portray a convincing lover onscreen. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the script, which manages the subtle balance of being poetic while still being rough enough that it doesn’t sound phony coming from Hondo’s mouth. Angie for her part still thinks of herself as a married woman and rebuff’s Hondo, though far gentler than you might expect.

The next day Hondo departs, urging Angie and Johnny to leave as well. The Apache are on the warpath after all, and it’s doubtful that they will spare any civilians that they come across. Angie isn’t worried though, because her family has lived in these parts for a few generations and they’ve always had good relations with the Indians. This turns out to be pretty damn naïve because, after Hondo leaves, the Indians descend on the ranch in force, intending to take some scalps for their collection. It looks pretty desperate for Angie until Johnny runs out of the house armed with his mother’s navy revolver, and gets a grazing shot off on Silva, the Apache second-in-command. The boy’s heroism so impresses the Indian leader Vittoro, that he makes the boy an honorary Apache and decides to spare Angie and the ranch.

Elsewhere, Having successfully delivered his message to the Cavalry command, Hondo heads into a nearby saloon to unwind. Since this is a classic Western, he quickly gets embroiled in a barroom brawl. The lowly cur that started the scuffle by grabbing Hondo’s shirt (“Those shirts are hard to come by!”) was none other than Ed Lowe, Angie’s deadbeat, dirtbag husband. Hondo is surprised by this turn of events, but he doesn’t let it derail his plans and in short order, he’s on another scouting/dispatch mission to Apache country. Here again, he stumbles upon Ed Lowe, this time being attacked by Apaches. Hondo, like the gallant gunslinger he most assuredly is, blasts the Indians and rescues Lowe. Then for reasons that I cannot fathom, Lowe tries to shoot Hondo in the back and gets a slug through his chest for his troubles. I see the plot reason for this incident, but I cannot for the life of me grasp what Lowe was trying to accomplish here? Is he just getting revenge for Hondo roughing him up in the tavern earlier? It seems a bit excessive, particularly given the fact that Hondo just saved his life.

Hondo has more to worry about than why Lowe was trying to kill him though, as one of the Indians escaped and got word to the rest of the tribe. In short order, Hondo is on the run from Silva and a platoon’s worth of Apache warriors. Hondo is a good shot and handy in a fight but even he doesn’t stand much chance when outnumbered fifty to one. In short order, he’s captured and slated for execution, but when Vittoro discovers a photo of Johnny on his person (which he took from Ed Lowe) he decides to have mercy on Hondo and returns him to the Lowe ranch; after all a boy must have a father and a squaw must have a husband. The turn of events is at once welcome, Hondo has feelings for both Angie and the boy, and unwelcome, as he’s thrust headfirst into the responsibilities of fatherhood (under normal circumstances, men are given a 9-month ramp-up period).

At this point, Hondo’s dog, Sam is worth some consideration as he serves as something of a symbol for Hondo’s character arch. Sam is an unusual dog, who sticks with Hondo more out of familiarity and habit than the normal loyalty and love which characterizes human-canine relations. Hondo doesn’t feed the dog, or allow anyone else to feed him either, preferring to let Sam be totally independent, hunting and scrounging his own food. Sam thus serves as a stand-in for the ultimate rugged individual, who does as he pleases and depends on nobody for anything. The dog better embodies the cowboy ideal than any of the cowboys! Sam is also killed at a crucial moment in the plot, right after Hondo is redeposited on the Lowe’s farm by the Apache. A signal that Hondo’s own days of life as a rugged freewheeling individual are now at an end. His independence dies with the dog, as he is now ensnared not only by the love of Angie but also by the responsibilities of caring for Johnny.

When looking at Hondo, one question immediately jumps to mind: If the main theme you want to explore is related not to settlers, or Indians, or gunslingers, or stagecoaches why bother with making it a Western in the first place? If you want to make a movie about the American family, surely it could be more fully fleshed out in a more contemporary and realistic (the wild west existed, but the Hollywood version is pure mythology) setting. There are material considerations, of course, in 1953 Westerns were at the height of their popularity and even a mediocre one was all but guaranteed to make a boatload of money provided they cast John Wayne (or a star of similar stature) in the lead and shot it in technicolor. Yet, with Hondo, I think that there is more at work here than just the studios’ bottom line, and I suspect that it has something to do with the rather tenuous state of the American family in the 1950s.

Contrary to popular belief, the 1950s were not a period where family life slid back into the traditional mold after being momentarily disrupted by WWII. Rather it was an age that promised a bold new experiment in American life, one radically different than what came before it. Families in the 1950s lived in single-family homes populated only by the nuclear family, whereas the Americans of yesteryear had generally lived in multi-generational houses. The idea of a commuting male breadwinner and a female housekeeper too was a new innovation, as previous economic arrangements in the family had been considerably less rigid, particularly on rural farms (which incidentally, was where the majority of Americans lived before WWII). What scholarship that exists on the subject focuses overwhelmingly on this new system’s effects on the women who lived under it, taking it as a given that the men were having a grand time while their wives slaved away chained to the oven while bare-foot and pregnant. However, this view overlooks the sacrifices that men were making for their families. Long hours in the office, followed by an equally long commute (the main drawback of living in the suburbs) meant they had little time for leisure, hobbies, and other pursuits. Being the sole wage-earner meant that their careers had to be front and center at all times, lest their family suffer the consequences. What they wanted out of life was a secondary concern so distant that it scarcely existed at all, for them the family must come before all else.

Moreover, the men called upon to make these historical anomalous sacrifices for the domestic bliss of their wives and children were themselves a historical anomaly. These were the same men who had been plucked up by the whirlwind of World War II and deposited across the world in a thousand different foreign locals. They had, almost to a man, seen and done more than just about any generation prior. How were you going to keep them on the farm after they’ve seen Paris? Thus, by chaining themselves to a desk, a long commute, and a mortgage they were giving up far more than even their fathers had a generation earlier. So, seeing John Wayne confronted with the same dilemma, to abandon his life of rugged independence (and the ideals which have guided him on that) in order to protect the newfound family that he has grown to love, it may have hit a bit closer to the bone for the men of 1953 than they would have liked. Thus, the need for this film to be a western, because if it were in a contemporary setting it may have been too immediate, and too real for much of the audience to have derived enjoyment from. Hondo ultimately stresses the importance of this sacrifice and acknowledges that it is the right decision to make. However, in merely asking “is it worth it” the film is miles away from the rest of the decade’s pop culture which either does not acknowledge paternal sacrifice at all or takes it as a given. Even literature (a medium working under considerably fewer restrictions at this period and with much more creator control) wouldn’t even catch up for the better part of a decade. Not until Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road would a novel wrestle with these issues in a comparable way.

Tellingly, when I screened Hondo, it was not me, the guy obsessed with midcentury Americana that was most affected by the movie. Instead, it was my father-in-law, who has little interest in old American movies, a great preference for later (and more violent Westerns), and who couldn’t even understand the language the film was shot in (we had Chinese subtitles) who liked the film more than any of the rest of us. It spoke to him because he knows first-hand the kinds of sacrifices that a man makes for his family and the burdens that they are expected to carry in silence. If asked directly, he’d say it’s all worth it, I’m sure, just as my father would. But when these men look back at the compromises they made, and the things they gave up to be the great fathers they are. I don’t doubt that they would for a moment pause and imagine a life free from these responsibilities, they reflect as Hondo does at the film’s end "Too bad... It's a good way."

The film’s views on family and fatherhood are unquestionably a product of the times, yet we do ourselves a disservice by dismissing them out of hand. The film reiterates, again and again, the need for children to have active, involved fathers to offer a stern (but still loving) counterbalance to the mother who is naturally inclined to spoil. This line of thinking was more in line with 1953 than 1853 and was the topic of much discussion among developmental psychologists at the time. If it was important for all children to have a father, then it was double so for boys who needed a male role model to pattern themselves off of lest they fall into delinquency. Today we’re inclined to scoff at their attitudes and bring up how this social pressure forced women to stay in loveless or abusive marriages. Yet, we ignore the wisdom of the past at our own peril. The vast horde of directionless criminals emerging from broken homes is proof that the social psychologists of the 1950s weren’t totally out of touch with reality. Certainly, single mothers can and do raise well-adjusted sons, but these exceptions do not disprove the general rule. In general, a stable marriage is more likely to beget stable children, a broken one is more inclined to produce broken children.

That said, the film is not completely disinterested in the historical trappings of its genre and even manages to do a few interesting things with them. Of particular note is the way that the film handles the conflict between natives and settlers. The film’s treatment of Native Americans is unusually positive for the period (and unusually nuanced for contemporary viewers, accustomed as we are to a steady diet of “noble savage” bullshit). The Apache here are not mere savages that delight in killing and bloodshed, nor long-suffering naturalists wise beyond their technological development. Certainly, the Indian customs and way of life are wildly different than the ways of the white settlers encroaching on their land, but neither way of life is ever held up as better or worse than the other. They have their heroes like Vittoro and their scoundrels like the treacherous Silva, just like the whites. Along with Last of the Mohicans (1992), this is one of the rare films I’ve seen that treats the settler-Indian conflict with anything approaching realism or even-handedness. Sure, the Apache are going on the warpath at the start of the film and later on we learn that they massacred every settler in the area surrounding their lands, man, woman, and child alike. However, we quickly learn that the Apaches have had their hands forced by the way that the whites broke the existing peace treaty. If they don’t go to war, it’s looking pretty obvious that the whites will just bleed them dry bit by bit, and the Apache prefer to go out in a blaze of glory than suffer a death by one thousand cuts. Vittorio kills and scalps plenty of white settlers (off-screen, this ain’t Bone Tomahawk (2015) after all) but his motives for doing so are compelling. Aside from fighting to preserve his people and his way of life, he fights to avenge his murdered children. He also shows mercy and compassion for those outside his tribe, provided that they first prove their mettle like Johnny does. Moreover, Hondo himself, our hero in part Apache (not that he looks it, but hey do you really want to see John Wayne in blackface?) and has more than a bit of respect for their culture and customs and he, for the most part, is our viewpoint into the film.

The action is on a slow boil for most of the film, there’s a shoot out and a couple of fistfights here and there but for the most part, the film would rather focus on the relationships of its leads and Hondo’s transition from free-wheeling adventurer to devoted family man. However, this is still a big budget, color Western so it won’t do to not end on a thrilling climax. Hondo delivers this in spades with a massive battle between the beleaguered remnants of the cavalry detachment and a veritable horde of Indian warriors. It doesn’t exactly fit with the slow-burning domestic drama we’ve been watching up to this point, but it’s thrilling and exciting enough that I don’t mind its addition much.

In addition to all this, Hondo was also part of the brief 3D craze that swept over cinemas in the early 1950s. This explains some of the goofy shots that happen periodically in fight scenes where knives and fists seemed aimed directly at the camera. It’s neither as ludicrous as House of Wax (1953) nor as artful as The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and consequently, it’s easy to ignore and forget for whole swaths of the film that it was originally intended to be in 3D. The 3D effects are more of a marketing gimmick that was tacked onto an existing film. About the only thing they do of any significance is explained why an 83-minute movie needed an intermission (most theaters could avoid intermissions by using two projectors, but 3D films of this era needed two projectors to work so both reels had to be changed at the same time).