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I agree completely with Keith Simanson, whose critical review is seen at the head of the review column for this item. I suspect it wasn’t really any quality integral to the movie that earned it the scorn of most reviewers of its day, but simply the fact that taste was turning away from the big-screen musical and PYW just happened to be positioned to get the benefit of that fact.br /br /The movie is based very loosely on the stage musical Paint Your Wagon: Original Broadway Cast, taking off from the secondary romance of that version and expanding upon it while basically ignoring the main one. Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) is an aging ex-mountain man and probable veteran of the War of 1812 who has followed the siren song of gold to 1840’s California. There, while burying a young farmer whose wagon has gone off the trail and down a steep slope, he finds gold–and a mining camp immediately blooms. Ben takes the dead man’s injured brother (Clint Eastwood) as his partner, and all goes well enough until a travelling Mormon, Jacob Woodling (John Mitchum), and his two wives, Sarah (Sue Casey) and Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) come to town. Cornishman Mad Jack Duncan (played to the hilt by Ray Walston) points out that “it just ain’t equitable…for you to be havin’ somethin’ the rest of us got none of,” and Jacob, who has found Elizabeth something of a trial, agrees to auction her off (with her consent) to the highest bidder. Ben, too drunk to be completely sure of what he’s doing, makes the winning bid, and Elizabeth is married to him “according to…mining law” (which means that, technically, she’s a claim, not a wife). It’s here that the film branches off from the stage show, in which Elizabeth eventually elopes with another miner while a third is negotiating to buy her from Ben. Instead, Ben falls genuinely in love with his peculiarly acquired wife–but so does Pardner. It’s Elizabeth who comes up with a solution: “I was married to a man who had two wives; why can’t a woman have two husbands?”br /br /What makes this movie especially worthwhile is the picture it offers of life in the early mother-lode country. There *was* a terrible shortage of women, particularly of the “respectable” kind; miners *did* travel miles just to have a look at one; towns *did* spring up almost overnight; women of easy morals often *were* the first of their sex to arrive, and they *did* make a major difference in the lives of the miners–and not merely as providers of sexual relief, either. (Read the pertinent chapters of This is the West [Illustrated] if you don’t believe me.) The men *did* miss their homes, yet many of them, like Ben, became so used to the lives they lived that when they tried to go back they complained that ordinary life was “too slow” for them (Mark Twain had some almost poetic words of lamentation about the fate of these ever-hopefuls). The designers of the film are especially to be credited for their efforts to capture the look of that time and place–the costumes, the ever-present mud, the international character of the gold hunters, the all-stag dance around the campfire, the tent village replaced by the ramshackle buildings with their incongruously luxurious interiors. (Among the high points are some of the lesser characters–Schermerhorn (Karl Bruck), the German storekeeper; Rotten Luck Willie (Harve Presnell), gambler and saloonowner; Ezra Atwell (Robert Easton), the courtly Southern hotelkeeper; Horace Tabor (William O’Connell) of Worcester, Mass.; fiery-haired Mad Jack and his two partners; the otherwise-unnamed fire-and-brimstone Preacher (Alan Dexter) who comes to town astride a white mule led by his Indian wife, Princess Hummingbird, and with eagle feathers in his hatband (I’d love to know how he got them!).) Both Marvin and Eastwood obviously did their own singing, and did it no worse than many a rock star of today; moreover the script portrays their characters, and Elizabeth, as real individuals with understandable motivations. Ben especially is a better man than he sometimes gives himself credit for: he’s a boozer and a drifter, he’s “salted claims…coveted my neighbor’s wife…and once a man in Walla Walla come at me with a gun and I killed him,” but he “ain’t never gulled a partner,” and that’s where the conflict, and the eventual tragedy, of the movie come in. A good novelization is available in paperback Paint Your Wagon. Though perhaps not the best note on which movie musicals could have gone out, this one is certainly worth your time and deserved better treatment and more respect than it got.
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This film and iHello Dolly/i were the knockout blows to the studio movie musical, but iPaint/i doesn’t deserve its tarnished name. Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) takes the model of a rakish derelict to an unequaled high as a prospector who teams up with a greenhorn named Pardner (Clint Eastwood), and they both end up marrying the same scorned woman (Jean Seberg). No-Name City, the prospecting town they found, is Sodom and Gomorrah without the camels, and a vision of humanity left to its own devices. The songs are mostly wonderful melodies from Lerner and Loewe, with definite high points, notably “They Call the Wind Maria” and “Wand’rin’ Star.” Clint Eastwood always gets flack for his versions of “I Still See Elisa” and “I Talk to the Trees,” but that scorn is equally undeserved. Perhaps iPaint/i’s biggest sin, in retrospect, was trying to combine the aesthetics of the musical with the aesthetics of the male protagonists’ world-weary machismo. Not the easiest task, but iPaint/i pulls it off. I–Keith Simanton/I

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Carol ” Topcat59″ – Carol Pettibone – Pearce,Az
Saw this movie when it first came out at a Drive-In place in Moscow,Idaho. I already have this movie in VHS form. Sent it to my daughter, who was born the year it was filmed, as a christmas gift.

Earnest hippie-western-musical-comedy might be Eastwood and Marvin’s weirdest film – Muzzlehatch – the walls of Gormenghast
First a little background…I’ve been a Clint Eastwood fan since around 1990, when I and about three other fans nationwide saw “White Hunter, Black Heart”, his ambitious box-office flop examining John Huston filming “The African Queen”. It was pretty clear that this was a guy who had gone beyond the stereotypes I had of him as Dirty Harry and The Man With No Name. Though I skipped seeing “The Rookie” in the theater (and who can blame me?), since “Unforgiven” I’ve seen every film the man has directed and/or starred in first-run.br /br /And I’ve also caught up to his back catalog. I think by around 1999-2000 I was basically complete as far as his starring or costarring roles back to “Fistful of Dollars”. Except for the 2 1/2 hour musical with a wretched reputation, filmed in Cinemascope but unavailable in proper aspect ratio at the time. Eventually, a few years ago, it did get released on DVD properly framed, and I’ve finally caught up to it. I can’t say it really let me down – because I didn’t expect much, but…let’s look at it in detail.br /br /OPENING: the title song isn’t bad – but it’s sung by an off-screen chorus as a wagon train heads into California full of farmer-settlers. One of the wagons alas goes off the trail and down a cliff, and Eastwood’s young “Pardner” (he’s never named anything else until the end of the film) almost dies along with his brother, only to be saved by drunken, curmudgeonly gold-miner Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin). Gold is found as Pardner’s brother is buried, and Rumson quickly stakes a claim and cuts Pardner in for half – riches are to be found, and songs are to be sung.br /br /THE SONGS: Pauline Kael accurately described Clint’s voice as something like “pleasant, light, thin”. There’s nothing horrible about listening to him, but you forget it immediately. Good thing he didn’t try to make a career out of it. Marvin can’t sing at all really but apparently enough people found him over-the-top bad that his ‘Wand’rin’ Star’ became a minor cult item. Female lead Jean Seberg (you knew there had to be a woman to cause trouble, didn’t you?) was apparently even worse so she’s dubbed. The various choruses aren’t bad, and ‘They Call the Wind Mariah’ became something of a small classic due to the powerful baritone of Harve Presnell, a real singer. But apart from that, nothing about the music is particularly interesting and I can barely call the instrumental score to mind now 16 hours after watching it.br /br /THE DANCING: uh, the less said the better. Really.br /br /SEX: As mentioned, Elizabeth (Seberg) arrives on the scene to help cause disruption and dissent, as her Mormon husband auctions her – the second of his wives – off to the highest bidder, the dead-drunk Rumson. This may seem (well, is) horribly offensive and sexist, as the film treats it all like a good joke, but a fascinating twist soon develops as Elizabeth decides she’s in love with Pardner – but also with her husband Rumson – and the three all consent to a plural marriage with Elizabeth as the more-or-less dominant member. Interesting stuff for 1969 and a mainstream release, but again it’s all just treated lightly and jokily. It’s hard to find the sexual politics either offensive or progressive, they seem there just to provide jokes and perhaps to bring in the youth audience (which they apparently failed to do).br /br /PLOT DEVELOPMENT: Does it matter, really? Suffice it to say that Rumson slowly corrupts Eastwood with drink and gambling, the two of them hatch a scheme to dig underneath the town and nab all of the gold dust that falls through the floorboards of the various saloons and whorehouses (oh I forgot to tell you, the settlement develops quickly into a boom-town when Marvin diverts 6 French ladies of the evening to “No Name” – clever town name eh? – and sets up bawdy houses and casinos). Eventually the tunnel system undermines the stability of the ground, the town collapses, Marvin the wandering spirit moves on, and thankfully the damn thing is over.br /br /Overall Marvin gives the best performance by far – if he was even acting – and there’s a weirdness to the whole thing what with the odd sexual situations that does make this kind of fascinating. But Clint looks wooden and bored if not angry throughout (“damn, I can’t believe I’m in this”) and Seberg – a good actress in the right films – is just dull.br /br /For serious Clint, Lee Marvin or musical completists, or those interested in some of the weirder and more unexplainable sidetracks of 60s Americana. I’m glad I watched it, but I doubt I’ll be visiting it again very soon.

TOTALLY ENTERTAINING – salvacion mendiola – Tinian, CNMI, USA
It’s a good one with stars like Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Ray Walson and Harve Presnell. Lots of comedy, good skits, music, great background in Oregon and a love story. If you want a nice enjoyable, relaxing evening,this is the one to see. Based on a musical involving Alan Lerner, Paddy Chayefsky, Andre Previn, and Joshua Logan, with songs like “They Call the Wind Maria.” and “I Talk to the Trees.” Outstanding, and has stood the test of time. Good show!

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