The Main Library’s Summer Film Series, Once Upon a Time in the West: Great Hollywood* Westerns (* and one Italian), ends today with a screening of Sam Peckinpah’s 1962 oater, Ride the High Country. Western superstars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea wind down their careers with this eloquent piece about two grizzled vets hired to protect a gold shipment through rough terrain. The upstanding Steve Judd (McCrea) doesn’t know that his longtime friend Gil Westrum (Scott) plans to steal the gold, but the pair are eventually united against a family of “redneck peckerwoods” (as our heroes call them). McCrea’s character is as inspiring as any of the pillars of virtue played by Gary Cooper or John Wayne — when he states that his only wish is to “enter my House [i.e., Heaven] justified,” it can bring a tear to your eye. Peckinpah would never again make a film as humanistic as this one. Free. 2 p.m. Wachovia Playhouse, ImaginOn, 300 E. 7th St. 704-973-2780.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.
