quick, quick!
by Douglas Messerli
Charles Chauvel and Elsa Chauvel (screenplay,
based on a story by Zane Grey), Clarence G. Badger (director) Rangle River /
1936, USA 1939
The 1936 Australian and US co-sponsored western
Rangle River was produced in connection with the Australian film quota
that demanded that a percent of US films had to include scenes filmed in
Australia with that country’s cast members.
The
writing team of Charles and Elsa Chauvel added some refinements that turned
most of Zane Grey’s original tired cowboy saga about land rights in Coombs, New
South Wales, into a rather charming and somewhat wicked tale that questions and
satirizes the supposedly suave British visitors of that country and their own
laconic, macho, female-shy cattlemen, putting between them an Australian woman
Marion Hastings (Margaret Dare) who had been living and spending her father’s
meagre funds lavishly in England.
When the two opposing cultures come together, along with the fact that
the film was directed by imported American Clarence Badger and starred US bad
boy actor Victor Jory (he went on a hunting expedition while in Australia and
was later arrested for speeding in Sydney) as the work’s hero Dick Drake, the
result was that the original genre was transformed into a combination of a
cowboy-detective-gay oriented-heterosexual love story like nothing that we’ve
seen since.
The owner of the Hasting ranch, the elderly Dan Hastings (George Bryant)
is a good man who unfortunately never met a man (or woman for that matter) who
he didn’t like. He spends far too much of his dwindling funds on his spoiled
British living daughter Marion and has no idea that his traditionally handsome
friendly neighbor Donald Lawton (Cecil Parry), also a beef rancher, is not all
that he appears to be. More importantly, the life-blood of a ranch which has
long been producing some of the best meat in the country, Rangle River, is
inexplicably drying up. He’s about to lose his lucrative contract to provide
meat to one of the biggest producers in Brisbane and to give up what’s left of
his finances for his daughter’s “education,” with no funds left to dig for a
desperately needed new well.
His foreman, Drake, tries to explain the situation, but the tired
rancher simply wants his daughter to be happy and to keep his neighbor’s
friendship. What to do? The rough-hewn Drake takes matters into his own hands
writing a diatribe against her lifestyle to the errant Marion, demanding she
return home to Australia and contribute something to the ranch instead of
siphoning off what’s left for its support for her “ornamental” existence.
Marion rightfully is offended by his cruel letter, but it does bring her
home along with her seemingly stuffy Aunt Abbie (Rita Pauncefort). On a stop in
Singapore for a change of planes the couple run into a cinematic stereotype of
the sissified British manhood in the form of Reggie Mannister, who like his
name performs as a kind of man “minister” (one who attends to the needs of
other men) acted by the later master of that character role, Robert Coote.
Coote played similar figures in over 50 movies and stage plays, the most famous
of which was his role of live-in companion or and symbolic lover to Henry
Higgins in the stage version of My Fair Lady, Colonel Pickering.
Reggie, evidently about to trot off to India in search of another
adventure, spots Marion during her Singapore stop, setting his pretended
heterosexual heart all aflutter, requiring he make a change of plans and book a
seat on the flight to Australia instead. Reggie, like so many wealthy British
eccentrics, is a master of game-playing and immediately pleases Aunt Abbie by
suggesting the Solitaire moves she apparently can’t figure out for herself, and
within no time has been invited by Marion to join them at the ranch for “a few
months” while he intends to “prospect” in the neighborhood.
Even on their way to the ranch they encounter the mounting tension
between the two ranches as they catch Drake and Lawton punching it out at a
local stock sale, Drake winning only after Reggie stops one of Lawton’s men
from hitting him over the head with a wooden club. The properly brought up
Marion is even more outranged by Drake in person than she was by his honest
assessment of her in his letter, and determines to bring things back in proper
order once she reaches her father’s ranch.
Delighted to see his daughter and sister once more, Hastings plans a
little dinner party, with Lawton in attendance where both the men, Reggie and
Lawton, both of whom she momentarily perceives as appropriate companions, flank
her as she displays her proper upbringing in a piano recital.
Lawton is the more handsome, so Reggie quickly bows out to attend to the
cuts and bruises of the foreman Drake, the ministering role he plays so very
well. If Reggie may be a kind a flop when it comes to the women, Drake meets
him with an unlikely but appreciate friendliness. And the scene in which they
come together is about as gay as a cowboy yarn dare be if you want the boy to
walk off into the sunset with the girl on his arm by film’s end. A video of the
scene would be the best evidence, but you’ll have to take my written
observations as something approximating this almost comically homo-insinuating
scene about which the censors of the day evidently didn’t have a clue.
Upon Reggie presenting himself to Drake, the more than friendly foreman
beams and immediately shaking hands, thanks him for “saving me from that knock
on the head this morning.”
Reggie compliments him on his good fight, to which Drake thanks him but
adds it’s not the sort of thing they teach in the smart finishing schools of
England. Reggie suggests that it’s “something they rather lack.” A second
later, as Drake picks up a small bottle of medicinal liquid to rub on his
wounds, Reggie, grabbing up the small bottle takes over, “Let me give you a
hand.” Smiling widely the “two-fisted man’s man,” as Marion has called him,
appreciatively offers up his arm.
Rubbing in the liquid on his lower arm, Reggie asks, “How on earth did
you get that?” presumably meaning the wounds and not the muscles to which he is
now applying the liquid.
“Oh lack of good manners and intelligence I suppose.”
“O
not a bit of it,” Reggie responds, tapping Drake’s forearm, “Your fist is worth
its weight in intelligence.”
Smiling the entire time, Drake finally
thanks him with the words: “Fine. You have...rather a professional touch.”
Still standing closely face to face, Drake thanks him again.
Reggie hems, “Well, a.....”
“Well...” Drake also responds, the two acting very much like awkward
lovers upon their first date.
They both attempt to start up conversation yet again with “I....”
laughing at the shy tenderness they obviously feel for one other, Reggie
finally breaking it off with a “well a....goodnight,” Drake mimicking him but
both remaining in position without the broad grin ever leaving Drake’s face, as
Reggie looks briefly down, faces him again, and once more leans down before
taking his regretful leave.
The two quite obviously have quickly bonded, and in fact, Drake almost
always lights up when Reggie enters his space throughout the rest of the movie.
Marion, meanwhile, intends to prove she can be “useful,” riding a horse
out to where the cowmen are herding their cattle, jumping fences, as she has
probably learned in riding school. The horse trips and she falls, Drake and
others coming to her rescue.
A scene or two later she attempts to extract a calf from a deep mud
pool, but not only is she unable to help the calf scramble to safety but must
herself be retrieved, again by Drake.
Drake argues that she might be of more use if she stay at home, but the
willful girl insists upon attempting to demonstrate her abilities. Of course,
in his clearly misogynistic cowboy narrative, she demonstrates a great deal of
cleverness in gradually converting the foreman from a woman-hating man’s man
into someone with whom she might fall in love and vice-versa, the necessary
requirements of this basically normative story.
Meanwhile, however, things for the herd go from bad to worse. The
company with whom Hastings has a contract is ready to cut ties with them and
turn to Lawton for their meat. For the first time in history the river has
almost completely dried up. They have no choice but to take the herd a long
distance to find a better watering spot, but in the process assuring the cows
will grow even leaner and worn out. Even when they finally discover water near
the Hastings home, the well suddenly grow dry—due to the treachery of the
Lawton gang.
Although Reggie seems to be a natural bungler, in truth he has become a
kind of detective—perhaps because of his attraction to Drake and his newfound
commitment to the ranch—finding queer goings-on about the place, including the
behavior of the family servant Minna (Georgie Stirling), an odd horseshoe near
where their well went dry, and finally the suspicion that something is going on
in the closed-off Lawton land which the Hastings dare not enter, particularly
after Drake, attempting to steer a few stray Lawton cows back to their side of
the fence, is suddenly shot and nearly killed.
With Drake recuperating, Marion suddenly has the man where she wants
him, in bed where she can serve him and demonstrate her love. When he is on the
mend and sitting with her on the porch she attempts finally to illicit the
words of love he is still too bashful to spit out. She demands
he be direct and ask her something, hoping
that he might at least ask for a kiss. Finally, he begins to stutter out his
sentence...”Do you think you might,” she leans ready to pounce. “...Make me
some tea?” And at that very moment Reggie, flying an airplane suddenly out of
nowhere lands in the front yard, demanding the Drake join him to check out his
suspicions.
That suspicion, which turns out to be true, is that Lawton has been
damming up the river on his land, thus strangling off the flow to a trickle by
the time it reaches the Hastings’ estate. But, we might argue, that he has
another suspicion as well—or at least, by this time, the audience does. It may
just be that Drake is only a “man’s man,” more at home in Reggie’s company than
he might ever be in Marion’s drawing room drinking tea.
Once they’ve got the evidence, Drake and Reggie head off by horseback
into danger to confront Lawton and end his subterfuge. But meanwhile, Minna,
Lawton’s in-house spy, has warned him of their discovery and Lawton orders the
dam to be dynamited, which will cause such a rush of water into the Hastings
ranch that it will surely drown their cattle and anyone following along the now
riverbed such as Drake and Reggie; and suddenly Marion as well in her final
attempt to be of some use.
At the last minute, Drake and Reggie split up, the foreman taking the
higher path to look over the lay of the land while Reggie follows along the
riverbed. Marion is also following the river further behind. When the dam
explodes the rush of water spills out from the lake behind it. Drake has time
to rush to his fellow cowmen and demand they move the cattle immediately, and
he finds Marion floating near death further on, scooping her up from the river
water just in time to save her; but there is little hope for Reggie, too close
to the dam before it let loose to save him.
The minute things have died down, Drake rides into Lawton territory to
teach his enemy a lesson even before the police arrive to arrest him. I might
add that in Australia cowboys use whips instead of ropes and pistols to herd
their cattle, and Lawton, as we’ve observed throughout the
film,
is a master of their use. After Drake gets in a few punches, Lawton grabs up a
couple of whips and lashes out at Drake brutally, whipping him again and again
as if he were playing out some terrible fantasy of a S&M flick. Like Christ
being scourged, Drake is about to be flayed until his men and Marion ride up to
distract Lawton just enough that Drake can grab up one of the whips, fight back
Lawton and finally, after pulling away the second whip, hog-tie and drag him
off.
If they are all saddened by Reggie’s death, they hardly have time to
show it, as Marion hunkers down with her hero staring into the sunset while she
tries to coach him on finally acting out what a woman needs to occur before she
can walk away with him. He leans into a possible kiss at the very moment that
Reggie, after miraculously surviving the flood and having found a large piece
of lumber which he has dubbed “the Queen Mary,” floats into view. Her final words
are “Quick, quick,” as she nuzzles up to Drake for the closing kiss which
allows all in the normative heterosexual realm to collectively let out a sigh
of relief. The sun sets just as the credits begin their rise.
Los Angeles, May 15, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (May 2021).
