Ride the Pink Horse? Strange title. A gay slur, perhaps? Like “playing the pink oboe”, maybe? But as the title music comes up, all clippity cloppity, this unusual movie from 1947 sends us off in yet another direction.
Because this isn’t a cowboy movie either, or even something more esoteric, it’s an unusual slice of dark noir set, atypically, on the Mexican border, where an ex-soldier recently back from the Second World War arrives in town to exact revenge on the guy who caused the death of his old comrade-in-arms.
Robert Montgomery plays the ex-soldier, Gagin, and Fred Clark plays the slippery Mr Hugo, from whom revenge will be extracted, that’s if Gagin can outwit Hugo and his phalanx of shady accomplices – among them aloof manservant Jonathan (Richard Gaines) and Hugo’s “friend”, cool and classy femme fatale Marjorie (Andrea King). While on Gagin’s side it’s a more of an underdog story: he makes friends with a fat Mexican drunk called Pancho (Thomas Gomez) and a doe-eyed Indian street girl called Pila (she might be Mexican, in fact, it’s never that clear, but Gagin jokingly calls her Sitting Bull several times).
As the plot plays out – innocent (but how innocent?) guy arrives in strange place and ends up tangling with forces beyond his control – it’s tempting to see the whole thing as a foreshadowing of The Wicker Man story. The fact that there’s a fiesta looming, at which an effigy called Zozobra will be burned, only adds fuel to that theory.
But that’s as far as it goes. No further read-across is possible and in any case Ride the Pink Horse (the “horse” is on a fiesta ride Pancho operates) needs no comparators. It’s strange and, eventually, dark enough to ride on its own merits.
Montgomery not only stars but also directs. The year before he’d directed Lady in the Lake, a treatment of the Raymond Chandler story which unusually showed all the action from the protagonist’s point of view. He proves himself an excellent director again here with less gimmicky, more traditional set-ups and camera viewpoints, though he has a stylish way of using space, never particularly cares if his sets look too much like sets and speeds up and slows down the pace as the action requires. He knows what he’s doing.
It’s not only well directed, it’s well cast. We know from one look at everyone involved what they’re about – Pila the innocent, Pancho the good hearted, Marjorie the heartless, Hugo the malevolent (just for good measure Hugo is fitted with one of those old-fashioned hearing aids that mark him out). When an FBI cop turns up, called Retz, one look at actor Art Smith’s face tells us he’s a good guy. It’s only Gagin whose character is in question.
It’s a good movie from its first moments but a great one in its last section, when Gagin picks up an injury and is thrown into a state of shock which aggravates the PTSD he picked up serving overseas. At this point Pila also comes into her own and big-eyed small-fry Wanda Hendrix (5ft 2in or 157cm) puts in a mighty performance that speaks of a big career to come. It was not to be. Though Pila, it must be said, is never really explained adequately as a presence in this story, great though Hendrix is at playing her.
The whole thing is strongly allegorical – the soldier returning from the war only to find everyone has been getting rich while he’s been away and that the US government (kindly FBI guy Retz) isn’t really aware of the psychological toll the war has taken on the guys who fought. It can all be ignored with little damage done. That’s the power of this movie: it works brilliantly whether you choose to embrace its subterranean aspects or not.
BTW: thanks to Tony D’Ambra’s filmnoir.art.blog for nudging me in the direction of this gem, which I’d not come across before. The blog is a great resource full of research and insight, and its listicles (Top 25 Noirs, Essential Noirs) are an excellent place to start if you’re fascinated by all things noir.
Ride the Pink Horse – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
