‘The Missouri Breaks‘, the 1976 film by director Arthur Penn, is the stuff of which cinematic legends are made. Thomas McGuane wrote the screenplay for this revisionist western, a subgenre of cinema that flourished in American cinema after 1966, taking advantage of the demise of the Hays Code and in response to the offensive of Westerns produced in Europe by Sergio Leone and his disciples. One can speculate what this film would have become if the cast had been different. With Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson in the lead roles, both coming off two of the pinnacle roles of their careers, both of which had won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a lead role in previous years, what happened on set was more widely publicized than what happened on screen. The film fell short of the hype – a critical flop and a failure at the box office. Unfairly, I would say.
The story takes place at the end of the 19th century in the area where the Missouri River crosses the border between the United States and Canada. David Braxton, the farmer who controls a large part of the good lands and pastures of the region, is a religious and cultured man at the same time (he boasts a library of 3500 books). He lives with his daughter and a male servant whose devotion seems to be more than a servant-master relationship. When a gang of horse thieves led by Tom Logan appears and buys a small farm in the neighborhood, conflict is in the air, especially since an idyll begins to blossom between Tom and Braxton’s daughter. To solve the problems, Braxton calls on a regulator which in the jargon of the era means a gunman who settles conflicts with pistols or other deadly weapons. However, he is not an ordinary character either.
On the one hand, the story includes elements of a classic western. We are in a border area where the law of the strongest or the fastest with the trigger rules. The corrupt domination of the big landowner is questioned by the appearance of outsiders. The lone gunman is the one who is supposed to be able to bring order and justice. It is a scenario that may seem familiar, but the characters are atypical. Braxton’s corruption is deep, but in a different place than the audience expects. Tom Logan, the horse thief, turns out to be almost a positive character, with chances of moral recovery. Braxton’s daughter offers her unconditional and uninhibited love. The strangest and therefore most fascinating character is that of the regulator Lee Clayton. He borrows everything from the charisma and independence of Marlon Brando, who during the five weeks of filming did pretty much what he wanted on the set, improvising and giving in many places to his character other traits and nuances than those imagined by Arthur Penn and Thomas McGuane. Jack Nicholson, who had a great admiration for Brando, was content this time with the role of partner on screen and adversary in the story. The confrontation between the two leads, as in many westerns, to a duel in the end, but here too the resolution is not like in other westerns. ‘The Missouri Breaks‘ is an atypical western, in which the audience fans of the genre have found and will find many flaws, but as a film it remains a memorable cinematic moment due to the meeting at peak between the two great actors of different generations.