Scenic beauty

Following on from reference 3, we did indeed buy the twenty five year old film noticed at reference 1 from Prime the other day. Perhaps wrongly buying a single viewing rather than buying it outright, which would have cost slightly more than two viewings. We watched the film in two sittings - and I dare say we will watch it again one day.

I was slightly surprised - I don't know why - that the book had been given the wide screen, natural splendour treatment. And the two farms boys, central to the story, had been sanitised, being a lot more wholesome, clean and decent than seems likely in real life. All part of the US fantasy world of small farmers? A bit like us here in the UK and the cuddly villages of so many of our novels and television adaptations. OK, so there is the odd bad apple, but usually a bad apple with redeeming features and very much the exception which proves the rule.

The story had been considerably simplified for the purposes of the film, a process I am trying to get to grips with with Maigret adaptations, of which more in due course. And in just the same way as in those adaptations,  this one pastes in some key touches from the text, a sort of gesture to afficionados, which your average punter is quite likely not to notice.

I felt that the film largely failed to capture the text's fascination with all things horsey, although I don't see how it could have done better than it did without overloading. And I wondered once again where McCormac got it all from, not coming from a horsey background himself. Another part of the dreams of farms and of the west? But I was prompted to look up what a quarter horse was at reference 4.

Contrariwise, turning to the point noticed at reference 3 about Mexican men not changing their minds, of keeping their word, the film does capture this one - with the ladies. With the heroine explaining to the hero than she promised her aunt to break with him and that this is a promise she has to keep if she is to keep her self-respect. A nice point, although I dare say there are times when it is better to break promises which are made, more or less under duress.

I associate to a late story about Captain Hornblower giving his word about a lie, in the knowledge that while the lie might be good for the world, he will have to resign his commission when he is found out. He will have broken his word as a gentleman. As it happens, he does not have to, because, rather fortuitously, it turned out not to be a lie after all. Impressively, Bing turns up the story, at reference 5, at the top of the list for 'hornblower saint elizabeth'.

I was a bit uncomfortable this morning with this business of real men spending their time breaking horses; essential if you are to work the horses, but a business which has a bad flavour this morning. A touch of the veggie perhaps? I associate to reading in a book about slavery in the US about rough overseers knowing how to break new slaves - in much the same way and for much the same reasons as you break horses.

All in all, a good watch, even if, according to Wikipedia, the film was a bit of a flop and came nowhere near getting its money back.

PS: searching the blog for 'pretty' did not seem to turn up reference 2 or reference 3. One of the very occasional errors in usually reliable & accurate blog search, an error not cleared on this occasion by accessing the offending posts in some other way. Plus an error of my own at reference 2, a confusion of 'All the pretty horses' with 'No country for old men'.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Pretty_Horses_(film).

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/trolley-771.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/first-impressions.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Quarter_Horse.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornblower_in_the_West_Indies.