The Missouri Breaks is a 1976 American western film starring
Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson.
The film was directed by Arthur Penn,
with supporting performances by Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton,
Frederic Forrest, John McLiam and Kathleen Lloyd.
The score was composed by John Williams.
The title of the movie refers to a forlorn and very rugged area of north central Montana,
where over eons the Missouri River has made countless deep cuts or "breaks" in the land.
Production
In a May 24, 1976 Time magazine interview it was revealed that Brando "changed the entire flavor of his character — a bounty hunter called Robert E. Lee Clayton — by inventing a deadly hand weapon resembling both a harpoon and a mace that he uses to kill. He said, "I always wondered why in the history of lethal weapons no one invented that particular one. It appealed to me because I used to be very expert at knife throwing."
Principal photography began on June 23, 1975. Jack Nicholson was the first actor to arrive on location with director Arthur Penn, the cast, and the crew. During the second week of filming in Nevada City, intermittent rain showers hit the area, which made the entire cast and crew more bedraggled than the script called for. More than 80 extras were used for area scenes, most of them were local people and children. A narrow-gauge car was lost for a week while on route from Chama, New Mexico to Harrison, which arrived after being held in Salt Lake City for interstate transportation permits. A scene which required the car was filmed on a trestle, four miles from Harrison on the abandoned Red Bluff Railroad. After filming was completed there, the cast and crew went on to Virginia City. In mid-July, Marlon Brando arrived in Montana to began filming in Billings on a ranch near the city.
In August, while filming a scene on The Yellowstone River that requires the two main characters on horses and crossing the river, one of the horses name Jug drowned accidentally while in the water. In question, the film's production executive said Jug died of shock when he was in the water. His answer was he hit a car body with one hoof and had a heart attack. An investigation was required, and they came to the conclusion that it was an accident. But according to a spokesman for the Billings Humane Society, the sheriff's investigation was unsatisfactory. The set was closed for a couple of weeks to everyone and there was no discrimination involved. After the horse's drowning and several others were injured, including one by American Humane Association-prohibited tripwire, this film was placed on the AHA's "unacceptable" list.By the end of August, Brando had completed filming and left Montana. Nicholson stayed behind with the crew and cast. Production then headed to Red Lodge for two weeks to complete filming, and it was officially wrapped in mid-September 1975.
The movie was filmed on location in Montana — Billings, Bovey Restorations, Nevada City, Red Lodge, and Virginia City.
Reaction
Coming on the heels of Brando and Nicholson's Oscar-winning turns in The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the film was highly anticipated, but became a notorious critical and commercial flop.
Vincent Canby's review in the May 20, 1976 New York Times cited "an out-of-control performance" by Brando.
Brando agreed to accept $1 million for five weeks work plus 11.3% of gross receipts in excess of $10 million. Nicholson agreed to accept $1.25 million for ten weeks work, plus 10% of the gross receipts in excess of $12.5 million. (Nicholson later sued producer Elliott Kastner for unpaid wages.)
Despite its two stars, Missouri Breaks reportedly earned a domestic box-office gross of a mere $14 million.
Xan Brooks of The Guardian sees the film as having ripened over the years: "Time has worked wonders on The Missouri Breaks. On first release, Arthur Penn's 1976 western found itself derided as an addled, self-indulgent folly. Today, its quieter passages resonate more satisfyingly, while its lunatic take on a decadent, dying frontier seems oddly appropriate. ...Perhaps for the last time, there is a whiff of method to (Brando's) madness. He plays his hired gun as a kind of cowboy Charles Manson, serene and demonic".
User Review
Unusual western that entertains with its anti-heroes
9 September 2006 | by Jugu Abraham (Trivandrum, Kerala, India)
Quote from juguDisplay MoreSeeing the movie for the second time after a break of some twenty plus years, I realized that I was watching a film that deserved more attention than it has received over the decades. Apart from the fact that it contains one of the finest lines in cinema "You know what woke you up? You just had your throat cut!" most reviewers have logically zoomed in on the obvious—the swaggering performance of Marlon Brando at the peak of his career and an overshadowed but endearing performance of Jack Nicholson. Yet the film belongs not to these two worthies but to Arthur Penn, the director.
Penn seems to be constantly attracted by characters that are out of the ordinary—those who are constrained either physically or mentally ("The Miracle Worker," "The Chase" "The Little, Big Man," "Night Moves" etc.). He loves anti-heroes. In "The Missouri Breaks" there are three anti-heroes—a rustler, a cross-dressing bounty hunter, and a gay rancher who reads "Tristam Shandy" but serves as judge and jury as he metes out death sentences to make his little world better to live in.
One would assume in a film studded with such unlikable characters that Penn would paint them black. Penn does the opposite—he manipulates the viewer to sympathize with the bad guys. Nicholson's horse rustler is smart—he knows the circumstances when a gun would have a bullet in it. He knows how to court a woman by brewing Chinese tea in the Wild West. Brando's bounty hunter is equally erudite—he carries a book on ornithology while horseback as he watches eagles seek its prey through binoculars, just as he follows desperadoes before he moves in to his kill. The ranch owner, with a gay lover on the ranch, is a good father and well read with 3500 works of English literature in his library. What a weird set of anti-heroes! One would have expected good women to balance the bad guys. The women of Penn have shades of gray—"Missouri Breaks" is no exception. The leading lady seems to be fascinated by the bad guys and "demands" sex. Another rancher's wife has illicit sex with a guest.
The final sequence of two important characters leaving for different destinations after checking out where they would be 6 months hence leaves the viewer guessing of what would happen. Penn's films tend to end with a perspective of a detached outsider, making the characters quixotic and the end open to several viewpoints.
Brando was a treat to watch—only his "Quiemada" (Burn) appealed to me more among all his films. Interestingly, in both films Brando had problems with the director and took matters in his own hands.
The music and screenplay are in many ways a tribute to the rising fame of the spaghetti Western and therefore quite stunning—also because of the very interesting and intelligent use of sound editing. The opening fifteen minutes of the film underline this argument, although this is a Penn film and not a Sergio Leone film.
All in all this film is a major western as it has elements that never surfaced in most others—women who were not mere attractions, the effect of carbines on those shot by them, and of course the slow death by hanging, in contrast to the lovely countryside (stated by the leading lady). This western entertains in a way most others do not. (Exceptions are William Fraker's "Monte Walsh", "Will Penny," and Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller"). Thank you, Mr. Penn and all those that contributed to making this deceptively interesting film so enjoyable.