RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) B/W 101m dir: Robert Montgomery
w/Robert Montgomery, Thomas Gomez, Rita Conde, Iris Flores, Wanda Hendrix, Grandon Rhodes, Titi Renaldo, Richard Gaines, Andrea King, Art Smith, Martin Garralaga, Edward Earle, Harold Goodwin, Maria Cortez, Fred Clark
Suspenseful tale of a ex-G.I. who comes to a small New Mexico town looking for a mobster. Out-of-the-ordinary crime drama with superb direction by Montgomery.
From Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, edited by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward:
"RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) ...
"Filming completed July 3, 1947
"Released: Universal-International, October 8, 1947 ...
"[Note: The antique Tio Vivo Carousel, built in 1882 in Taos, New Mexico, was the model for the carousel in the novel Ride the Pink Horse (by Dorothy B. Hughes, adapted by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer). This carousel was purchased by Universal-International and shipped from Taos to Universal City where it was reconstructed for the film.]
"An ex-G.I. known only as Gagin comes to a small New Mexico town during its annual fiesta. Gagin's intention is to confront and blackmail a mobster named Frank Hugo. While he waits for Hugo's arrival at the local hotel, Gagin is approached by Bill Retz, an F.B.I. agent, who suspects that Gagin possesses incriminating material on Hugo and asks him to turn it over. Gagin claims to be in town merely as a tourist and denies having any information. Followed by Retz, Gagin does tour the town, spending a good portion of the day near an old carousel operated by Pancho and frequented by Pila, an Indian girl who attaches herself to Gagin. Despite Gagin's efforts to discourage her, she follows him around town and, after his initial meeting with Hugo, witnesses an attempt to kill him. She and Pancho nurse the badly beaten Gagin but cannot dissuade him from approaching Hugo again. This time Gagin defeats the mobster but is tricked by his associates. Retz, alerted by Pila, intervenes and Hugo is killed.
"Among the various portraits of weary veterans contained in film noir, Gagin is perhaps most literally devoid of identity. He has no first name --- only Gagin, clipped, guttural, almost an epithet for Robert Montgomery's taciturn portrayal. The epithet the villagers give him as he wanders through San Pablo is 'the man with no place,' an appropriate choice of words for someone who comes from nowhere in particular and lacks any ultimate destination. As to Gagin's personal connections, he describes them succinctly to the inquisitive Pila: 'I'm nobody's friend.'
"Initially, the mise-en-scène supports this self-image of Gagin. He descends from the bus, and the camera tracks him through the terminal as he deposits an envelope in a locker, conceals the key, then exits and enters the town proper. The actions are simple enough; but the single moving shot in which they are inscribed rivets the audience's attention and compels them to extrapolate some sense of Gagin's character from the mere fact of his silent, methodical activity. At the same time, the sustained camera graphically imprisons Gagin within the unattractive realities of the bus depot and the dusty road to town.
"Gagin is not a cipher. The typical qualities of the embittered loner, which the figure invokes through the visual inscription, and the subsequent narrative exposition of his hatred for Frank Hugo are the film's seminal definitions of a complex protagonist. As a result, the original assertion of Gagin's identity is grounded in conflict --- both an understated but immediate conflict with his environment and an imminent clash with the criminal archetype, Hugo. Ostensibly, San Pablo offers nothing other than the presence of Hugo, to mollify the alienation that Gagin carries so visibly, no alternate reality to that revealed in the naturalistic images of the bus terminal, central to San Pablo, or the hotel lobby peopled by Hugo's henchmen and agent Retz. Only after Gagin's quest to extort Hugo and vindicate his dead friend is momentarily suspended does he discover Pancho, Pila, and the Tio Vivo Carousel.
"It is not merely because it gives the film its title that Tio Vivo is the central image of Ride the Pink Horse. Somewhat like Rika's apartment in Thieves' Highway, it offers a haven, and not merely for Gagin. Well before Pancho and Pila take take him there literally to regain his strength, Gagin is made uneasy by the unusual relationship between the carousel and its patrons. On his first visit there, Pila asks Gagin, the stranger, which horse to ride. Approaching the merry-go-round Gagin uncovers the horse nearest to him and remarks laconically, 'Why don't you ride the pink one?' To Gagin, it makes no difference which horse she chooses; all are substantially the same, all travel in the same circle. To Pila, who understands instinctively the significance of choice, it makes all the difference. The carousel is at once one of the most stylized objects in the film --- by nature, as a theatrical amusement, and because it is photographed on a neutral sound stage under a neutral gray light that differs markedly from the high contrast shots made on actual location --- and one of the most free of artificial restraints. Aside from its theatricality and the aspects of ritual that its patrons attach to it, Tio Vivo is a quintessential noir set piece. Gagin, who comes to it burdened by the complicated codes of the noir underworld, specifically the belief that he must extract vengeance for his friend, cannot see it as representative of existential choice, which Pila without benefit of sophisticated terminology clearly does. Again like Nick Gargos in Thieves' Highway, only after Gagin accepts the carousel, albeit reluctantly, as sanctuary, does he begin to comprehend its meaning. Conditioned as he is to living with alienation, as part of the role that he feels compelled to take on, he still rejects Tio Vivo in favor of another chance at Hugo. That rejection, in itself, represents a truer choice than Gagin had previously made; and choice, in the noir world, ultimately guarantees either annihilation or salvation.
" --- A.S."