Who is Steve Leech?
It is the Jeopardy answer, for me, to the 'question', "Charlton Heston's finest role".I am with Norm in remembering the stunning opening to the utterly great The Big Country.
But in many ways, while St. Gregory Peck contributes a great deal to this tale of taming the old west, Charlton Heston made a real mark in playing Steve Leech, a basically decent guy caught between two worlds. He moved the role between the sympathetic and the less so - stuck to old retributive values, he was baffled by Peck's character, who understood completely the futility of tit for tat.
The movie popped up a couple of weeks ago on TV, and I tuned in initially just to enjoy that opening sequence that Norm is so enthusiastic about, and in the end, I stayed through the whole very long film.
Heston features in the great fight scene in the movie, another great essay on the futility of personal revenge. He is brilliant and beautiful through the whole movie.
Check out this picture.
If it were not for the multitude of jackass (the word is too kind, as it leaves out the layer of malice) behaviors of Michael Moore, I would regard his sneaky attack on a Charlton Heston in early stages of Alzheimer's as particularly loathsome. But I imagine there is much worse I know little of.
Farewell, Charlton Heston. You brought a lot of pleasure to my life.
Labels: Charlton Heston The Big Country
posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:06 PM
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