There is, in retrospect, way too much to talk about with this movie. Anything you folks want to discuss, I'll be more than happy.
I'm just going to go into one aspect of the film: the way that the prophecy comes to pass, and what it says about the film's ideas on sin and virtue.
This is a question worth considering, because the film is steeped to a surprising degree in Christian ethics. It assumes an audience -- 1968 was almost the last time you could assume it -- that is equally familiar with the details of Christian ethics, and that will share the farmer wife's shock at the idea of a woman having a husband whose name she did not share. In addition, at the end the film resolves all the moral issues it raises in favor of the accepted mainstream Christian ethics of the day. In other words, it's not poking fun at Christianity. It's taking it quite seriously. Christianity isn't the joke: Christianity is the context that makes all the movie's jokes funny.
No-Name City's doom is foretold by the Parson, shortly after his arrival. He sees all the departures from mainstream Christian virtue (to name a few: polyandry, drunkeness in the streets, prostitution, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, etc). He arrives on the veranda of Ezra Atwell's hotel and gives his prophecy:
No-Name City!That is, of course, precisely what happens.
No-Name City!
The Lord don't like it here!No-Name City!
No-Name City!
You're reckoning day is near!No-Name City!
No-Name City!
Here's what he's gonna do:Swallow up this town,
And gobble it down,
And good-bye to you!
However, the first person to "sink into the pit!" is the Parson himself (although he finds Ben Rumson there to greet him -- "Welcome to hell!"). The two men have to escape from the bull while the city collapses around them, and the prophecy is re-sung with enthusiasm. The Parson's eventual fate is not shown -- he is last seen in a collapsing building -- but Ben Rumson escapes the chaos, afloat in a bathtub with one of the ladies of the evening.
Why would the Parson suffer a worse fate than Ben Rumson, who is among the chief sinners ("Go pray outside, Parson, where the Lord can hear you better")? There's nothing to indicate that the Parson is a hypocrite, which is the usual crime of religious figures in movies. He really seems to believe all the things he says. He really acts on the beliefs. He has the gift of prophecy; the Lord does indeed, in the film, carry out his threats.
It seems to be the case that the Parson is just damned annoying in his certainty.
That is to say, he is possessed of the sin of Pride. This is (so the Medievals thought) the worst of the deadly sins. Ben Rumson is without pride: he covets his own wife, but not so much that he won't share her with another husband. He loves to drink and fight and gamble, but he is wholly honest about the fact that he is a sinner -- his early conversation with Pardner lays out his sins as honestly as could be desired by the Biblical admonition to "confess yourselves to one another."
The Parson is virtuous, but sure of his virtue; and Ben Rumson is sinful, but honest about his sins ("A man has his creed; and mine is all greed," he sings, although in fact he's most generous with Pardner at every point). He does have some virtues -- he works hard, he faithfully keeps his bargains with Pardner and his wife. He honors the contract of marriage (according to his own understanding of it as "mining law") and also his proposed terms of partnership.
Is that why?
Or, alternatively, is it a restatement of the problem of the Book of Job: that virtuous living is no guarantee of success in this world? That suffering belongs to all men, even the best men, and that success or punishment in worldly affairs is not proof of the Lord's favor or disfavor in a larger sense?
Just like the Book of Job, the movie ends on a contradictory note. Rumson rides off into loneliness and the certainty of despair (his occasional "melancholy," as he calls it, he says is "a disease common among mountain men" -- as I can attest myself). Pardner, the best man in terms of traditional ethics, gets all the rewards, just as Job finds at the last that he is given rewards to more than make up for all his suffering.
The movie, if it is echoing Job, echoes it very well. We must not expect virtue to be rewarded and vice punished; and yet, virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. Yet there is no sense of hate or disdain for the honest sinner: Ben Rumson rides off, "pushing on to another wilderness," beloved by all he leaves behind.
Yeah, it's a grand, rollicking comedy. At times it celebrates vice and sin gleefully. Yet it presents us with a picture of genuinely moral men, within the real confines of human limitations. There's not an evil character in the entire film: not though they kidnap, brawl, booze, wench, steal, and eventually witness the divine destruction of their city.
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