weezeralfalfa Apparently, a seriously fictionalized adaptation of the saga of troubled Paiute "Willie Boy", transforming it into a Romeo and Juliet-like tale, with Willie(Robert Blake) and his half-breed girlfriend, Lola(Katherine Ross), the victims of racial slurs and prejudice by judicial authorities. In part, it's also a standard western, with a long posse chase of this horseless fugitive and his girl through a rocky desert wilderness in southern CA, followed by a hide and seek shooting duel with Deputy Sheriff Coop(Robert Redford) on a bare rocky Ruby Mountain. The ultimate outcome was quite predictable.Willie much resents being considered inferior to white men, and often being referred to as 'boy'. Once in a while, he strikes back like a rattler. He jabs a belittling bigot in a pool hall, causing serious injury. He refuses to give up his courting of half-breed Lola, despite murderous threats by her disapproving father. When this duo disappear one night, her father and 2 other men with rifles go looking for them in the woods, and find them making love. As papa appears ready to shoot Willie, he grabs his rifle and shoots papa first. The other men scatter. Seems like Willie should have been able to plead self-defense, with Lola a witness. Apparently, they(rightly) didn't think that would be good enough for a white judge. Thus, they run into the wilderness, and a posse is organized to capture them.Dr. Lisa Arnold(Susan Clark) is the 4th main character. She has earned a doctorate at a prestigious eastern university, and is a medical doctor as well as the superintendent of this reservation. Apparently unmarried, she treats the 'Indians' as her surrogate children, to be protected from the big bad outside world(especially illegal whiskey salesmen). She has a dysfunctional sexual relationship with Coop, refusing to acknowledge him outside her bedroom, as she considers him her social and intellectual inferior. Since Willie's Lola has been raised to be a white woman, Willie is also seen by most as her social inferior.The fact that Willie, from a high vantage point, shot at only the horses, not the men, of the posse, suggests that he did not shoot men unless he felt he absolutely had to. However, in his subsequent shooting duel with Coop, he definitely was shooting to kill.The details of the final duel between Coop and Willie are perhaps significant to the story. Coop surprises Willie from behind, and gives him a chance to surrender. But Willie whirls around, with rifle ready to fire. Coop shoots him dead. But Coop discovers that Willie's rifle was empty. Hence, Willie's action was actually an indirect suicide, thus mimicking the apparent earlier Lola suicide. Coop's action was in apparent self-defense, as was Willie's earlier shooting of Lola's father. However, Coop is regarded as a hero, whereas Willie rightly assumed that he would be regarded by white authorities as an unjustified murderer.The film ends with Willie's body being cremated at the base of Ruby Mountain, where he died. Interestingly, Coop gave the body to the Paiute present, telling them to bury it. Instead, they gathered wood for a funeral pyre. When the white posse arrived, they object that they want a body to show to authorities to prove that Willie is indeed dead. Coop obviously supports the Paiute's decision, saying "Tell them we're all out of souvenirs". In that era, the bodies and effects of infamous outlaws were often subject to theft by souvenir hunters. Presumably, that's part of Coop's thinking. Also, he was telling the posse to let the Paiute dispose of the body according to their traditions. According to Gary Varner's web site titled "The Treatment of Death Among the Paiute", both burial and cremation were commonly practiced, according to circumstances. Willie's circumstance could call for cremation.For one thing, burning was believed to neutralize evil associated with a person and the potential mischief by their ghost(also true of the witch burnings in Europe). Actual accounts of Willie's death favor cremation on site, although another account claims that he escaped captureAccording to one reviewer and several web sites I consulted, the real Willie clearly murdered Lola's father, who was a Paiute shaman. She was either a voluntary or involuntary companion during his flight, depending on the account. Lola was either murdered by Willie or accidentally shot by the posse, depending on the account. Willie died alone on Ruby mountain, maybe. The Coop and Dr. Arnold characters are pure inventions. Thus, the most important details of the film are all fabrications, despite the claim at the beginning that it is a true story. Typical Hollywood! I thought the President Taft episode was an unnecessary diversion from the main story. The main characters, with the possible exception of Katherine Ross, were well cast. For a much more fun role for Susan Clark, see "The Skin Game", in which she is a pickpocket-con artist nemesis-companion for James Garner.

theowinthrop This was one of the westerns made in the 1960s and 1970s, including Ford's CHEYENNE AUTUMN and LITTLE BIG MAN which presented the westward expansion as the disaster it was to the Native Americans. Ford's film concentrated to the attempt of an entire tribe to flee to Canada to avoid being cooped up on a reservation. LITTLE BIG MAN looked at the long series of insults and thefts suffered by the Native Americans leading up to the Battle of the Little Big Horn (their great victory over the politically ambitious Custer - in this film - and the point where their doom got sealed). Those films occur in 1876 - 77. TELL THEM WILLY BOY WAS HERE occurs some three decades later (1909), and shows the hopelessness of their situation.The screenplay is not quite even. It is notable that the author of the original novel, Harry Lawton - who died a few weeks ago - was writing the script with director Abraham Polonsky. This may explain the uneven handling. Polonsky, who was a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, was notable for his radical point of view (best shown in his 1947 John Garfield film FORCE OF EVIL). But he was an expert screenplay writer, and his view of the rights of Native Americans would be similar to those of Lawton. According to Lawton's obituaries he remained committed to Native American rights and culture throughout his life.Willy Boy (Robert Blake) kills a man who was bigoted and goaded him. He is pursued by a posse led by Robert Redford, which is determined to get the young man because of his background. Redford, a bit more fair minded, wants to just catch him to bring him to trial, but one gets the impression as the film continues how hopeless this hope is. It would be sort of like Henry Fonda being in charge of the lynch mob in THE OX-BOW INCIDENT to try to control their passions (and probably as unsuccessful).To confuse matters, the killing takes place near an inn that newly elected President William Howard Taft is visiting on a political trip. Taft's presence in the locale makes the newspaper reporters wonder if they are getting the full facts from the sheriff. Why so much intense searching for this Indian? Is it (as they are told) that he killed a local man and he is quite adept at hiding in the deserts of Utah? Or, is he part of a massive conspiracy of Indians planning to kill Taft? To us, knowing the actual incident, it seems ridiculous, but keep in mind that since 1865 three U.S. Presidents were assassinated for political reasons, the last (McKinley) in 1901. Also, while thirty three years since Little Big Horn, and nineteen since Wounded Knee, the possibility of an Indian uprising was not hard to dismiss (the great chief Geronimo died in 1905, shortly after attending Theodore Roosevelt's inauguration - we were that close in time to the period when he was on the warpath).The film goes to it's tragic conclusion - a long, hard chase to the death of a representative of a defeated people. But the final victory is Blake's. In the end Willy Boy becomes the legend of the Native American who would not surrender.

wb-11 This is a film that tries too hard to be 'worthy', convinced that it conveys some deep message about the culpability of the White Men who colonised the American West at the expense of the Native American Indians. But, as the Haliwell's film guide puts it, it ends up being 'boringly predictable', with its fashionable downbeat ending and cast of bigoted and unsympathetic characters mistreating each other and creating a situation that will inevitably only lead to tragedy. The actors are all fine, the photography is at times excellent, but we are not made to feel for the characters- we can see the outcome way before it happens. Thus, the final confrontation between Sheriff Coop and Willy Boy had no suspense factor for me- and I didn't care when either he or the Katharine Ross character (no, she did NOT look like an Indian!) died. A much better western that is'revisionist' in its attitude to the Native Americans are 'Little Big Man'. Watch that instead.

shepardjessica This under-rated gem of an anti-Western deserved much better than it got. Abrahom Polonsky's return to film-making was swept under the carpet, as are so many heartfelt, thoughtful films (even in 1969). Robert Blake, with the exception of In Cold Blood and Electra Glide in Blue was never more determined or intense as Willie. Redford gives a subtle and layered performance. Katharine Ross is gorgeous but doesn't look like a Native American (her eyes are bluer than Paul Newman's).An 8 out of 10. Best performance = Robert Blake with able support from Barry Sullivan, Susan Clark, and Charles McGraw. I'm sure this flick must have it's own cult following by now. If not, it should.