The Outrage

Aug. 23, 2009 (Journal Notes)
I saw “The Outrage” last night, Martin Ritt’s take on Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon.” I had seen it before but it had been many years since I last saw it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it was a great script, and I thought Edward G. Robinson did a marvelous job as the cynical con-man. Before writing about it I thought I’d look it up to get some basic info, but to my surprise I couldn’t find a thing about it in Martin & Porter for 2007, none of Pauline Kael’s books mention it, and neither does David Thomson in his listing of a thousand films. I wondered why it was ignored; skipped over when it is obviously a solid film, even more if you ask me. It was listed with the 500 best Westerns.
The story is set up so well, with the three men in the train station, which is decrepit, while a heavy rain pours down, creating a gloomy ambience for the three men who have gathered there. There is the delusion preacher (William Shatner), the absolutist who believes truth should be one and unassailable; the old prospector (Howard de Silva), who hides his version of “the truth” to the last; and the con-man (Edgar G. Robinson) who is there to prick the balloons of idealism floated by the other two. While sitting in foul weather the con-man persuades them to tell the story of the trial held the day before, which is still fast on their minds—actually, more like an acid eating into their guts. At first it’s just away to past the time till the train arrives, but as the tale unfolds it becomes the perfect foil for the con-man to deliver his merciless and insightful attack on this foolish, dishonest, and pathetic humanity who wouldn’t recognize truth if they sat on it.
The story is told in flashback from four perspectives. The prospector had found a dead man with a knife buried in his chest and reported it to the sheriff who arrests Jose Carrasco (Paul Newman) who was found asleep under a tree near the sight of the murder. Carrasco is a notorious bandit well-known in the Arizona territory, and the locals would love to pin the killing on him just to rid the territory of him. We hear Carrasco’s story first at his trial for the murder of the gentleman; and it’s full of his egotism and bravado, as he touts his own mastery of fighting, having killed the man in a duel of honor, and his power over women as the genteel lady he snares, along with her husband, falls for his sexual charisma. He had stopped them on the trail and then kidnapped the pair; the man, a Southern gentleman (Lawrence Harvey), he ties to a tree and rapes the woman, who to some extent enjoys the experience. When she tells her story there’s no question she enjoyed the encounter with Carrasco and her husband treats her with contempt, as he was witness to their embraces and love-making, later accusing her of inviting the rape. Angered by his view and snobbery she kills him with his knife. The husband has a story too, which he told to an old Indian who found him still alive but dying. He claimed he had killed himself over the humiliation by accidently falling on his knife while fighting with Carrasco. As each of these different versions are unraveled the con-man delivers biting discourses on the folly of human nature, and Robinson gives these speeches with plenty of brio and black humor, taking no guff from the other two who are too tender-minded as far as he is concerned.
But there is a 4th version and that belongs to the prospector who claims to have witnessed the whole charade. His telling is broad and comical, a kind of absurdist summing up of the event. It leaves everyone involved without much dignity and looking quite foolish, with the gentleman this time killing himself quite deliberately. We also learn why the fancy murder knife wasn’t found. Some old reviews treat the 4th version as definitive but it’s hardly that; it just one more telling by someone with a stake in the telling.
One thing I didn’t like was the finding of the baby in a room at the train station; it is no more that foil to encourage the prospector and especially the preacher back to rejoin the society they had temporarily been disillusioned with due to this rape and murder. It was an improbable event at best.
The movie cleverly argues truth is subjective and shaped by the storyteller’s investment in a situation; they will always color things in their own favor. Carrasco make himself out to be commanding in the situation with the Southern pair; in her version her sexuality made him jump through some her hoops. He also said the gentleman was a good fighter but he was better. But the prospector said the so-called duel between them was a farce, as both were scared to death and acted cowardly.
Newman was enjoyable as a Mexican bandit, although a bit too broad and too comical throughout, although that did not bother me very much, as clearly he and Robinson had the job of being comic relief to the tale of murder and rape. To see the movie these days, it would have to be through Netflix.