Ride Lonesome

by Kirk Ellis

Ride Lonesome , the fifth film in the "Ranown cycle," is both the best and most representative of the whole series, which has been called "the most remarkable convergence of artistic achievement in the history of low-budget moviemaking." Director Bud Boetticher captures the alienation and loneliness of an America faced with the Cold War and the daily threat of nuclear annihilation. Shot in seventeen days for under a half-million dollars, Ride Lonesome is a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism.

Veteran screenwriter Kirk Ellis brilliantly unpacks the themes, narrative, visual language, and editing in this seminal film. In Ride Lonesome Ellis not only shows how this one film embodies a turning point for the Western, but he also explores the unique vision and contributions of director Boetticher and his writing partner Burt Kennedy.

184 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2023

Reviews

[David Klingenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what film criticism should be: researched, wide ranging, insightful, lucid, and well written.

[John Hocking · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first saw Ride Lonesome on a late night showing on cable TV maybe thirty years ago. The little B-movie was such a concise, stripped-down example of pure storytelling power that I was transfixed. This book offers an elegant examination and analysis of what makes this low budget, 73-minute, 1957 western “a masterpiece of cinematic minimalism, at once epic and austere”.

We are given chapters devoted to the director, Budd Boetticher, and the scriptwriter, Burt Kennedy, but the bulk of the book walks through Ride Lonesome scene by scene. And it is delicious. The author engagingly points out dozens of moments, details even, that contribute to how this movie does so very much with so very little. Probably the best, most enjoyable, book of film criticism I’ve read and the kind of thoughtful, enthusiastic examination Ride Lonesome deserved.