The Frisco Kid

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The Frisco Kid
Frisco kid ver2.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by
  • Michael Elias
  • Frank Shaw
  • Gene Wilder (uncredited) [1]
Produced by Mace Neufeld
Starring
Cinematography Robert B. Hauser
Edited by
Music by Frank De Vol
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date
  • July 13, 1979 (1979-07-13)
Running time
119 minutes
CountryUnited States
Languages
Budget$9.2 million [2]
Box office$9.3 million [3]

The Frisco Kid is a 1979 American Western comedy film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Gene Wilder as Avram Belinski, a Polish rabbi who is traveling to San Francisco, and Harrison Ford as a bank robber who befriends him.

Contents

Plot

Rabbi Avram Belinski, newly graduated at the bottom of his class from a Polish yeshiva, arrives in Philadelphia en route to San Francisco where he will be a congregation's new rabbi. He has with him a Torah scroll for the San Francisco synagogue. Avram, an innocent, trusting, and inexperienced traveler, falls in with three con men, the brothers Matt and Darryl Diggs and their partner Mr. Jones, who trick him into helping pay for a wagon and supplies to go west, then brutally rob him and leave him and most of his belongings scattered along a deserted road in Pennsylvania.

Still determined to make it to San Francisco, Avram, on foot and exhausted, comes upon a colony of Amish people. From their simple black clothing, he assumes fellow Hasidic Jews, until he notices Christian cross on the Bible carried in the pocket of one of the men, at which point he faints. They take care of Avram and collect enough money to get him a train ticket. In Ohio, Avram works on the railroad until he saves up enough money to buy a horse and some supplies.

On his way west again, he is befriended and looked after by a stranger named Tommy Lillard, a bank robber with a soft heart who is moved by Avram's helplessness and frank personality, despite the trouble it occasionally gives him. When Tommy robs a bank on a Friday, Avram will not ride on the Shabbat even with a hanging posse on his trail. The two also experience Native American customs and hospitality, disrupt a Trappist monastery's vow of silence with an innocent gesture of gratitude.

While stopping in a small town not too far from San Francisco, Avram encounters the Diggs brothers and Jones again. He gets into a fight with the three of them and, after taking a beating, is rescued by Tommy, who takes back what they had stolen from Avram and more besides. At the coast, Avram is dismayed when Tommy announces that they will be parting ways. The three bandits follow the pair and ambush them on a California beach where they have stopped to bathe. Tommy shoots Jones dead and grazes Matt, who flees the scene. Avram is forced to kill Darryl in self-defense.

In San Francisco, Avram begins to doubt whether he is qualified to be a rabbi, not just because he killed a man, but because he rushed to save the Torah over saving Tommy, who has become his best friend. Tommy restores his faith, reminding him that he still is what he is inside, despite what he had to do on the beach. However, Matt, the sole survivor of the ambushing trio, appears and challenges Avram to duel. Avram, regaining his composure, shows his wisdom and courage in front of the entire community by disarming and exiling him from San Francisco with Tommy's help. The film ends with Avram marrying not the elder daughter to whom he had been betrothed sight unseen by her father, but Rosalie Bender, the younger daughter with whom he had fallen in love at first sight, with Tommy as his best man.

Cast

Production

Development

The film was in development for seven years. It was known as No Knife for a long time, then briefly as Greenhorn before someone suggested The Frisco Kid. [4]

Robert Aldrich replaced director Dick Richards during pre-production. [2] Roger Ebert wrote, "It's really nobody's movie. The screenplay has been around Hollywood for several years, and Aldrich seems to have taken it on as a routine assignment." [5]

According to Gene Wilder's autobiography, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, the Tommy Lillard role, played by Harrison Ford, was originally planned for John Wayne. John J. Puccio of Movie Metropolis writes that Wayne was "eager to take it on as a comic follow-up to True Grit and Rooster Cogburn . Salary concerns nixed the idea, though, and it's questionable he would have finished the shooting, in any case, as he died shortly before The Frisco Kid opened." [6] (Another source says Wayne did not want to make the film due to "vulgarity" in the script. [7] )

Wilder said he was offered the film in 1976 but turned it down. The script was rewritten, he read it again the following year and thought it was better but still turned it down. However, when he read a revised second draft he agreed to do it. Warners asked him to work on the script, so he helped with the construction of a third draft, then wrote a fourth draft. [8]

Production

Filming started 30 October 1978 under the working title No Knife. [9]

Aldrich said "With the exception of Bette Davis, Gene is the best actor I've worked with. He's very intuitive, very bright." [8] Wilder also enjoyed working with Aldrich, calling the film Young Frankenstein Meets the Dirty Dozen and saying "the way he chooses to do a scene is the most artistic of any director I've ever worked with." [8]

Aldrich did not always get on with Harrison Ford during the shoot. "I think every time Aldrich looked at Harrison, he saw John Wayne," said Mace Neufeld, the producer. "Harrison was aware of that, but he was always fun to be around, very funny." [10] Ford later said "It was fun to work with Gene... [but] every time the director, Robert Aldrich, looked at me, he was thinking about how unhappy he was that he didn't have John Wayne, instead." [11]

Reception

Box office

The film earned $4.7 million at the US box office in its first year. [12]

Critical response

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 54% rating based on 28 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "Not even a genial Gene Wilder or a dashing Harrison Ford can rescue The Frisco Kid from a monotonous procession of gently comedic sketches that never cohere into a memorable yarn." [13]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times described The Frisco Kid as "harmless chaos": "People keep coming and going and doing ferociously cute things, but never anything that could appeal to anyone except a close relative or someone with a built-in weakness for anything ethnic whatsoever." He criticized the lack of plot development, saying that, while based on a clever idea, The Frisco Kid ultimately fails to deliver on its promise. [14]

Roger Ebert gave the movie a mixed review, admitting that after seeing Cat Ballou he was "forever after spoiled on the subject of comic Westerns." "The movie's based on a good idea, yes... But what approach do you take to this material? What's your comic tone? The Frisco Kid tries for almost every possible tone." [5]

Jordan Hiller called it one of "25 Essential Jewish Movies", praising its "uncommon innocence and unselfconscious humility." He called it an "unpredictably paced part screwball comedy farce, part dramatic buddy picture, part spaghetti western" and wrote, "The Frisco Kid has the feel of an artist's charmingly naive youthful indiscretion... The Frisco Kid is, all pratfalls and tuchus jokes aside, the quintessential 'Torah' movie." [15] Reviewer Ken Hanke wrote, "Robert Aldrich's penultimate film is an easygoing work of some considerable charm that relies far too much on ethnic humor — mostly Jewish, but not entirely — to sit quite as comfortably as it might like... [Aldrich's] professionalism serves the film well. It's very hard to fault on a technical level, and he brings a strong visual sense to bear on a number of sequences that raise them several notches above the TV flavor of the material. The dance sequence, when Avram and his unlikely companion, Tommy (Harrison Ford), are prisoners of a tribe of Indians, is a good case in point, as is the final shoot-out in the streets of San Francisco... Never a great movie, it's nonetheless a pleasant one — an old-fashioned entertainment that more than gets by on the unforced (albeit unlikely) chemistry of Wilder and Ford." [16]

Puccio of Movie Metropolis called the film "humorous and touching" and "uplifting as well": "The Frisco Kid is not a great film; it's not even a very good film by the best filmmaking standards; but it's such a sweet and gentle film, it's hard not to like... The film moseys along at a leisurely pace, and the director has a little difficulty finding the right comedic tone between dry, subtle farce and outright slapstick; yet it manages to find a soft spot in the heart for every scene, so maybe 'heartwarming' is what Aldrich had in mind, in which case he couldn't have done better." [6]

Wilder's performance was widely praised. Ebert wrote, "What's poignant about the film is that Wilder's performance is such a nice one. He's likable, plucky, versatile. He is, in fact, as good an actor here as he's ever been before, and at his own brand of complex vulnerability Gene Wilder has never been surpassed." [5] Hanke said, "But the main interest in the film is probably Gene Wilder's performance, which is interesting simply because it's one of the few times that Wilder played a character that wasn't essentially Gene Wilder. And, lo and behold, he does a perfectly credible job of being someone else — or at least someone else who isn't Willy Wonka." [16] Film scholar Stuart Galbraith IV declares that Wilder gives "one of his very best performances" and calls his character "incredibly endearing": "The Frisco Kid is a real surprise, offering as it does one of Gene Wilder's best characterizations in a film that's alternately funny and sweetly touching, this despite Robert Aldrich's generally indelicate direction." [17] Puccio wrote, "Nobody does nice like Gene Wilder... Nor have many actors been so willing to celebrate their culture and religious convictions as Wilder does here, perhaps also a trait he picked up from [Mel] Brooks." [6]

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References

  1. ↑ GENE WILDER: A RABBI AT HOME ON THE RANGE: FROM LOCATION Warga, Wayne. Los Angeles Times 24 Dec 1978: 45.
  2. 1 2 Silver, Alain and James Ursini, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, Limelight, 1995, p. 308.
  3. ↑ "The Frisco Kid (1979)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  4. ↑ At the Movies: Art Carney plays an aging bartender. Russian Day in Queens Buckley, Tom. New York Times 20 July 1979: C6.
  5. 1 2 3 Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1979). "The Frisco Kid". www.rogerebert.com. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 Puccio, John J. (February 13, 2006). "FRISCO KID - DVD review". Movie Metropolis. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  7. ↑ Taxi Driver Totaled on TV.-Big John's Big Bux McCarthy, Todd. Film Comment; New York Vol. 15, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 1979): 78-80.
  8. 1 2 3 GENE WILDER: A RABBI AT HOME ON THE RANGE: FROM LOCATION Warga, Wayne. Los Angeles Times 24 Dec 1978: 45.
  9. ↑ FILM CLIPS: Star Transfiusion for 'Bloodline' Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 7 Oct 1978: b5.
  10. ↑ Danger Is His Business It may not look like it as Harrison Ford sits on the front porch of his Wyoming retreat. But trust us: Hollywood is a dangerous place, and Ford has certainly done well in the action game.. (Just don't hold your breath for `Fugitive II.'): [Home Edition] Newman, Bruce. Los Angeles Times 14 Aug 1994: 6.
  11. ↑ Harrison Ford dishes on news, family life and socks Nepales, Ruben V. McClatchy - Tribune Business News; Washington [Washington]13 Nov 2010.
  12. ↑ Grosses Gloss: Breaking Away at the Box-Office Beaupre, Lee. Film Comment; New York Vol. 16, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 1980): 69-73,80.
  13. ↑ "The Frisco Kid (1979)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 17, 2022.
  14. ↑ Canby, Vincent (July 6, 1979). "The Frisco Kid (1979)". The New York Times . Retrieved April 11, 2011. There's scarcely a plot development, from the moment the rabbi is swindled out of his money on his arrival in Philadelphia, through his adventures on the open range in the company of a kind-hearted, WASP outlaw (Harrison Ford), that isn't telegraphed from the opening, pre-credit sequences.
  15. ↑ Hiller, Jordan (September 24, 2009). "25 Essential Jewish Movies". Bang It Out. Archived from the original on June 28, 2014. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  16. 1 2 Hanke, Ken (June 15, 2005). "The Frisco Kid". Mountain Xpress. Asheville, NC. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  17. ↑ Galbraith, Stuart (March 13, 2006). "The Frisco Kid". DVD Talk. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
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