Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

DIRECTOR: Robert Montgomery
WRITERS: Dorothy B. Hughes (novel), Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer
CAST: Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, Art Smith, Thomas Gomez
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Russell Metty
COUNTRY: USA
GENRE: Noir, drama
MISCELLANY: 101m

Even among noir men, hardly the most loquacious bunch, Robert Montgomery's disillusioned veteran Gagin of "Ride the Pink Horse" is notably tight-lipped. But his terseness arouses interest, not indifference; in the absence of revealing dialogue, I turned to his body language, his relationships. Instead of being told what he was thinking, I wondered what he was thinking.

With nowhere to sleep, Gagin is referred to as "the man with no place." His alienation is enforced by the setting, a village in New Mexico, where he goes to find the man who killed his friend Shorty. There he is a foreigner among the locals — who greet his questions with blank looks, amusement and sometimes furious outbursts in Spanish that he struggles to comprehend. And he's an outsider among the tourists there for the fiesta, whose gaiety mocks his desolation. In a flawless scene that makes his loneliness plain, he opens the door to a cantina and the singing and strumming and talking stop cold; the patrons stare, their faces laced with shadows and smoke and, perhaps, Gagin's paranoia.


Gagin's hardly a big shot gringo throwing around cash, yet seems most at ease in relationships whose boundaries are set by money. He's demonstrably friendly with the bellboy, whom he tips for service and advice. He buys a round of drinks at the bar and finds shelter and camaraderie at Pancho's carousel. He gives the Indian girl Pila, who stalks him like an angel despite his brushoffs, a 10-cent spin on the merry-go-round, and $10 so she can have her hair waved. Maybe he is not buying loyalty from Pancho and Pila but earning it; simply because he does not care enough about money to hoard it.

This quality certainly endears him to Pancho, who declares himself "born to be broke" and claims to be happy only when he has nothing. He incurs a debt to Gagin rather than accept a second round of drinks, because of his "pride." So is his refusal to give free rides on the carousel, even for friends, a business policy or a moral code? The time he breaks it riders pay dearly as they spin around, helpless witnesses to a brutal beating.

Greed sickens Gagin, especially the brand exhibited by the very man he's battling, war-profiteer Frank Hugo. When Gagin attempts to shake him down, Hugo taunts him for his modest ambitions. "Thirty thousand?" complains Hugo's moll, who tries to partner with Gagin. Hugo, she says, "would've asked for a million — and gotten it." But Gagin's heart isn't in blackmail, at least that's what the FBI agent tailing Hugo thinks. He sizes up Gagin as a veteran who is outraged to discover that he went to war for three years and "got nothing out of it but a bunch of dangling ribbons."

"Ride the Pink Horse" is one of many forties films about a maladjusted veteran. Its long, hallucinatory night sequences evoke those of other veteran noirs of the period, notably "The Chase," "Blue Dahlia" and "Somewhere in the Night." Dorothy B. Hughes, author of "Ride the Pink Horse," also wrote "In a Lonely Place," another hardboiled tale about a troubled veteran, adapted to film by Nicholas Ray, starring Humphrey Bogart in one of his grittiest performances.
— Becky