Equilibrium

SemiNoir is a continuing series of short academic essays dealing with film noirs watched and reviewed in the seminar 'Film Noir and American Culture' at the University of Tuebingen.

Gagin (Robert Montgomery) is a disillusioned patriot. He was fighting in World War II with a lot of his friends – some never came back home with him: "I've seen enough flags!" he replies when Retz (Art Smith) tells him about his 'reward' (of honor) and his deserts for his country. Retz pobably knows of Gagin’s state of mind and that is why he stops bothering him when Gagin tells him so. Maybe Retz knows when to 'bother' him again … We do not know what really happened to Gagin during the war. However, Ride the Pink Horse has the most war references of all the noirs we watched so far. What we do know is that Gagin once was a patriot, fighting for his country and therefore answering its call. He made some friends ‘over there’, because his "I've seen enough flags!" probably refers to his dead comrads and their military burrials which in the center has the star-spangled banner which is given to the wifes or other bereaveds. Exactly this motif is a pretty common one in film and literature (e.g. The Rock, Armageddon, Man on Fire): the disillusioned ex-patriot who suddenly turns rouge and does not want anything to do with his country, which is represented here by FBI agent Retz, anymore. He then needs a special moment, probably a catharsis, to recognize that crime does not pay (the main premise of most of our noirs), but being loyal to a country's values does (he did stick to its values in the first place, did he not?).

He gets his catahrsis when the gangster beat him half-dead and when 'his' girl Pilar (Wanda Hendrix) gets into trouble. He cares about the the girl extremely much – maybe he tries to do good after having lost a comrade in the war due to his (wrong) behavior. He does not want to lose more people he feels connected to, especially because he seems to have no one except for Pilar and Pancho (Thomas Gomez). They are now his family, his sister and his brother – and in the end, when Retz joins them the family is complete. Gagin has found three things in him: his lost patriotism: "Uncle Sam", his father (Retz served the same way as a father figure as E.G. Robinson's character did in Double Indemnity), and, to a certain degree, his salvation. Furthermore, he does not totally fall in love with Pilar – how is that? Altough we do know very little about her, we do know that she is Indian. So, if Gagin is seeking salvation, why not think of her as a figure of historical weight – what if Gagin treats her that good (in the end), because he feels sorry for her and her people? The U.S. was found on the Indians and Gagin knows that, no matter how patriotic he is. He wants a full salvation, so he tries to apologize for the acts of his fellow Americans. He has fought in a war, which means that he has seen a lot of evil, and now he wants to make a clean sweep of things. Real patriotism to him therefore also means to confess that one was sometimes wrong. And he was wrong in so many cases …

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