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Cat Ballou is at once recognizable with the chanteuse in jail, a dandy sharpshooter since infancy. The crane shot that follows Betty Grable as she arms herself and seeks her "long drink of ink" lover (Cesar Romero) in the saloon's upper floor while singing "Every Time I Meet You" shows the technique Preston Sturges learned, the ruckus that follows (with her jealous bullet finding a spot in the honorable Porter Hall's ass) shows the slapstick he never stopped loving. "Maybe he forgot my name in the excitement," she hopes. "In letters of fire, he remembers your name! Letters of fire! Nine feet high!" booms the sheriff. Bashful Bend, "a law-abbidin' town, it ain't the Wild West," the heroine ditches it and comes to Snake City in a schoolmarm frock, her sidekick (Olga San Juan) wrapped in an Indian blanket. On one side the clueless gallantry of the gold-mine owner (Rudy Vallee), on the other the randy braying of the hayseed twins (Sterling Holloway, Danny Jackson), quite the welcoming. "Oh, just a poem..." Destry Rides Again dilated for the benefit of the Coen brothers, or simply Sturges' The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a lament not for the end of the frontier but the end of the decade when the auteur's brand of lunacy soared. Members of his stock company materialize like ghosts, the last hurrah is a chaotic shootout packed with resurrections and abstruse gags (a dreamlike effect is achieved by having the same cowpoke shot off a roof four times in a row), clearing the path for The Great Race and Blazing Saddles. "We mustn't be ridiculous." "I don't mind!" With Hugh Herbert, Al Bridge, El Brendel, Margaret Hamilton, Richard Hale, Emory Parnell, J. Farrell MacDonald, Chester Conklin, and Marie Windsor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |