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Technicolor for Anthony Mann means a rediscovery of Nature, with peril never far from beauty: An early composition has greenery and tree stumps capped by icy mountains in the distance, a hard pan right suddenly gives a close-up of grimacing face in noose. The wagon-train guide (James Stewart) saves a fellow wanderer (Arthur Kennedy) from a lynch mob, they swap nomad-outsider philosophies: "Still following that star?" "Sometimes it's better than having a man with a star following you." Former Kansas border raiders, their skills are displayed during a nighttime Shoshone strike. (The camera lays low and recedes tersely as the cowboys crawl toward unseen attackers, making its way through bushes and streams until a bloody corpse enters from the bottom of the frame.) "A new country where we can make things grow," Oregon is envisioned as the distance between the modest settlement sprouting in the wilderness and nascent Portland, which grows tainted by gold fever—the ride through the rapacious boom town glances unmistakably at Stewart's Pottersville shock in It's a Wonderful Life. The patriarch (Jay C. Flippen) with his rigid morality about "rotten apples," the lass (Julie Adams) who gets a taste of city life, the San Francisco gambler (Rock Hudson) who won't shoot to kill. A campfire at dusk or crimson and yellow "Chinee" lamps glowing over the dockside hoedown, lambent pictorial opportunities for Mann. The dilemma of greed and betrayal en route (Ride the High Country) builds to Stewart's seething obsessive side unleashed at the foot of a snowy hill: "You'll be seeing me..." The Columbia River receives the showdown of the doppelgängers, a sincere "Thank you" is plenty reward for the hero with rope burns behind his scarf. Cinematography by Irving Glassberg. With Lori Nelson, Chubby Johnson, Stepin Fetchit, Harry Morgan, Howard Petrie, Frances Bavier, Jack Lambert, and Royal Dano.
--- Fernando F. Croce |