|
The interrupted wedding and the barricaded avenger, "the day's full of surprises, huh?" The "nervy cuss" (Randolph Scott) is already inside the stagecoach, as befits a landscape of concise genre curveballs, he switches paths and joins his partner (Noah Beery Jr.) at the tail end of a three-year manhunt. The stage is a festive morning in a town gripped by intimidation and grievance, the groom is a dandyish honcho (John Carroll) with the sheriff (Andrew Duggan) in his pocket. Rifles are piled high in the church's vestibule, his mistress (Valerie French) sits in the front pew, yet the bride's (Karen Steele) warning comes from the visitor who couldn't forever hold his peace: "If you marry this man, you'll be a widow by sundown." The interlopers face a barrage of gunfire inside a livery stable, outside Budd Boetticher conducts an acute dissection of citizenry slowly roused out of apathy. Less than 80 minutes but dozens of characterization brushstrokes, from the amateur preacher with his hidden whiskey bottle to the bartender with a biting awareness of human nature. (Typical of the expressive compression is Beery's lovely miniature portrait of a mellow sidekick, savoring a long-delayed meal and a flirtation at the saloon before his rendezvous with a bullet.) A hero's corrosion and a rake's progress for the parallel illumination, obsession chips away at Scott's rectitude while fear and loss complicate and humanize Carroll. Red River is evoked in the purposefully anticlimactic showdown, the coin in the spittoon is headed to Rio Bravo. "A man's gotta draw the line somewhere if he's going to live with himself." The line between redemption and emptiness is a thin one, naturally Boetticher's bitterest resolution segues right into his most playful composition (Buchanan Rides Alone). With John Archer, James Westerfield, John Litel, Ray Teal, Vaughn Taylor, and Richard Deacon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |