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The title is just the kind of blunt headline an intrepid newshound would choose for his directorial debut. The eponymous outlaw is first a flat profile on a wanted poster, then a looming, bushy-bearded visage, impassive like an undertaker's but for fervent, lupine eyes. Close-up of a sweaty bank clerk with his hands up and foot slowly inching toward the alarm button, pistols drawn as the camera dollies back to reveal the robbery as tableau vivant—the composition combusts as bullets fly, and there's the cornerstone of Samuel Fuller's cinema of collision. Jesse James (Reed Hadley) saves Robert Ford (John Ireland) in the wake of the hold-up, and takes him into his home: "They say when you save a man's life, you assume his responsibilities." Both desperadoes yearn for stability, the promise of amnesty rather than money fuels Ford's betrayal of his friend. Like Marat in a barnyard bathtub, James gifts his guest with a six-shooter and his soapy back, the shooting in this tale of sublimated love and rape instead takes place under a slanted family portrait. Ostracized more as traitor than criminal, the bewildered Ford is rejected by his beloved (Barbara Britton) and descends into a bit of reflexive self-flagellation, re-enacting his Judas act on stage only to freeze before the audience. All he gets is his cowardice flung back to him in ballad form and snot-nosed gunslingers vying for his notoriety. "A real heartwarming drama," with Preston Foster at hand to point up the concentrated reworking of The Informer. The West and its theater, Fuller's early essayism (Shakespeare is quoted, or is it Aristotle?), contradictory forces building toward a raging Pietà. "To be a little corrupt, for the sake of art, that I wouldn't mind." With Barbara Woodell, J. Edward Bromberg, Victor Kilian, Tom Tyler, and Tommy Noonan. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |