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Nicholas Ray shows his hand with the insert of maquette and miniature locomotive, though the approach to the Western is already stated in the opening shot, a scenic vista promptly dynamited. "What's keeping you awake?" "Dreams" is the answer, the gambling hall named "Vienna's" materializes out of a howling sandstorm by a redstone mountain—the wandering buckaroo (Sterling Hayden) strolls by to the sound of roulette wheels and the laser eyes of the owner (Joan Crawford). She's called "a railroad tramp" and he fancies himself "not the fastest gun west of the Pecos," their reunion is interrupted by the disapproving schoolmarm, here a witchy bundle of knotted desires unforgettably embodied by Mercedes McCambridge. The Dancing Kid (Scott Brady) further destabilizes the formulation, a robbery is just the spark needed for the collision of outsiders and cattlemen to go full baroque. "I'd hate to have to be run out of town for something we didn't do... So let's do something!" Arizona hills and Republic sets, romanticism and disillusionment and florid gravity, Hayden's wounded Roy Rogers send-up and Crawford towering like María Casares in leather breeches, components of Ray's thundering ballad. Lynch mobs and forced confessions pin it to the anxious era of McCarthy, hidden waterfall portals and the Fauvist hues of Trucolor free it into the timeless realm of enchantment. "You've got nothing to tell me because it's not real. Only you and me, that's real." The heroine trades white gown for crimson shirt in a subterranean passage as her nemesis trembles blissfully before the bonfire she's ignited, their showdown is the culminating aria. ("It's their fight," admit the men cowering in the bushes.) An overwhelming fable, an enduring crucible for the Cahiers crowd: Truffaut's review recognizes the alliance to Cocteau, Godard in Weekend name-checks it as a guerrilla conjuration, Rivette has the clash of the goddesses in Duelle. Cinematography by Harry Stradling. With Ward Bond, Ben Cooper, Ernest Borgnine, John Carradine, Royal Dano, Frank Ferguson, and Paul Fix.
--- Fernando F. Croce |