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"Revenge and power" in the sagebrush, André De Toth's first Western and the inauguration of a stark subgenre. (Walsh's Pursued runs parallel, Mann's The Furies swiftly follows.) The ranching honcho (Charlie Ruggles) is under the thumb of the ruthless cattleman (Preston Foster), who aims to marry his daughter (Veronica Lake). She has different plans, dashed when the sheep farmer she's taken up with is run out of town one night, the foreman with a past (Joel McCrea) leans by an oil lamp and contemplates the opposing forces. "From now on, I'm gonna make a life of my own. And being a woman, I won't have to use guns." A hard image throughout, perfectly keyed to the corroded worldview—the camera pans right with McCrea and the sheriff (Donald Crisp) into the saloon, dollies in for terse words at the counter, dollies out and pans left to the exit, one unbroken, saturnine stroke. Tidy morality is rejected, "the law was just a tired old man," virtually every character evinces a shadow side. (With his shifting grin, Don DeFore's gunslinger is the one best adapted to the landscape.) "A lot of killing, kid," one cowhand is beaten blind, another gets a cigarette burn on his hand when he refuses to reach for his revolver during a confrontation. Galloping posses viewed through the vertical screen of a cabin window and silhouetted profiles illuminated by the opening in a mountain hideout, detached long shots giving way to compact close-ups in a nocturnal ambush. "He must want to get himself shot, taking this trail." "We'll accommodate him." De Toth continues to refine the form up to the freezing culmination of Day of the Outlaw. With Arleen Whelan, Lloyd Bridges, Nestor Paiva, Ray Teal, Houseley Stevenson, Ian MacDonald, and Jeff Corey. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |