|
They "lean and crawl and swell like they was alive," the titular dunes, perhaps with reference to Macbeth. Mexicali intrigue, the stranger (William Bishop) slips into a cantina to try to shake the private detective (John Ireland) off his tail, and there's Randolph Scott in a poker session ahead of Boetticher. (The game is serious but not so serious that a certain pinup can't be noticed straddling an ice block on the calendar: "Never seen a tomato needed a seat cushion so bad.") The legend of the gold shipment on the lost wagon train suddenly looks rather real, the saloon bunch ventures into the desert after the jackpot. "Quite a mob we got," including shifty drifter (Arthur Kennedy), salty prospector (Edgar Buchanan), mystery gal (Ella Raines). Unsettled pasts, rising tensions, grist for the mill of John Sturges in his first Western. Noir shadows and cracked clay, figures digging in a sandy void. (The Alabama Hills and Death Valley locations return in Bad Day at Black Rock.) "Hangman's bait" between the horse breeder and the fugitive, the Huston connection has been noted though Wellman's Yellow Sky is nearer. A distant glare flashing on guilty lives, down to the indigenous mule driver (Charles Stevens) with a tragic tale of smuggled immigrants. Bluesy accompaniment from Josh White and his slide guitar, Scott meanwhile prefers a wallop when it comes to settling an argument, "I ran out of words." Dueling shovels yield to a sandstorm remembered by Kurosawa in Dersu Uzala, the upshot is a newborn foal in the wasteland. "I don't suppose there'd ever be a time when things would seem to come out even." Aldrich's The Flight of the Phoenix is among the variations. With Jerome Courtland, Russell Collins, Houseley Stevenson, Frank Yaconelli, and Ralph Dunn. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |