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The opening has instant consequences in The Grapes of Wrath, Jane Darwell and all, Henry Fonda's Frank James pauses mid-tussle with the land-grabbing skunk (Brian Donlevy) to spit out a bit of tobacco. (Another foreglimpse finds Henry Hull orating at the local gazette, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "You know those cuss words I told you to take out? Put 'em back in.") Tyrone Power enters in overalls encircled by dappled Manet greenery, somehow he grows into "one of the doggonedest, goldingedest, dad-blamedest buckaroos that ever rode across these United States of America." The family home explodes, the scion's vengeance erupts in a saloon ("Bartender, count three and duck"), a fugitive to the end. A populist hero, though the sympathetic marshal (Randolph Scott) voices Henry King's ambivalence toward his violent progression: "He ain't a knight anymore... He's a wild animal." The train robbery is exceptionally filmed at dusk with the silhouetted outlaw atop illuminated passenger windows, John Carradine's unmistakable eyes peer over his mask as Bob Ford helps himself to the diamond pin in the cravat of the railroad president (Donald Meek). Dollars from a saddlebag detain Cavalry pursuers in the escape from jail, the sermon on the Prodigal Son is curtailed for the wedding of the windbag's niece (Nancy Kelly). Jesse is meant to darken over the years but Power remains a spotless lad, when he forces a rotter to swallow a perfidious letter he still makes sure to order a glass of water for washing it down. (King's interiors are more expressive than his leading man, a cozy abode briefly becomes a shadowy grid when an oil lamp is blown out.) The plainspoken epitaph falls to playacting children: "You're Jesse James. You're dead." Lang's stark sequel follows, as do fierce revisions by Ray and Kaufman and Hill. With J. Edward Bromberg, Slim Summerville, John Russell, Charles Tannen, Claire Du Brey, Willard Robertson, Harold Goodwin, and Ernest Whitman.
--- Fernando F. Croce |