|
Elaborate camerawork is on display from the beginning, long shot to close-up on Main Street with a vertically descending crane to find the hired killer arriving "with blood in his eye." (He's dispatched soon enough in a scene surely recalled by Eastwood, the would-be victim's concealed derringer leaves a smoking hole in the barber's sheet.) "How is the flower of the West this morning?" "Gone to seed." The marshal (Randolph Scott) is a seasoned town-tamer, dealing with vicious gunslingers is a quotidian matter, the Colorado burg is "a wild animal in chains" he every day hears outside his window. Impresario (John Emery) and gambler (Warner Anderson) know of an eminent mining boom and scheme a takeover, the assassin (Michael Pate) sniffs a bonanza and demands his cut. The feminine second theme concerns the music-hall star with a secret (Angela Lansbury) and the rancher's wife in a triangle (Jean Parker), in the middle of it all is the peace officer weary of his violent reputation. ("I manage somehow to keep alive," he states as if recognizing a curse.) Closer to The Undercover Man than to High Noon, the first of Joseph H. Lewis' late Westerns and a bright Technicolor prism on somber genre ruminations. The hero just wants to enjoy his landlady's cooking and a peaceful sleep in his own jail cell, after a bruising brawl with a scarred giant he walks tall before the townspeople only to crumble dolorously as soon as he's out of their sight. Disorder is welcomed with flames and drums in the wake of the shootout, retribution follows resurrection. "Funny how a man softens to another once he's killed him." The "snarling beast" is no longer heard at the close, "nothing but church bells." With Wallace Ford, Ruth Donnelly, James Bell, Harry Antrim, Jeanette Nolan, and Don Megowan.
--- Fernando F. Croce |