Available on Blu-Ray
This noteworthy 1940s Western prefigures much of what was to be seen in the genre over the next 20 years. It’s dark, questioning themes were at odds with the gung-ho jingoism of wartime America and the movie only got made because the studio wanted reliable director William Wellman to do other, more commercial, work. Wellman’s wonderful Yellow Sky (1948) is another great movie to seek out.
It’s Nevada, 1885: cowboy country. Two strangers arrive in a flyblown town – Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan (recognisable as the colonel in TV’s M*A*S*H) – just as the locals are jumping to judgement and organising a lynch mob when a local rancher has been murdered. There is dissent; should the accused rustlers be apprehended and brought to town for a fair trial, or strung up on the nearest tree? The town’s roughnecks find the idea of law and order ‘womanish’ and crave a bit of bloodthirsty excitement. When the posse finally captures the suspected perpetrators there’s an impromptu vote. Henry Fonda, Hollywood’s eternal good guy, naturally wants justice and a trial for the men (the evidence of the crime is flimsy). Will the majority do the right thing or give in to mob rule?
In the shadowy recesses of the saloon and on the night ride there are some exquisite noir moments. The film has a wonderful craggy cast that form a true west Mount Rushmore. Fonda gives a magnetic performance though he is hardly the star. This is fine ensemble playing – look out for Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, Leigh Whipper as the black preacher man, Francis Ford (John Ford’s elder brother), and Jane Darwell as one of the prime bullying bigots.
Okay, there’s some dull speechifying and, if you want to look for it, there are some troubling gender politics going on – there is a suggestion that the bullying Southern colonel’s son (William Eythe) is ‘not fully a man’. But essentially this is a dark story with a lot of bite.