Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence features a very young Glenn Ford as Joe Riley, a New York department store salesman heading west to settle his Arizona ranch, Shady Acres. Along the way he joins up with itinerant Tony Casselli (Richard Conte) and illegal immigrant Anita (Jean Rogers) for a series of adventures. Ford is clearly in over his head here, with the cheerfully Reagenesque Riley a far cry from the morally compromised and deeply nuanced characters that later made him famous. His performance is not good, and it makes one wonder how he developed the skills that would render him one of the best film thespians of the 1950s. Conte, on the other hand, is excellent, his restless screen persona already fully formed. As for Rogers, she's frankly an embarrassment, but that's probably the fault of the awful dialogue she was saddled with. Technically, Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence is quite well made, with some outstanding Edward Cronjager cinematography, but it's Depression-era tale of riding the rails was already thoroughly passé by 1939. Wild Boys of the Road it ain't, but if you're an admirer of either Ford or Conte, you'll still want to see it.
Review of Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence
