Reviews

William Wellman could break your heat better than almost anyone who ever got behind a camera. There are moments in each of his films that rank with Ford and Mann and Aldrich that are so gritty and realistic and moving that, well, he is just one of the best. The ending of Yellow Sky easily vies with the shootout of My Darling Clementine and Winchester 73 as absolutely brilliant. Each of the three are as different from the other as night and day, but wow, touch after touch keeps your eyes glue ever second to them.

The movie itself is pretty boring in a lot of places, but thats the price of this ticket.

One thing that should be mentioned, never has a western had not only so much night footage, but so little overall score. This Night and Silence has a pretty spooky effect and in some ways is the truest feel for the desert and west of any western ever made. Wellman did this same sort of thing a decade earlier with Beau Geste, using the Arizona desert around Yuma the same way, though here with Sky much better. There is simply no western like this ever made.

Wellman, Walsh, Ford, Mann. Thank goodness for them. Each of them. And again, be sure to catch the final scenes of Yellow Sky. Simply one of the best ever made.

Oh my lord, what were they thinking about with this one. It not only is frantically unfunny, but worse, a very good original was trashed in the bargain. Jane Fonda, believe it or not, actually turned in the performance of her life in that one. Even better than where she plays the whore in the other so called performance of her life. Maybe she is just flat good as a crook. Any other time, wow, what a waste of time. But she and Segal team up beautifully, so if you even remotely got a glimpse of anything funny in this baby, catch the anvil upon which it got beaten into a pulp from.

Because very very very little of that one remains, to this ones horror. Nothing in this baby is remotely funny except for maybe a couple of moments when Dick and Jane are bulging lipped up as lepers and cant kiss..... and uhh........oh my lord, that's it? Well, looks like it.

It truly is that bad a film.

The shootout at the end is up there with the one in LA Confidential. And the performances are all quite good. But the story as someone here has so ably picked up on, is very very stupid. Had Devane just been a vet that has seen too much smoke and blood and somehow or the other then got his hand whacked off, well it would have made more sense. I guess. So its no wonder Tarantino likes the story, considering how little sense most of his make either.

But the shootout is a marvel. Very nice buildup, and both Devane and Jones deliver the goods in the whorehouse.

And the song at the end, somehow is particularly haunting. Also nice that the story is set in and around San Antonio. Its just too bad they had to go out of their way to make this so ridiculously ridiculous. It could have been a taut tale in the right hands.

Odd that the song drew me back to this film. Upon first viewing I liked it but it slipped under the water past me it was so silently good, despite the blaring soundtrack. Hindsight, looks like it and Officer were the only Gere movies even worth watching for more than a few seconds.

Talk about a career of just hanging around doing ludicrous movie after ludicrous for several decades. That's persistance. Yet this really is kind of a luscious film, so it's even more ridiculous, from luscious to ludicrous. Too bad.

The ending mars it, bit sappy. Not that it somehow should not have ended on that note, but just something else than, and here is the spoiler, his doing the Jimmy Cagney bit behind bars hollering Ma, to Hutton (just kidding, but its almost that bad), no reason he has to wind up with the cuffs on. It would have made it much worse if he had been found down in some dirt floor Mexican bar, eyes swimming in Tequila. Maybe even on the run. But of course, as Sturges says, thats another plot.

Anyway, one of the best takes on the emptiness, the real horror of materialism ever done. B r a v o. The only other example I can think of beating it is the scene in De Palmas Scarface when Pacino is looking around in the restaurant saying, Is this all there is. This is all there is. And starts taunting all the rich suits and disguised whores in the room.

There are moments in this film that are some of the most outstanding in all westerns. The rest is tripe. The opening is OK, but the first bits of great, great dialog comes with Boone and Francioso in the guardhouse. Keep your ears open, some nice exchanges. Then after Boone is brought in with Warner Anderson, he fills the screen, really begins to strut his stuff. Keep both your ears and eyes open when he toasts the Colonel and says with that quizzical look after Anderson has asked him to give his word: My word???? (pause) Colonel, you've got it.

But thats not all. After the wagon load of gun powder gets rolling, and they are trapped by bandits, comes some of the finest seven minutes of laughter fraught danger ever filmed. (yes even better than the stuff with the bandit in Treasure of Sierra Madre) Where they dug up the bandit leader for this is almost beyond belief: his teeth sticking out from his gums almost like in a horror movie every time he giggles.

Just an amazing scene.

Though not long before that there is another great scene with Boone and Francioso talking about young Francioso thinks the looks and how old Boone KNOWS he does.

Very very funny.

But one of the viewers were absolutely right. Francioso throughout is a little irritating, but just didn't quite get it analyzed. Its the accent. A Mexican accent that came from Woolworths. Only one worse in all cinema. Paul Newmans in The Outrage. Which he got out of a cereal box with coupons. Both of them are really very, very embarrassing.

Nevertheless, do not miss the first thirty minutes for this stuff. It's fabulous. And the entire film is Boone at the top of his form. But after the first thirty minutes the thing degenerates fast in cardboard clichés, never a good bet for a strong finish. Still stick around for the first third and you will have caught one of the best Boones of them all.

And Boone at his best was one of the best.

This is a retread of fairly obvious ideas that have been handled much more masterfully by much greater directors. The notion of the violence lurking within us all has to be done and redone so many times that it is going to take something a lot better than this to move me very deeply.

That said, I watched the whole thing. Near the end was a little ashamed to have done so, especially once he arrives back at the castle, the whole business of the brothers fighting it out, and then the obligatory tossing the gun into the water in a renunciation of everything he has become. Very clumsy stuff, and then the Quaker scene at the end was even more clumsy.

Maybe the best of all time for the guy who can't escape his past is the great Anthony Mann western, Man of the West. The gang he returns to is much more scary, the fight Gary Cooper gets into is absolutely raw.

However, the rapelove scene, whatever it is in History, near the last third, is powerful. Wonderfully shot in the stairwell, relentless, shocking. For it alone, I was glad I had almost wasted a good two hours in a theater. Like the crash scene in Aviator, it kept me from saying, ahh suckered again by all the wild reviews. Still it is pretty sorry when about all there really is new in a movie is one scene. So you pays your money and takes your choice.

In fact, walked out on it in less than a half hour. With no regrets. Found it trying so hard to be clever and different that it rapidly became a parody of itself. For films that know they are films, the Road pictures of Hope and Crosby were much more sprightly and spontaneous. For upending of genres, what's the point. There are ridiculous private eye pictures, and great ones, and the great ones hardly need skewering, and even the mediocre ones have more of a point than this frantic rambling of whispered comebacks. And here comes a spoiler: spotted even before I left this babbling baby: Downey and his girl are the same age, supposedly. Well 43 or 45 whatever his makeup is trying hard to hide sure ain't 28 or 33, unless that's the new math.

But if you want somebody telling you this is a great one, there's plenty here for that. And they are right, at least this is not your standard fare. But it sure didn't work for me.

Night Passage is unusual in that Audie Murphy actually turns in a more interesting performance than Stewart. Someone else here has caught that Audie is at his absolute best here. Though actually he is equally good in John Huston's The Unforgiven. Those two are his centerpiece renditions.

The movie itself is really pretty stupid, yet rises far far above said same by the main performers. Anytime Murphy is on the screen it comes electrically alive. Here we see the baby faced killer at his most terrifying. Look up his Colmar Forest action in world war two and you will see that he was the real deal, and his twisted smiles are positively psycho in this one, and even crazier is that he is playing it all one stop below Dan Duryeas supposedly even wilder psychosis. When they are on the screen together it's almost Laurel and Hardy with guns, very very funny stuff in a totally fraught way.

Here comes a spoiler. So if you are going to see the movie first, I would suggest you skip this paragraph. It revolves around a very curious feature of Stewart. Nobody ever did one thing in the entire history of cinema and got away with it more naturally than Sir James. And he does it again here. Crying. Repeatedly he has broken into tears so believably, so touchingly, that nobody ever noticed. Yet time and again he does it, in Naked Spur, Its a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, Night Passage. In Night Passage right at the end just watch him break down so heart breakingly with the line.....no, I'll ....I'll take care of my brother.

Very very moving. Also I have mentioned elsewhere that nobody ever received physical punishment so horrifyingly as Stewart. Far Country, Bend of the River, Man From Laramie, Winchester 73 (all Mann westerns) he does it so well you wince: this is what is must actually look like when people are shot or burned or beaten. Just amazing what the guy could do, and do it more believably than Brando, great as Brando was. Yet all that said, Murphy for once gives the more interesting performance, because this is the perfect vehicle for his killer mentality. After all the guy did sleep with a service 45. under his pillow until the day he died.

Night Passage was his best.

In the entire history of western movies, there have been very few shot through with poetic dialog. The Wild Bunch is one of them. The dialog is in fact so poetic that it is hard to miss, and more than once its quality has been noted by various well known film critics.

Colorado Territory, pound for pound is easily its equal. And why? Not Walsh, not Mc Crae, not any of the usual reasons given. In fact if you look at Walsh's other western works, and they are numerous and fine, none of them come close to this one in it's poetry. So either you chalk it up to just sheer luck, or you have to look elsewhere. Yet before I point to that reason, let's look at some of the lines...which probably will be considered a spoiler so, if you don't to hear any of the talk find a review without spoilers, and here goes: we're a couple of fools in a dead village dreaming about something that'll never happen... or earlier Mc Crae is warning two of his outlaw companions about being careful not to double cross him, and tells them about two others that tried to, and says.....they're buried outside Lawrence Kansas. Prettiest little bone orchard you'd ever want to see. Little stone angels watching over them.........or later Mc Crae is telling Pluffner, the railroad detective that has double crossed him, and now Mc Crae has found him out....robbing the dead....and the detective turns and exclaims his innocence, that the man he is robbing his died naturally, that its all part of the game, Mc Crae comes back with.... .... not this game, there's been so much bottom dealing from this deck it's dog eared..................and proceeds to shoot the detective.

Yet this was not the last time that western lovers would be treated to such wonderful stuff, except they would have to go to other directors, one being Stuart Heisler, and DALLAS.

Or Andre De Toth and SPRINGFIELD RIFLE.

The key ingredient in all this not being the director but a writer that heretofore has gone completely unnoticed by virtually any critic. Namely John Twist.

John Twist along with Borden Chase were the two finest writers of western cinema, period. Chase was, is, of course well known. Twist has for some reason been invisible. However one day, some discerning crew with get together for a retrospective of his films and the charade will be over. But trust me, western lovers, see his name on any film and you can always count on some of the best dialog ever written for westerns. Colorado Territory being his best.

As for the other comments here about the movie, they are pretty right on. This film is the equal overall of any of Mann's films, Boettichers, is better than most of Ford's, in fact only slightly below Red River and My Darling Clementine.

The only flaw is a rather mawkish handling of the Dorothy Malone situation: the whole business with her slows things down a bit. But anytime Mc Crae is not around her the film is about as perfect as a western can get.

Don't miss is.

This is a strange Lang film. It is a pure programmer, somewhat along the lines of Hitchcock, but because Lang did not get much of his way with it, the reins largely being in the hands of the producer/writer Seton Miller, well....thereby hangs the warping something he had wanted to do for a long time, and would have done had not the film rights been bought up long before.

So we will never see anything as of a piece say as Big Heat, yet some of the set pieces are as good as anything Lang ever did.

Getting rid of the detritus first, much of the time the film is absolutely leaden. However there are a few good moments at the carnival where Milland gets his cake, and then on the train with the cake...and from here on we are going into some spoilers, so don't read any further if you have not seen the film.

After the train is bombed, there is a hokey but absolutely pure Lang scene during the seance with Hillary Brooke. Hitchcock would probably have handled it differently and it would have been interesting to see how it would have differed from Lang. Lang's noir came from a deeper, purer UFA strain under which Hitch studied: while this not being the place to go into Hitch's style, Lang's approach was always much more primitive: his blacks were the blackest of the bunch, his terror was always meaner if not deeper than Hitch's largely because Lang really did escape from some of the meanest and baddest of Europe, the Nazis, and in film after film, the terrors he summons often have all the suddeness and starkness of a knock on the door at midnight...out of nowhere. Lang's blacks were always a pool from thugs and monsters to emerge with a gun. His blacks were the purest of anybody who ever got behind a camera, and his Nazis still the most terrifying of them all.

That said, after the seance, and the shooting there, his escape and running from the police is pretty idiotic, probably because of the poor script of Seton Miller. Only until the bombing of the room, and Millands waking up does the film take on real life again.

The person playing the cop is something else, however. Lang has the man give one of the most unusual takes on a cop in the history of cinema. The hunting for the cake in the ruins takes place on a set but does not suffer at all, much as they do in a Hitchcock with no damage. Much of the scene is also very hokey but is quite good. Then after the cake is found, the rest of the film is superb. Once they trace the microfilm to the tailor shop, wow, great stuff. The rain was never handled better, and the scene at the tailor is a good as anything Lang ever did. And even the final shootout is quite good. Only the last frames of the end betrays whom ultimately was controlling the film: Seton Miller tacks on a hack absolutely stupid ending that Lang must have felt like crawling into five bottles of Johnny Walkers. It's embarrassing. Yet Dan Duryea and Ray Milland and the man playing the Scotland Yard cop are about as good as anything that came out of Hollywood that year. Strange that a movie only rating an overall 3 or 4 could have a few not only good but really great, almost seminal noir scenes.

My own feeling is that Lang's best film is Manhunt. It is tight and watchable all the way through from first to last. But there are a few moments in Ministry up to the very best of that. Too few, unfortunately, but even so, Lang at his best, even minimally was always better than the vast mediocrities of most of the forties and fifties. Hang around for the few great moments of this baby and you won't ask for your money back.