A Fine Example of the 50s Adult Western

Chance2000esl

This is a fine example of the 50s 'adult' Western. It's in the 'trackdown' category-- Gregory Peck plays a glum, single minded blindly revengeful rancher tracking down the four villains who raped and killed his wife. It's a character driven Western, with a good script and a key performance by Peck with minor ones by Henry Silva, Lee Van Cleef, Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, and Andrew Duggan. It's a big scale production filmed entirely in the outdoors and the mountains of Mexico, with sumptuous Cinemascope photography, awesome Deluxe color, a sometimes stirring musical score, and even a couple of scenes entirely in Spanish with no subtitles. Great!

Supposedly an anti-McCarythism film, the screen play was by Philip Yordan, who acted as a front for other screen writers who were blacklisted during the 50s and 60s. Although seemingly in the mode of 'statute' like stoic actors (Rod Cameron, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott come to mind), Gregory Peck does a masterful job in silently expressing the feelings and attitudes of his character, rancher Jim Douglass. Watch carefully or you'll miss it; his discomfort at being in a church in an early scene, his flaring eyes and heaving chest as he kills Van Cleef and Boyd, his confusion and guilt when he realizes he has killed three men for the wrong reason, and his confession to the priest (Andrew Duggan) at the end. This is not Gregory Peck playing Ahab in 'Moby Dick' (1956) all over again!

Oh, if only McCarthy had been conscience stricken for trying to destroy the innocent and the wrongfully accused! The only disappointment in this film comes after Douglass's painful, heart wrenching, guilt ridden confession in the church, when he is (and we are, too) jarringly greeted by the entire town applauding and cheering his actions: he does not deliver a severe rebuke to them for their own blind retribution and lack of Christian feeling. The other bit of oddness is having British accented Joan Collins supposedly playing a lily white faced Latina ('Josefa').

Therefore, I'll only give it an 8. This is the kind of movie you watch color Westerns for: one of the best in the modern era of adult Westerns.

Note: For fun, check out some of these performances by some of the cast members. Henry Silva showing his impressive strengths as an actor in 'The Outer Limits' episode 'The Mice' (1964), and 'A Hatful of Rain' (1957). Albert Salmi as the psychic Peter Horkos in the two-part 'The Peter Hurkos Story,' in 'One Step Beyond' (1961) and of course, his three great episodes of the original 'Twilight Zone' (1960-1963). While Lee Van Cleef is immortalized as 'Angel Eyes' in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (1966) and in 'The Big Gundown' (1968) not to be missed is his starring role as an altruistic scientist who, out of misplaced idealism, becomes the Ultimate Collaborationist by delivering humanity over to an alien invasion in the amazing 'It! Conquered the World' (1956).

Gregory Peck has a well known and vast body of work, but let's focus on the films, besides this one, where he was making a strong personal statement: 'Gentlemen's Agreement' (1948), 'The Gunfighters' (1950), 'On the Beach' (1959), 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961) and of course, his mythic characterization in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (1962).

score 8/10

Chance2000esl 16 May 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2067272/