It’s free-range cattlemen vs homestead farmers (but with a twist) in this solid Western from fast-rising helmer Robert Wise. (BORN TO KILL the year before; THE SET-UP out next year.) With Robert Mitchum, also on an early career roll, as a drifting cowhand who lands in the middle of the conflict with honest, indie cattleman Tom Tully (dad to fetching daughters Phyllis Thaxter & Barbara Bel Geddes) on one side, and longtime pal Robert Preston on the other. Preston supposedly fronting for the land tillers, but secretly calling in Mitchum as strongman on a cattle swindle he’s worked up with local Indian Agent Frank Faylen. Under glistening dark clouds from Nicholas Musuraca’s lensing (lots of red-filter), Lillie Hayward’s canny script finds grey areas in plot & characterizations, especially Mitchum as he works his way toward Bel Geddes. Good action (a standout fight between Preston & Mitchum) and sharp psychological posturing (Thaxter gets an unusually compromised profile), the film’s a significant step forward in modern/post-war Westerns.
DOUBLE-BILL: In spite of leads under directors Anatol Litvak, George Stevens, Robert Wise, Max Ophüls & Elia Kazan on her first five films, Bel Geddes, whose dad was B’way producer/designer Norman Bel Geddes, didn’t quite break thru in Hollywood, spending most of the ‘50s and early ‘60s in hits on the New York stage. Then tv & occasional film work (VERTIGO/’57) only to become forever known as Miss Ellie, mother to all those dastardly DALLAS men when she really ought to be remembered for Steven’s I REMEMBER MAMA/’48 and Ophül’s CAUGHT/’49. (And her immortal ‘little piece of time’ moment, banging her fists against her head in VERTIGO: ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!’
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Almost all the international posters on this one feature Mitchum in a scene that has almost nothing to do with the film (as here). By the time it played overseas, he’d become bigger than just about anything he was in.
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