TWO FLAGS WEST (1950)

Screenplay by Hollywood vet Casey Robinson; direction by vet-in-the-making Robert Wise, but this Civil War oriented Western gets its main interest from an offbeat story, credited to film-critic-turned-film-writer Frank Nugent.*  Best known for his John Ford films, including FORT APACHE/’48, which this somewhat recalls . . . not entirely to its disadvantage.  A small piece of history sets up the situation as Southern POWs earn a get-out-of-jail pass if they enlist to take up Indian Wars out West for Uncle Sam.  Chafing at their position (and those blue uniforms), Joseph Cotten leads his not quite defeated outfit, along with Union Captain Cornel Wilde, to Major Jeff Chandler’s understaffed, desolate fort.  Once there, all three men fall for Chandler’s widowed sister-in-law Linda Darnell, eager to get back to her California family home.  But the main concern is Cotten and his men: desert on maneuvers to get back in the fight or wait for a coordinated plan being cooked up by counterfeit government agents?  Wise makes the plot complications clear as the Western sky, much helped by top talent below the line.  He also isn’t shy in showing some pretty raw violence for the period.  And there’s a fair amount of action since the plot is largely shaped by having North and South find common cause not in sharing the country’s future, but in the here–and-now of killing Native Americans; a rather uncomfortable moral for the 1860's, 1950s or now.  Chandler is especially good here, like a looser Charlton Heston.  But everyone pulls their weight, including a deep supporting cast (Dale Robertson, Noah Beery Jr., Jay C. Flippen, Arthur Hunnicutt) that lifts this pic past its B+ budget status.  Surprisingly uncompromising right to the end.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Wise’s three Westerns all worthy, all offbeat: BLOOD ON THE MOON/’48; FLAGS; TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN/’56.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/10/blood-on-moon-1948.html  OR: As mentioned, FORT APACHE, which moves the bar from ‘good’ to ‘great.’  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/11/fort-apache-1948.html