GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT (1938)

At heart, a Cattlemen vs Homesteaders Western, but with a twist.  Here, the Homesteaders are already in place and the interlopers aren’t Cattlemen, but rough & tumble miners, flushing away California hills & ruining wheat fields with hydraulic water pressure to liquify land into slurry and collect the gold buried within.  (1870s strip mining.)  Olivia de Havilland is the daughter of farm baron Claude Rains, and a link between the two sides when she falls for George Brent’s stalwart mining engineer.  But after his money-grubbing bosses flaunt a court order to stop, war threatens to break out and Brent switches sides with a plan to stop the carnage.  With a script by untested Robert Buckner, there’s a didactic feel to the story, many a Civics Lesson interrupting a bumpy structure you rarely get from producer Hal Wallis and director Michael Curtiz, even when, as here, he had little prep time.  Add in a lack of chemistry between Brent & de Havilland, some tired supporting perfs (Margaret Lindsay dreadful in an underwritten role as sophisticated Aunt), and the film should be a write-off.  It’s not.  The early 3-strip TechniColor, uneven in the sourced print (registration & saturation problems), is uncommonly lovely when it’s ‘on’ under Sol Polito’s airy lensing, improving as it goes along.  And what surprisingly current issues in land use & conservation.  Even better, a striking turn from Tim Holt, like de Havilland a teen at the time, as her hot-headed brother.  Playing Prodigal Scion, he lights up the screen, disdainful or brave, playing with fire no matter the side he’s on.*   Next up for producer Wallis, director Curtiz & heroine de Havilland, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD later this year.  (There, Curtiz really had no prep time, taking over more than half the film shoot from Errol Flynn’s director of choice William Keighley.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Orson Welles was fascinated by Holt’s talent and his lack of discernment in choosing roles to play.  His career largely ‘program’ Westerns when not shooting classics like STELLA DALLAS/’37; STAGECOACH/’39; MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS/’42 (for Welles); MY DARLING CLEMENTINE/’46; THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRES/’48.