THE BRAVADOS (1958)

Exceptional Western from vet helmer Henry King, a strong outing amid a string of unworthy late projects that have long diminished his critical rep.*  Fifth of six films with Gregory Peck. At their best (see TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH/’50; THE GUNFIGHTER/’51) these two slow burn artists compound their strengths in emotional depth and ambiguous payoffs.  (Influenced here by recent adult Westerns from Anthony Mann & John Ford?)  Peck’s the stranger in a small town, showing up to witness the hanging of four men for murder & bank robbery.  The same four men he believes raped and murdered his wife.  But with most of the town at evening mass the night before the hanging (in a church far grander than this town could possibly support), the men make a well-planned escape and Peck is soon leading the local posse and serving up personal justice in unusually tough manner for the period.  A grand example of peak CinemaScope lensing (Leon Shamroy, more theatrical than usual with almost no grain in the HD transfer), there’s an expendable romance tucked in (Joan Collins, over-parted), but just about everything else exemplary Hollywood craft with good support for Peck from Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Henri Silva, Lee Van Cleef, Andrew Duggan, Gene Evans.  The film a lesson in construction and organization.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *King also suffered (critically, and sometimes commercially) as Darryl Zanuck’s go-to director on many uncongenial 20th/Fox prestige projects.

DOUBLE-BILL: Peck co-produced William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY/’58 next, another superb Western, this time with Charlton Heston instead of Stephen Boyd as main antagonist.  Ironically, a falling out with Wyler likely led to Peck passing on Wyler’s BEN-HUR/’59 which fell to Heston with Stephen Boyd as main antagonist.