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Thursday, September 10, 2020

THE VIRGINIAN (1929)

Silent in 1914 & 1923, third time proved the charm for Owen Wister’s classic Western novel.  A first or second Talkie for nearly all involved with director Victor Fleming finessing Early Talkie technical limitations by ignoring them, the film remarkably fluid & pacey for 1929, made largely on location, feeling not so much primitive as unfiltered, even a bit raw.  And not a stage trained voice in the lot, though main villain Walter Huston has to watch it now & then.  (You have to envy 1929 audiences hearing the gruff, gravelly voice of Eugene Pallette for the first time.)  Gary Cooper, rugged & impossibly glamorous without trying, is the young cattleman, out West from Virginia, roughhousing with his irresponsible best pal Richard Arlen, each vying for the affections of new schoolmarm Mary Brian.  The drama centers around cattle rustling, with Huston’s black-hatted villain leading easy-going Arlen down the path to ruin.  Coop will have to face both of them, dealing out justice to friend & foe in the film’s two most remarkable scenes: a quick-justice hanging and a final shootout.*  Most prints are a little ‘dupey,’ but you can see how extraordinary they must have seemed at the time, especially in comparison with the stiff, stagebound films flooding the market.  This one, still a natural.

DOUBLE-BILL: The famous catch phrase from the novel, ‘When you call me that, SMILE!’ used to great comic effect in Buster Keaton’s sweet, funny, still too little known GO WEST/’25.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The shootout not the expected quick-draw duel on Main Street, but a strategic cat-and-mouse death hunt thru emptied streets, back-alleys, walkways & porches.  Fleming & cameraman J. Roy Hunt beautifully flowing with and catching/anticipating the action.

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