Two years after THE PROUD REBEL/’58, Alan Ladd looks ten years worse. Not older; worse. In five years (and five films), he’d be dead, 51, mostly from alcohol. (Something traumatic post-REBEL?: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-proud-rebel-1958.html) But while this is a lesser film, and has the rep to match, it’s a bit of a sleeper. Mostly, I suspect, from what’s left of the Louis L’Amour novel it comes from. Unusually nuanced character development, lots of gray areas on all sides, the good, the bad, the conflicted. A shame director Robert D. Webb so coarse & cavalier in all areas. Ladd, partner Gilbert Roland and his hearty crew of singing lumberjacks invade a town to strip the forest that protects the watershed of a robust farming community where Jeanne Crain owns a major spread . Why it’s that old standby plot: Open Range Ranchers vs Crop Growing Homesteaders, just like SHANE/’53, Ladd’s best-known film. Only Ladd’s on the ‘wrong’ side of the issues yet structurally still the hero. If only Webb knew how to finesse the film’s dramatic road blocks: two anachronistic Pop songs for a debuting Frankie Avalon; a jolly, heavily scored donnybrook (a lumberjacks vs. farm owners free-for-all hackiest of big-time Western directors Andrew McLaglen couldn’t have made worse); a feisty old bitty as comic relief; a happy ending pulled out of a hat. Worst of all, putting Ladd next to Gilbert Roland, a working actor from the 1920s to the 1980s who never seemed to age. Fortunately, cinematographer John F. Sietz, who shot almost all of Ladd’s late films, figured out how to acceptably light him as the film goes on. Or do we just get used to the decline?
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note the DVD is non-anamorphic and plays best left in Academy ratio without bumping up to fill a 1.85 : 1 frame. Look out for falsely ‘corrected’ aspect ratios on some streaming services.
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