Silver Lode

One of the more interesting Westerns to emerge during the Communist witch-hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era was Silver Lode (1954), a solid little B-picture directed by Allan Dwan, a once prominent director during the silent and early sound era who spent his final years in Hollywood making efficient, low-budget entertainments. Unlike most oaters of its day, Silver Lode was a thinly disguised allegory about guilt by suspicion and vigilante justice that paralleled the paranoid atmosphere created by the House Un-American Activities Committee at that time. The story begins, appropriately enough, on the 4th of July with model citizen and local sheriff Dan Ballard (John Payne) preparing to marry his bride, Rose Evans (Lizabeth Scott). Before the ceremony can be completed, however, the wedding party is interrupted by Ned McCarthy (Dan Duryea) who confronts Ballard with an arrest warrant for the robbery and murder of McCarthy's brother. Slowly, insidiously, McCarthy plants the seeds of doubt in the minds of the citizens about Ballard's guilt and once trusted friends and colleagues of the sheriff begin to abandon him in his hour of need. By the end of the film, Ballard finds himself a hunted man, trapped at the top of a church spire. Yet an unpredictable last minute turn of events reverses his fugitive status. Now available on DVD from Image Entertainment, Silver Lode has often been cited by director Martin Scorsese as one of his favorite Westerns and he comments on it in A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (co-written with Michael Henry Wilson): "Dwan's finest movies featured simple people, pastoral landscapes and the rural America of a bygone era. Yet behind the lyrical images of the old West, Silver Lode suggests the fragility of our democratic institutions. On the day of his wedding, John Payne should be the happiest man in Silver Lode. Instead, he has to fight for his life when he is unjustly accused of a murder and ostracized by the community. Daringly, the fugitive's bride-to-be convinces the town that he is not guilty by forging a federal warrant. A church bell and a fantastic fraud save the day. Persecuted for the wrong reasons, Payne is pardoned for the wrong reasons. This was the era of the blacklists; political messages had to be smuggled in - cloaked in metaphors. Actually, the name of the villain played by Dan Duryea was McCarthy." Of course, not everyone will agree with Scorsese's high opinion of the film which has its share of flaws including some inane dialogue, uneven performances, and preposterous plot contrivances. It definitely comes up short when compared to High Noon (1952), an A-budget Western starring Gary Cooper which was made two years earlier and was also seen as anti-McCarthy morality play. It also can't quite match the entertaining flamboyance of Johnny Guitar (1954), which was released the same year as Silver Lode but was an even more extreme presentation of frontier justice that drew parallels with the political hysteria of its day. On the plus side, though, Silver Lode is tautly directed by Dwan who doesn't waste a shot and moves the narrative along at a brisk clip. John Payne, an often underrated actor whose best work was in film noirs, is also impressive as the accused hero. The way he plays the part you're never quite sure until the end whether or not he really is guilty as charged. His refusal to explain himself adequately to the townspeople underscores his oddly ambiguous behavior while providing the film with an added layer of suspense. VCI's DVD of Silver Lode is presented full frame (4X3) and comes with a few standard extras - the theatrical trailer, actor biographies and a choice of scene selections. The original source materials used for the transfer look relatively clean but the Technicolor is now just a faded memory of the original with bleached out hues of yellow, red, blue and orange battling for dominance from scene to scene. Until someone comes along and performs a full-scale restoration on this film, however, the VCI disk is probably the best available version of Silver Lode you're going to see. VCI is also offering another Allan Dwan on DVD - Passion (1954), presented full screen (4X3). Stylistically closer to a costume drama than a Western, the film is set in California in the 1800's and centers around a rancher (Cornel Wilde) who is seeking revenge for his wife's murder. Yvonne De Carlo plays dual roles, one as the rancher's ill-fated wife, the other as her identical sister who wants justice for her sibling. Filmed on location in the mountains between California and Nevada, Passion features the cinematography of John Alton who also photographed Silver Lode. In the Peter Bogdanovich biography, Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer, the director admitted that "I didn't think much of the story - it was a contrived affair, but the shooting was one of our shrewd business manipulations. We rented magnificent Spanish sets Warner Bros. had built for some big picture, and then we moved over to Universal and used a lot of their sets. So we got a magnificent production for very little money." Yes, Passion could almost pass for an A-picture on looks alone but just about everything else about it is unremarkable. Admirers of Dwan's work and Western B-movie completists might want to take a look at it but Silver Lode is easily superior to this feature. And like VCI's presentation of the latter, this DVD also comes with the theatrical trailer, actor biographies and a choice of scene selections. Once again, the transfer was made from a faded color print so you'll have to use your imagination and try to picture the dazzling Technicolor imagery of the original. For more information about Silver Lode and Passion or to purchase them, visit VCI Entertainment. By Jeff Stafford