Western Noir - February 19
The sunny spaciousness of Westerns and the shadowy streets of film noir might seem incompatible, but a subgenre of films has managed to combine qualities of both forms. It’s all in the attitude, with some filmmakers finding it possible to take what seems on the surface to be a traditional Western and imbue it with the dark psychological underpinnings and bleak attitudes of noir. With a collection from the 1940s and ’50s, TCM offers a sampling of such hybrid films. Most are from the studios closely associated with noir, RKO and Warner Bros., although there is one atypical entry from MGM. Below are highlights.
Station West (1948) stars Dick Powell, a leading man of many films noir of the 1940s, and features other players with noir backgrounds, including Jane Greer, Raymond Burr, Steve Brodie and Regis Toomey. Powell plays a stranger in a tough town filled with menacing types and a noirish femme fatale (Greer). Sidney Lanfield directed for RKO.
Blood on the Moon (1948) was directed by Robert Wise, who gave us such films noir as 1949’s The Set-Up and 1959’s Odds Against Tomorrow. Noir veteran Robert Mitchum stars as a mysterious stranger in a hard-bitten Arizona town where a dishonest cattleman (Robert Preston) clashes with homesteaders. The ace RKO cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca lends the film the shadowy blacks and whites of noir classics.
Colorado Territory (1949), directed by Raoul Walsh for Warner Bros., is a remake of that studio’s 1941 crime drama High Sierra, also helmed by Walsh. Joel McCrea takes over the Humphrey Bogart role as an outlaw who is sprung from prison for one last heist. The setting is changed from the mountains of then-contemporary California to the vistas of Colorado in post-Civil War days. But the noir elements are still there, including treacherous associates and enticing women (Virginia Mayo and Dorothy Malone in this case).
Along the Great Divide (1951), also from Warner Bros., reunites director Walsh and female lead Mayo, with Kirk Douglas heading the cast in his first Western. Douglas plays a U.S. Marshal who rescues a cattle rustler accused of murder (Walter Brennan) from a lynch mob. In true noir style, it’s difficult to tell whether certain characters are guilty or innocent. Cinematographer Sid Hickox makes atmospheric use of filming locations around Lone Pine, CA.
The Badlanders (1958), an MGM film directed by Delmer Daves, is another example of a contemporary noir story being retold in the Old West – in this case The Asphalt Jungle (1950). In this treatment, set in 1898, Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine star as inmates whose destinies become entwined after their release from a Yuma prison. Claire Kelly and Katy Jurado play the women in their lives. This one was beautifully shot by John Seitz in Technicolor and CinemaScope on locations around Tucson, Arizona.
Also screening: Riding Shotgun (1954), Warner Bros.; Black Patch (1957), Warner Bros.; and Roughshod (1949), RKO.
