Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz on 10/18/2006 for "Ozus' World Movie Reviews".
Arguably the best film made by Edward Dmytryk ("Murder, My Sweet"/"Cornered"/"Crossfire"). It comes after his return to the good graces of Hollywood from being blacklisted and fully forgiven by the studio heads when he gave up names before HUAC. This "thinking man's western" is one of the few films he made during this period that had any bite, and is well-accomplished even though it's overlong and overwrought in its melodramatics and use of Freudian symbols. It's taken from the intelligent novel by Oakley Hall and excellently scripted by teleplay writer Robert Alan Aurthur, who keeps it looking like High Noon but without a squeaky clean lawman as its hero.
It's set in the fictional western mining town of Warlock, where there's no law and order. Since the town is not a regular town, its lawmen and its jabbering judge (Wallace Ford) are unofficial. When their last sheriff (Walter Coy) gets run out of town rather than risk being shot in the back by the San Pablo boys (a band of "regulators" hired by the greedy and ruthless mine owner McQuown (Tom Drake) to run things in town), the cowardly citizens hire for $400 a month (four times the regular wage of a lawman) a notorious gunslinger mercenary marshal, known for his gold-handled Colts, named Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda). Clay is accompanied by his loyal longtime friend Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn), who has a club-foot, dons blond hair (the only role in which Quinn was a blond), sleeps in satin sheets and, as the deal with the town goes, runs the gambling casino/dance hall called The French Palace where the marshal moonlights by working the wheel. It also seems evident that Tom is in love with Clay, even saying "he's the only man who looked at me and didn't just see a cripple." Dmytryk in his autobiography denies it was a gay relationship, a no-no at that time, as he points out it was a complex one and much more than that (you can decide for yourself, but to me it looked like something romantic was going on between them).
The film is bleak and sour on mankind's morality, nevertheless it had a wonderful operatic tone and a certain magical quality that did the most with its superb performances (even Widmark is good here), terrific action sequences and dynamic character and psychological presentation. It inspired many other Westerns, including those Spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone.
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no pass
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