|
Violence and piety are twin impulses in the American West, the annual mass takes place on the eve of a hanging. "Your prayers will help them," says the padre to his congregation, the stranger with "the face of a hunter" (Gregory Peck) isn't listening. An icy blue filter imbues day-for-night images with a nearly supernatural light, under it is unmasked the sham executioner who frees the outlaw quartet. The wife's rape and murder has turned homesteader into vigilante, he follows the fugitives into the desert and gets a lesson in Providence. Stephen Boyd strokes his rifle's barrel while mentally undressing their hostage (Kathleen Gallant), Albert Salmi and Lee Van Cleef are fellow sinners, Henry Silva has taciturn Indio wisdom ("You'll never hear the shot that kills you"). There are absurdities—Joan Collins in rancher duds, a small town with a church as huge as the Vatican where every white gown in the 200-boy choir has just been washed—yet Henry King's stroll into Anthony Mann territory is a strong and thorny companion piece to The Gunfighter. The landscape is a procession of parched vistas, the ride is a descent with pit stops like the forest with its hanging trees and the tall grass where the plea goes unheard. (Perched on the edge of a gulch, Gene Evans' adobe cabin provides dark secrets beneath the blasting sun for the connection with The Searchers.) The waste of vengeance, the blindness of persecution, the cowboy's crackup. The revelation south of the border finally discomposes the avenger, shamed and drained he emerges to the applause of the community. "The emergency arose... and the man appeared." The pocket watch at the border cantina has definite consequences for Leone, Brooks' The Professionals arrives at a similar turn from the same writer. With Barry Coe, George Voskovec, Herbert Rudley, Andrew Duggan, Ken Scott, and Joe DeRita.
--- Fernando F. Croce |