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The refined technique is at once on display, a long shot of the mansion at night cranes down as two men stride into a medium shot and a gate fills the screen with grilled wire. (The rectangular bathroom mirror in the workers' quarters is indicative of the CinemaScope articulation, it reflects a young bracero brutally dragged away by the cowhands.) Golden Empire, "over in Europe there's five or six countries aren't as big as this ranch," its owner (Orson Welles) lords like a feudal potentate over the New Mexico hamlet. Talking to his daughter (Colleen Miller) is a capital offense for a Mexican laborer, the dead man's friend (Martin Garralaga) hopes against hope for justice. "A pretty important charge against some pretty important people," it sends the newly-elected sheriff (Jeff Chandler) on an exhumation of corruption, racism and fear, encompassing everybody from the local coroner to the lawman's own wife (Barbara Lawrence). "Mud don't care who it splashes on." High Noon and Bad Day at Black Rock are precedents, Jack Arnold is leaner and sharper than both with an unofficial Western pit to prepare the official one of No Name on the Bullet. Cold truths in a heat wave, among them the economic dependency that blinds denizens to fascism, Welles with askew Stetson and rammed cigar plays the honcho surprised at the violence he's loosened. (The Italian barber recognizes a despot, "and you know what happened then.") Arnold's quiet sense of geometry etches the town in hard verticals surrounded by tainted horizons, with a Main Street square around which the protagonist is dragged from a pickup truck. "What in God's green earth does it take to shock you people?" Penn conducts a particularly close analysis in The Chase, down to shared codas of troubled female consciences facing the wreckage. With Ben Alexander, John Larch, James Gleason, Royal Dano, Leo Gordon, Paul Fix, Mario Siletti, William Schallert, Forrest Lewis, Harry Harvey Sr., and Mort Mills. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |