Everything about this film has been said elsewhere here except for this film's tip-top HORSE ACTION.
Few men in Golden Age Hollywood could sit a horse like Joel McCrea. I've been at the racetrack all my life and I've seen the best riders---Joel McCrea was right up there with the best of them. At a full gallop,, he's stock-still, one with his horse, an ice-man.
Joel McCrea has the coolest horse, a chestnut with a nice blaze on his nose. The way he handles this horse is a tell---this was J.M.'s own personal horse, for sure. You don't get horse action this fine out of some crap nag from some corral somewhere. Director Raoul Walsh was a master at staging/photographing top-quality horse action, a real delight and revelation for horse fans.
Consider this scene towards the end, one of many in this classic: J.M. is at a full-out gallop coming straight at the camera, when J.M. brings the horse to a sharp halt while AT THE SAME TIME getting the horse to do a half-pivot, stopping with the horse's left side---in perfect profile---at just the right amount of horse visible in the shot, as if the horse hit PREDETERMINED marks. This horse is then perfectly still, doesn't even move his head a little bit. You don't get that level of performance out of a horse you just met for the first time this morning: It takes THOUSANDS of hours of working together with a horse to achieve what J.M. does with this horse.
And J.M. and his ultra-cool horse have real Old School star quality---they make it look easy.
These "actors" today (hawk-*ptoo*) when they make what passes for westerns, they sit a horse like scared little boys. These modern-day "westerns" come unglued when it comes to horse action.
If you are fed up, give yourself a break and stream you some JOEL McCREA and see what REAL horsemanship is all about.
Review of Colorado Territory
