It seems to me that Rouse could have made this film as an exercise in making a western, to show to a film class. It has all the elements, sewn together nicely, although the quality of the acting doesn't quite carry it off.
The film takes place in 1889, a time in which there were already automobiles in the streets of St. Louis. The wild west was rapidly disappearing, and America was leaving its national adolescence for settled middle class maturity. We have here a town in which the citizens are so square that all of them are in church on Sunday morning. There are no whores in the saloon, and the worst wicked woman in town is simply a malicious gossip. This move from restless youth to settled adulthood is reflected in George Temple, who is desperate to give up his gun and live the quiet life of a shopkeeper.
The town and the citizens of Cross Creek are just too clean to be real. There is never a speck of dirt on Glenn Ford's white shirt (OK, it's off-white in the colourized version; I saw the B&W version for the first time tonight - I first saw it in colour in a theatre in the early sixties.)
In contrast, Broderick Crawford (the old flatfoot from "Highway Patrol") with his cronies play a less likable Butch and Sundance - trying to keep the old west alive, seeking after a goal worthy of an adolescent - to be the fastest gun alive. He and his henchmen are gloriously dirty; they even drink whisky from the bottle. We know they must fail, as the blind man in the first scene tells Crawford that his is an impossible quest: "There's always someone faster."
The past continually returns to haunt George Temple. He must prove his worth in the outmoded method - by showing his skill with a gun. Having done this, his shame causes him to run from his past, but the past in the person of Vinny Harold (Crawford) reaches him before he can run. George defeats Vinny in a classic showdown (something that never, never happened in any town in the west,) allowing him to put away the adolescent past and settle into the Great American Dream even before it was called that. Roll the credits.
I started watching the movie a few minutes late tonight, and Russ Tamblyn's dance scene was underway already. This surprised me, as I had forgotten that this scene was in this movie and remembered it as being in "Shane," which shares some thematic elements with this movie. I figure the scene was put in as insurance, to draw some extra audience. I never saw the trailers for this film, but I should imagine the dance scene figured heavily in it, and Tamblyn was given star billing. This might have encouraged some people to think this wasn't just another oater.
In spite of its foibles, I love this film. It's not "The Ox-Bow Incident," or "Requiem for a Gunfighter," or even "Warlock," but I'll watch it any time it's on. I prefer the colourized version. 8/10
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