Reeling Backward: "Last Train from Gun Hill" (1959)

 

There's a surprising amount of flesh and steel in "Last Train from Gun Hill," a largely forgotten Western that builds up to a real-time bloodletting in the mold of "High Noon" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." The latter was also directed by John Sturges and starred Kirk Douglas, and even much of the crew and background cast tagged along again.

There is not one but two scenes featuring topless women, albeit carefully obscured for Production Code compliance, including one offscreen rape. They actually use the word "rape" in the movie, which is in itself pretty astonishing for 1959.

Douglas' character, Marshal Matt Morgan, is notably hard-bitten and cunning, essentially taking a young man hostage and threatening to murder him. Though Morgan professes to never have killed an unarmed man, he certainly seems prepared to do just that, holding a double-barreled shotgun under his quarry's chin as he marches the lad down the titular town's dusty streets in the film's signature penultimate sequence.

It's now out in a splendid remastered Blu-ray from Paramount that's well worth checking out. The VistaVision colors are achingly vibrant and the screen image is as crisp as the day it hit theaters. A first-class restoration.

Morgan's best friend is Craig Belden, played by the immeasurable Anthony Quinn. It's suggested they rode together on the wrong side of the law back in the day. Now, in the fading years of the Wild West when things have become much calmer and gunplay unfamiliar, they find themselves become aging relics: one the upstanding lawman, the other the uncompromising cattle baron who essentially owns the town.

In a by-then familiar switcheroo on cinematic tropes, it is Morgan who wears the black hat and coat, while Belden is outfitted in an unassuming blue shirt, tan leather vest and white Stetson. If you knew nothing of the movie and saw photos of their get-ups, you'd assume their roles were opposite.

It's interesting that the script by James Poe, based on a story by Les Crutchfield, takes pains not to portray Belden as a maniacal dictator or Morgan as a pure-hearted do-gooder. Each in their own way is hidebound by their ethos as self-made individualists, and their inability to bend to changing times sets up their inevitable confrontation.

The story is set into motion when Morgan's wife, a Cherokee woman (played, sigh, by Israeli-Amerian actress Ziva Rodann), is brutally murdered by a pair of drunken cowboys while she is driving her 9-year-old son, Petey (Lars Henderson) home to their quiet town of Pauley. She manages to lay open one of her attacker's cheeks with the whip. The boy takes the killer's horse and rides back to tell all to his pa, the marshal.

The saddle is a handsome black-and-silver job with the CB brand Morgan recognizes as his friend's. Assuming the horse was stolen, he takes the train to Gun Hill with a pair of John Doe warrants in his pocket. He goes to see Belden, and their reuniting is both bittersweet and genuinely heartwarming, old range riders now widowers -- one recent and raw, the other long ago.

Both men quickly surmise, though, that the culprit with the cheek scar is Belden's own son, Rick (Earl Holliman), a disappointing offspring who the rich man clings to with a domineering sort of love-shame hybrid. Belden offers to let Morgan have the other man, Lee Smithers (Brian Hutton), but forbids him to arrest Rick.

Now, if Belden & Son had half a brain between them, they'd quickly decide it best for the young scallywag to hole up at their ranch, with the solitary Morgan having no chance to plow through Belden's several dozen gunmen to apprehend him. But then we wouldn't have a movie, so of course he traipses off to Gun Hill to gamble and drink, where he is quickly knocked out and taken captive by Morgan. He handcuffs Rick to the bed of a hotel room, awaiting the 9 o'clock late train back to Pauley.

At this point, the movie settles into a slow-burn affair with Belden and his toughs staking out Morgan in the hotel, alternating between exchanges of dialogue and bullets. 

There seems no possible way Morgan can get Rick to the train, with literally the entire town against him. The local lawman, Bartlett (Walter Sande), not only refuses to assist Morgan, he actually goes so far as to refuse to wear a badge or acknowledge he is the sheriff, arguing for a "long view" of the law that doesn't encompass crossing Belden.

The actual mechanics of the standoff aren't terribly interesting. What is is that neither man ever for a second considers backing away one inch from his position. Morgan is clearly motivated as much by a sense of personal revenge as duty to the law, even at one point musing that he'll leave Lee behind if he has to in order to see Rick to the hangman.

Belden, for his part, seems plainly confused and hurt that his best friend -- the only man in the territory he considers his equal -- would try to take his son away from him. The life of an Indian woman doesn't tip the scales one iota against the blood of his only child. Belden doesn't want to kill Morgan, but sees no other way if he continues on his stubborn path.

The confounding variable is Carolyn Jones as Linda, Belden's saloon worker (prostitute?) turned estranged mistress. She bumps into Morgan on the train ride back to Gun Hill and instantly takes a shine to him. It turns out she's just returned from an extended hospital stay resulting from Belden's latest beating, apparently after Rick was spreading lies about her nocturnal activities.

I knew I recognized Jones from somewhere, with her impossibly big eyes and narrow waist, and finally learned she played Morticia Addams in the original "The Addams Family" show that debuted five years later.

The attraction between Linda and Morgan is palpable, so it's no surprise when she helps him by acting as go-between with Belden, and even sneaks him the shotgun previously mentioned. She also clearly still has conflicting feelings for Belden, so it's something of a low-wattage love triangle.

(Again with my literalist quibbles: Morgan asks her for a shotgun, saying he needs one for what he has to do. But why wouldn't the same scenario of him force-marching Rick to the train station work if it was a six-shooter snugged up under his jaw instead of a double-barrel? The unsatisfying answer: because then we wouldn't get that great visual, or have something to drive the Morgan-Belden-Linda dynamic.)

Aside from the cowardly sheriff, there aren't a ton of notable supporting characters. Val Avery plays Steve, bartender at one of Belden's saloons, friend to Linda and someone sensible enough to acknowledge that the cattleman's rule is unjust but he isn't the one to oppose it. Beero (Brad Dexter) is Belden's cigar-chomping right-hand man, performing whatever duties required including besting Rick in a fistfight at his boss' behest.

Holliman as Rick isn't give a lot to do but bellyache and beg. He isn't necessarily an evil kid, just a weak soul spoiled and bullied by his father. We're not sad to see him go, the victim of a stray bullet from Lee, though his death prompts Belden to demand a quick-draw duel with Morgan, who seems positively weary at the prospect.

I admired a lot of things about this film, and in fact was left wanting more. At just a hair over 90 minutes, the movie moves very quickly through its plot steps without a lot of Dosey Doeing around into deep character investigation. I would've loved to see some flashback sequences of the two rivals as younger men, including the incident referenced several times where Belden saved Morgan's life.

That could have signified the strength of their bond, rather than just alluding to it, and maybe also hinted at early indications of the potential for a fallout... perhaps around the time they parted ways.

"Last Train from Gun Hill" is still a solid Western, rather daring for its time, one that relies more on telling than showing its bitter, shadowy heart.

 

Reeling Backward: "None But the Brave" (1965)

I've made it something of a hobby horse in this space to touch on movies directed by well-known actors who made it their first and last effort behind the camera. These include the only films directed by the likes of Charles Laughton, Marlon Brando and Karl Malden. Now it's Frank Sinatra's turn and his 1965 anti-war movie, "None But the Brave."

It's a rather ham-handed picture -- demonstrating that Sinatra's rightful place was in front of the camera or behind a microphone, not in the director's chair -- but it's notable for several reasons.

The most obvious are that it was the first joint Japanese/American production, and depicted World War II from more or less morally equivalent vantage points. Decades before Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iowa Jima," a companion piece to "Flags of Our Fathers," Sinatra's film melded the American and Japanese stories into one.

It's about two small forces of soldiers who are stranded together on a lonely island far away from the action. The war still plays out in a micro version, though, with an outbreak of humanism that holds the bloodshed at bay, at least for a time.

Written by John Twist and Katsuya Susaki, it's a quite pessimistic tale that essentially argues that men are doomed to repeat their mistakes by embracing violence rather than dialogue. We rigidly stay inside our respective silos, divided by nation, race, religion, etc. and fail to see the humanity in each other.

It's a noble sentiment, but one delivered without an ounce of subtlety or originality. As if the film's message weren't clear enough, the title card at the end hammers us square in the forehead: "Nobody ever wins."

(Which is, of course, an idiotic statement on its face. Ask the millions of descendants of Jews who survived the death camps if the Allies' victory was worthwhile or not.)

Sinatra gave himself a supporting role as the chief pharmacist mate aboard a cargo plane that is shot down over the island. The chief -- no name is every given -- is a combination of comic relief and needling voice of reason, who imbibes liberally of the large stock of whiskey among the medical supplies the plane was carrying. (Which all, apparently miraculously, survived a high-speed crash landing on the beach.)

The real protagonists are Captain Bourke (Clint Walker) on the American side, and Lt. Kuroki (Tatsuya Mihashi) for the Japanese. The latter narrates, as writings in a journal addressed to his bride, whom he married on the day he left for the war. Kuroki has a great deal of both humility and conceit about him, describing himself as a descendant of samurai warriors who loves life and the handiwork of mankind.

This is demonstrated in the early going as Kuroki chastises his hidebound sergeant, Tamura (Takeshi Katô), for working the men too hard in the harsh Pacific sun. They are building a boat to send a contingent to make contact with their command and replace destroyed "communicational" equipment. What they don't know is the American naval advance has pushed their tiny island far outside the reach of the Japanese Empire.

The sergeant grumbles, but obeys. Their force also includes a peasant fisherman and a Buddhist priest, both rotund and cheerful and competing for the distinction of worst soldier in the Japanese military. The men clearly respect and adore their lieutenant.

Were that it were so on the Yank side. Bourke spends the first half of the movie convincing the unruly Army soldiers to follow his lead, citing a fictitious piece of military code that any troops aboard his plane remain under his command until such time as they reach their destination. Bourke isn't power hungry, but simply recognizes that their greenhorn 2nd lieutenant, Blair (Tommy Sands), is likely to march into a Japanese ambush if he doesn't assert a more cautious hand.

A word on screen presence: Man, did Clint Walker have it. Though he's not a household name, Walker is a contender for the most impressive physical specimen ever to walk on a Hollywood sound stage. Fully 6½ feet tall, with a 48-inch chest and 32-inch waist, lantern jaw, jet black hair, Caribbean blue eyes and basso profundo voice, he was television's first Western star in "Cheyenne," which ran from 1955 to '63. He literally looks like Superman come to life.

(In 1971 he was impaled through the heart by a ski pole in a freak accident and pronounced dead. But a doctor detected slight signs of life. Walker was revived, recovered and, at 88, is still with us today.)

 

His Bourke is a pragmatic man with his own woman troubles back home. He's supposedly seen a lot of action -- odd for a cargo pilot -- and organizes his men on the far side of the island so they can scout the enemy. Lt. Blair openly challenges his authority at every turn, backed up by pug-nosed Sgt. Bleeker (Brad Dexter), whom Bourke has to put in his place with personal fisticuffs. (Dexter, who often played the big bully, looks like a little twerp next to Walker.)

 

And then there's Tommy Sands' portrayal of the headstrong lieutenant.

 

...Tommy, Tommy, Tommy...

 

This has to go down as one of the most ill-thought performances in Hollywood history. Employing an over-the-top Texas accent, Blair yelps and over-enunciates his words like a carnival barker hocking joy juice to the local rubes. He's not playing a "type," he's playing a caricature. Every time he appears onscreen, it's a distraction. It's like something out of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon. 

A more experienced director would've quickly put Sands in his place, or found another actor. Sinatra didn't do that, to the movie's detriment.

 

Sands, who like Sinatra got his start as a teenage pop music idol, saw his career go down the poop chute right around the time this movie was being made -- reputedly with the help of Sinatra, who encouraged his showbiz pals not to hire him. Though this was most likely retaliation for Sands divorcing his daughter, Nancy. Perhaps the younger crooner saw the writing on the wall and decided to stink up his father-in-law's movie as preemptive revenge.

Anyway, things progress as you'd expect. After some initial skirmishes and deaths, including the boat being blown up, the respective commanders set up an exchange in which the chief -- who's passed off as a doctor -- amputates the gangrenous leg of a Japanese corporal in exchange for the Americans getting access to the only fresh spring on the island. 

From there it's happy-happy time, with the men smiling and exchanging fish for cigarettes, with the barest of demarcations between the American and Japanese sides of the islands. Then Bourke fixes his busted radio and manages to arrange for a U.S. destroyer to pick them up, so all bets are off and the war's back on.

Why exactly? From a character/motivational standpoint, it makes little sense. Kuroki, having been established as the wisest man on the island, suddenly insists that it's his obligation to prevent the Americans from getting aboard that ship and becoming operational parts of the American war effort again. Bourke offers to accept their surrender and take them along, but Kuroki would rather lead his men to certain death in a useless gesture toward his sense of duty.

 

While it's not so that nobody ever wins in war, it is very much true that many people lose. Kuroki loses his personal war by remembering his patriotic one. Narratively, this war film loses by shoehorning conflict into places it doesn't fit.

Frank Sinatra's sole directorial effort isn't awful, but it's easily the weakest of those I've visited. Of course, I haven't written about Matthew Broderick's 1996 effort, "Infinity"...

Reeling Backward: "Von Ryan's Express" (1965)

There are many different variations of the World War II film -- the submarine adventure, the combat pilot thriller, the romance-amidst-the-horror drama. One of the most enduring sub-genres is prison movies.

Some of these dealt with life inside the prison/concentration camp ("Stalag 17") while others focused on escape attempts by daring Allied P.O.W.s ("The Great Escape"). Some of these movies combined a bit of each, including the grand poo-bah of WWII prison movies, "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

"Von Ryan's Express" starts out as a prison movie and morphs into an escape movie, and does neither particularly well. It was one of Frank Sinatra's most commercially successful films, a great rousing war adventure that culminates in a spectacular action sequence where prisoners fleeing on a train are pursued by fighter planes and German soldiers.

Sinatra plays the title character, Joseph Ryan, an American pilot who's shot down in Italy during the waning days of the war. Taken to the nearest P.O.W. camp, he finds the prisoners in a state of near revolt, whipped up by the acting C.O., Major Fincham (Trevor Howard). It seems the old C.O. just died after being locked in a hot box by the haughty Italian commander (Adolpho Celi).

As a colonel, Ryan finds himself the ranking officer. At first he is reluctant to take up the mantle of leadership. But his clashes with Fincham escalate as he has organized the entire camp around attempting to escape or defying their captors. Ryan rationalizes that the war is nearly over -- American troops have already landed in Italy and are pushing north. If they just wait a few weeks, they'll be rescued peacefully.

When two of the handful of American G.I.'s -- Brad Dexter and James Brolin -- get in trouble for stealing medicine Fincham had set aside for escapes, Ryan takes over. He even leads the Italians to the tunnel the Brits had been digging, in exchange for the clothes, showers and first aid packages the prisoners had been denied.

This leads Fincham to start referring to Ryan as Von Ryan, dubbing him a collaborator who will earn the Iron Cross for assisting the enemy so well.

I think the film would've done better if the had made the Ryan/Fincham the central conflict of the entire story. Instead their rivalry exists in the background, occasionally heating up as events transpire.

The odd thing is, Fincham is portrayed as being the deranged one, burning with a mad lust for revenge -- "justice" he calls it -- against their enemies. But in every occasion where the two men disagree over strategy, Fincham makes the right call while Ryan's decisions end up costing lives.

For example, when Italy surrenders and their prisoners flee, Fincham wants to try and execute the prison commander as a war criminal, which Ryan refuses, putting him into the hot box instead. Later the man is rescued by the Germans and leads them right to the prisoners, who are all killed or recaptured.

Later, they are put on a train heading deeper into Nazi-controlled territory. The prisoners eventually take over, killing all the German guards except for the officer and his Italian mistress (Wolfgang Preiss and Raffaella Carrà). Once they reach a point of no return and their captives become expendable, Fincham wants to do away with them. Ryan against refuses, and they later escape, kill a British lieutenant and imperil the entire group.

In this context, Ryan's acts are the humane option while Fincham would become the very thing he holds in contempt. But nice guys come in last here, and Ryan's leniency comes back to bite him every time.

After the German train officer and his mistress escape, Ryan himself is forced to gun them both down lest they are given away. Shooting an unarmed woman in the back is a pretty ballsy scene for 1965, and director Mark Robson milks it for every ounce.

I noticed throughout the movie that he rarely gives his stars close-ups, preferring medium shots where they interact together. According to the film's Wikipedia page, Robson and Sinatra clashed throughout the production -- so perhaps this was his way of paying his petulant star back. It certainly isn't one of Sinatra's better performances, seeming almost stiff at times.

Once the story gets rolling along the train tracks it has a certain amount of momentum, with the Allies staging an elaborate con job to convince all the enemies along the line that their German captors are still in charge. The highlight is the mild-mannered vicar (Edward Mulhare), the only one who speaks fluent German, being forced to impersonate an imperious Nazi. He succeeds, but then faints from the stress.

I couldn't get terribly engaged with "Von Ryan's Express." The movie feels distant and impersonal, a humdrum war adventure where nothing much is at stake.