Reeling Backward: "I Walk the Line" (1970)

"I Walk the Line" came out 14 years after Johnny Cash released the ubiquitous song with which it shares its name, and 25 years before the Cash biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix that also bore that title. Thematically it bears little relation to the song, which is all about devotion to a loved one and rejecting temptation, while the movie is about a man who does exactly the opposite.

Cash actually re-recorded "I Walk the Line" for the 1970 movie and, apparently inspired, wrote a bunch more songs and wound up supplying the entire soundtrack. One track, "Flesh and Blood," ended up hitting the top of the country charts, so the soundtrack is better remembered than the movie.

It's not a particularly good film but it is an interesting one, and sometimes that's a better thing -- particularly when being discovered decades down the line.

John Frankenheimer surely belongs in the sad pantheon of "best filmmakers never to receive an Oscar nomination." He's often confused (even by me) with his similarly monikered contemporary, William Friedkin, who released "The French Connection" the following year. Frankenheimer would direct its 1974 sequel, and continue on to be a busy director through the early 2000s.

The film stars Gregory Peck, a star with whom the word "decency" seems almost synonymous. So playing Tawes, the Sheriff of an unnamed rural county, is very much against type. Tawes seems resolute and upstanding, but it turns out he's a very weak man indeed, capable of capriciousness and even cruelty.

No first name is ever given for Tawes -- even his wife, Ellen (Estelle Parsons), and teen daughter refer to him as "Sheriff." He's had this post a long time and, it seems will keep the job as long as he wants. There's not much to it, mostly driving around resolving conflicts between neighbors over cut-down trees and the like.

But when he lays eyes on Alma McCain (Tuesday Weld), all bets are off. Tawes is completely swept away by her, even after learning Alma is the daughter of notorious moonshiner Carl McCain (Ralph Meeker). He enters into a strange, strained dance with the McCain clan, where he essentially rents Alma for sex in return for looking the other way from their illicit activities.

But then the stakes are raised, both criminally and emotionally as Tawes actually falls in love, or least convinces himself he is. It's quite apparent to the audience and to Alma that their relationship is just an arrangement, but the Sheriff is the only one who can't see it.

Frankenheimer wanted Gene Hackman to play Tawes, and as much as I admire Peck I can't help wondering what that version of the movie would be like. This film really required a tortured portrayal of inner turmoil, but Peck is more of the "stare hard and don't show weakness" generation of film actors.

My initial reaction was also that Hackman was too young to play an aging lawman, but the two men are actually only 14 years apart in age.

The script by Alvin Sargent, based on a novel by Madison Jones, is more notable for what it doesn't say or show than what it does.

There are references to events in Tawes' past that might leave him vulnerable to such a temptation, but they're not fleshed out. Apparently he lost his mother and sisters in a car accident some years back, which rendered his father (J.C. Evans, Frankenheimer's wife's grandfather) a doddering mess who keeps expecting his family to walk in the door.

Parsons is terrific as Ellen Tawes, who manages to be both headstrong and utterly submissive at the same time. She refers to throwing herself at the Sheriff and more or less forcing him to marry her, but now he barely speaks to her. The scenes inside their house are hard to watch, with Tawes hardly looking his wife or daughter in the eye or saying a word, as if blaming them for his lack of devotion to them.

Even after suspecting that her husband is playing around on her, Ellen makes it clear she's willing to accept his occasional philandering as long as he returns home. (Speaking of, it's an awfully big, nice house for a poor public servant.) Tawes feels like a man trapped, but this is the sort of gilded cage many a man would willingly place themselves inside.

It's also hard to grasp what it is he sees in Alma. Weld plays her as a coy, calculating but not hateful person who is more than happy to trade her body for her family's security. The McCains have been moonshiners for generations, picking up everything they have every once in a while when the feds come around sniffing. She seems as surprised as anyone when Tawes starts talking about running away together to Chicago, California or whatnot.

"You've got your people, and I've got mine," is how she puts it, which is the extent of her understanding.

Tawes and Carl McCain don't even meet until halfway through the movie, when a chortling federal agent, Bascomb (Lonny Chapman), starts investigating the interstate flow of illicit alcohol. Tawes tries to play the high-and-mighty lawman, but McCain knows he's already got the Sheriff under his thumb. He's not at all bothered by offering his daughter up for sex, seeing her as just another family asset to be leveraged.

"We'll take our chances. After all you won't be gettin' the worst of it, ya hear? You keep on gettin' the best of it," he says.

Alma has two younger brothers, Jeff Dalton as 18-year-old hothead Clay and Freddie McCloud as towheaded rapscallion Buddy, who's maybe 10. Her job is to cook and care for the men as her mother is long gone. There's a brief tender moment between her and her father that has incestuous connotations; even if he doesn't sexually covet Alma the elder McCain certainly considers her his property.

The other player is Charles Durning as Hunnicut, Tawes' only deputy. He's the sort of man, quick to a laugh or a drink, who everyone dismisses as fat and stupid. But Hunnicut is cracker cagey, constantly watching his boss out of the side of his eye.

He's the first to sniff out Tawes' affair, though it's never made clear what he intends to do with this information. Blackmail him? Take his job? Durning takes a rather underwritten role as a standard-issue redneck cop and gives him all sorts of nefarious shadings that make us fear him, even more so than the McCain patriarch.

"I Walk the Line" is a simple piece of clockworks with only a few moving pieces. There's the McCains, happy to keep to themselves and ply their trade, and willing to make whatever reasonable (to them) accommodations are necessary to keep doing so. Sheriff Tawes, the most upright man in the county but desperate for affection -- even though he's got plenty of it at home, and can't tell when presented with an ersatz replacement.

There's a good movie in here somewhere, or could be. What we're left with is a lot of interesting pieces that don't really fit together.

Reeling Backward: "The Stalking Moon" (1968)

"The  Stalking Moon" is a largely forgotten Western, owing mostly I think to arriving around the time the genre was being reexplored with a more critical eye -- "The Wild Bunch," "Little Big Man," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

But it contains some of those same questioning elements, including a subtle (maybe too subtle) examination of the relationship between an expanding America and the native peoples who were often trampled along the way.

Gregory Peck, a dramatic leading man who occasionally dabbled in cowboys, had been down this path before a decade early in "The Bravados," playing a rancher-turned-killer. Here it's the other way around, portraying Sam Varner, an Army scout helping round up American Indians who tries to settle down but finds his old life pulling him back in.

The first half is more interesting than the second, which oddly plays out almost like a slasher flick as the good guys are hunted by a seemingly unstoppable assailant. It's a rousing bit of Western action, abetted by the novelty of an Indian antagonist who clearly outskills the white hero. But in the end, it's just standard tension-and-release filmmaking.

How the movie got there has more merit.

Getting ready to muster out after 15 years with the Army, where he garnered a reputation as the best of the best, Sam is enticed to escort a white woman, Sarah Carver (Eva Marie Saint), who was kidnapped by Apaches 10 years ago when she was a girl.

(This would put the character in her mid-20s at the oldest, which is a bit of a stretch for the then-44-year-old actress. Peck, at 52, is a little closer to Sam's presumed age.)

Since then she has married and produced a boy of about age 8 (Noland Clay), a "half-breed" or "breed" using the parlance of the film, who has not yet been named in the tradition of his father's folk. After the vestiges of her tribe are captured and she is afforded the opportunity to return home to Columbus -- while the Apache will assumedly be taken to a reservation -- Sarah is desperate to leave right away, guilt-tripping Sam into being their escort.

It's eventually revealed that her husband is none other than Salvaje, a legendary killer feared even by his own people. Salvaje, which roughly translates as "ghost" or "he who is not here," is intent on getting his son back, if only for pride's sake.

Sam intends to put Sarah and her boy on a train and be done with them. But after all the people at a coach station are killed while they were off chasing down the boy during a runaway attempt, he's ready to be quit immediately.

There's a wonderful, largely wordless scene where Sam stares at the woman and her son as they wait at the lonely train station. He knows it's the smart thing to do, but he's also seen the looks and reaction the pair produces in white society and guesses what their future will hold. Carefully weighing matters, coupled with his own longing for stability (read: family), Sam invites them to come live with him at his ranch in New Mexico.

It's a fateful decision, yet knowing what the outcome is we suspect Sam would still make the same choice.

Salvaje soon comes a-knocking, wiping out Sam's new neighbors as well as his oldster caretaker, Ned (Russell Thorson). He's helped for a time by Nick Tana, another "breed" Sam took under his wing a decade earlier and shaped in his image as a scout.

The relationships between Sam and Nick and the boy are the film's most compelling dynamic. Certainly it's more worthy of note than the repressed romance that slowly builds between him and Sarah. Saint really isn't given a whole lot to do, other than sit stoically waiting for the menfolk to do stuff as she speaks in clipped cadences of her nearly forgotten English tongue.

Sam clearly regards Nick as a son, even if he's a somewhat resentful, churlish one. In an early scene Nick throws a knife at Sam's retreating back, clearly a demonstration of the arrival of his full manhood and commensurate independence. He feels like Sam is running away for him, and there is an unspoken hurt that the elder did not invite him to share in his new life.

Maybe Nick would've said no, but he's bothered by the lack of an ask.

All this is barely revealed in the dialogue. A rough caress of Nick's cheek as he dies at Salvaje's hand is all the evidence the film provides.

For his part, the boy largely remains an enigma -- but it's clear that he bears Sam even less regard. He's rebelling at being forced away from his people to live in a white man's world. He tries several times to escape and be reunited with his father. He steals a white man's knife and is tempted to use it on him before Sam intervenes.

Really, the best thing for all concerned would be for the boy to go back to Salvaje and for Sarah to marry Sam and produce another son. But that's not how a mother's love, or Western films, work.

"The Stalking Moon" has impeccable credentials. It's directed by Robert Mulligan, who made "To Kill a Mockingbird" with Peck five years earlier, with a screenplay by renowned scribe Alvin Sargent, who won two Oscars (for "Paper Moon" and "Julia") and found a second 21st-century spurt as the script man behind three of the Spider-Man movies. This was just his second feature film writing credit after starting out in TV.

Based on the novel by Theodore V. Olsen with an adaptation credit to Wendell Mayes, the filmmakers make the curious choice to depict Salvaje as little as possible. He's only glimpsed as a shadow or distant figure until the very end, and he never speaks a single word. His showdown with Sam is shot so as to avoid showing his face or revealing his humanity. It's basically a stuntman role.

I was struck by the musical score by Fred Karlin, best known for his music for "Westworld" and its sequel. It's more a collection of atonal sounds than melodies, with an oft-repeating discord strummed across a string instrument of some kind used for building tension.

(My ear isn't attuned enough to tell, so I'll take a stab that it's a mandolin, zither or dulcimer.)

Is there a hidden meaning to all this? If so, we're barely given more than a few wind-scattered tracks in the sand to decipher.

My guess is the theme has something to do with Sam facing a reckoning for his transgressions as an Indian hunter. He's reached an age where he wants to let go of that life, and finds that it has a hold on him he can't ignore. Having raised and ultimately rejected a half-Indian child, he is given another chance at fatherhood -- but has to endure a mountain of sacrifice as punishment.

The lack of a real character for Salvaje indicates he's more a remorseless force of history than a full-blooded human being, more existential threat than person.

"The Stalking Moon" is well-made, but seems like a sketch for a grander, grimmer tale the filmmakers weren't ready to tell. After the Peckinpahs and Penns of the world had their say, movies like this were destined to fade away.

Reeling Backward: "How the West Was Won" (1962)

By 1962 Hollywood knew the jig was up.

Audiences, with expanding options of quality programming on television, would no longer automatically show up to the cinemas for whatever fare they had thrown together. Actors and directors were tired of being workhorses for the studios, told to go here and do that, and wanted the power to pick their own projects. Certain quintessentially American genres, notably the musical and the Western, were increasingly seen as creaky and worn out.

The Golden Age, for good and naught, was waning -- and everyone knew it.

The reaction from Tinseltown, at least for awhile, was to deliver things TV couldn't: color pictures, big action spectacles, widescreen formats, stereo sound, 3-D imagery and so on. One of the big ideas was Cinerama, which stretched an extremely wide image across a huge curved screen, so the audience literally felt like the movie was wrapping around their field of vision.

To get some perspective, the aspect ratio of most films today is 1.85 to 1, width to height. Modern flatscreen TVs are 1.78, so when movies are played on them you only get a little bit of black bar at the top and bottom. (Rarer) widescreen movies are usually 2.35, so the bars are much bigger. Cinerama was 2.59, so when I watched the film on my set the film only occupied the middle third or so of the screen.

Only two major feature films were made using this process, which involved shooting with three separate 35mm cameras and then using a trio of projectors in the theater.  "How the West Was Won" was a big success, the second highest-grossing film of that year, but it was too expensive to outfit more than a handful of theaters with the setup.

When shown as a single image on a flat screen, the three pieces tended to not match up well, with noticeable lines during bright scenes. Since most theaters didn't undertake the upgrade, this is how most audiences saw it. Despite its early success, Cinerama died a quick death.

MGM undertook a restoration of the movie in 2000, and new Blu-ray editions include a version that simulates the curved Cinerama look. I've included two stills of the same scene above so you can see the marked difference in presentation.

Filmmakers didn't like the logistics of shooting in Cinerama, either, since it required them to position the actors and backgrounds in such a way that the performers might not even be looking at the person they were talking to in the scene. John Ford, who directed one of the film's five sequences, complained that you couldn't shoot closer than the waist up, which limited the ability to give audiences an emotional connection with the characters.

Much like the green screen technology of today, the final result could be fabulous, but required a talented and attentive cast and director to preserve the performance aspect.

The visual look of the restored "How the West Was Won" is often breathtaking, with glorious vistas of the American fields, rivers and mountains. Narratively the story spreads over 50 years, from 1839 to 1889, covering the settlement of Ohio, the gold rush, the Civil War, the building of a transcontinental railroad line and the height of the outlaw era. It's all told through the eyes of a single family, as subsequent generations grow up and move on further West.

The final movie was a languid 164 minutes, but includes lengthy musical overtures (by Alfred Newman) at the beginning, middle and end that probably consume at least 20 minutes on their own. Everything about the film telegraphs that it wants to be seen as an old-school epic, but really it's several small, barely interrelated stories strung together.

In a gimmicky move, different directors were hired for the five sections, though Henry Hathaway helmed most: the first, second and fifth. Ford directed the third and shortest section on the Civil War, which is really more of a vignette than a true standalone story. George Marshall oversaw the fourth and probably best sequence on the often merciless drive to connect the railroads from east to west.

It was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won three for Sound, Editing and James R. Webb's screenplay -- thought it did not get a nod, notably, for directing.

The film also has the prerequisite "All Star Cast," though most of them have very fleeting parts. John Wayne is in it for about two minutes, along with Henry Morgan, playing great Union generals Sherman and Grant during the Civil War section. Jimmy Stewart has a bigger part as a frontier trapper who falls for one of the daughters (Carroll Baker) of cantankerous pioneer Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) in the first sequence. Stewart gets stabbed by some river pirates (led by the great Walter Brennan) but survives to win the girl.

Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark turn up in the railroad section as, respectively, a fiercely independent scout and the hardcase overseer of the building operation, who's willing to break the treaty with the Arapaho Indians and start a war if it'll mean shaving a few days off his schedule.

Gregory Peck plays a gambler who courts, then deserts, then nabs again one of the Prescott daughters, played by Debbie Reynolds, who wants to marry a rich husband and move back East but ends up as a saloon showgirl instead. Robert Preston plays the wagon train master who pitches his own woo at her, telling her about the matching suitability of his huge ranch and her ample child-bearing hips, but she's looking for a little more romance. Thelma Ritter plays an over-the-hill female pioneer who desperately wants to get married; I kept thinking she would hook up with the Preston character.

Eli Wallach turns up in the last sequence as Charlie Gant, a particularly nasty outlaw who avoided jail years ago and is back to torment the lawman who killed his brother. They each put lead into the other they still carry, so there's no love lost. It seems like a clear precursor to Wallach's Spaghetti Western roles later on.

Really the biggest star in the picture in terms of screen time is George Peppard playing Zeb Rawlings, the son of the Jimmy Stewart and Carroll Baker characters. He's the main character in the last three sequences. In the Civil War he's a scrappy young recruit who becomes disillusioned by the senseless killing. In the railroad section he's a U.S. Cavalry officer charged with keeping the peace, who continually butts heads with the Widmark villain. Finally he's the marshal, now with a wife and kids of his own, who faces off with Charlie Gant, as Debbie Reynolds returns as an aged doyenne of San Francisco who wants to spend her last years on a ranch.

Spencer Tracy narrates the tale with openings to each sequence, plus a flowery speech at the end about how the suffering and triumphs of those Western pioneers allowed us to have all the great stuff we have today. It's a little disconcerting as the airborne camera swoops over the vistas, which gradually become more and more occupied with the mark of humanity, including highways and smoke-belching factories. I suppose in 1962 those things were seen as hallmarks of progress rather than urban sprawl.

I guess I like the idea of "How the West Was Won" more than the totality of the movie itself. It's generally quite entertaining, and even grand at times. But it feels more like a lot of haphazard pieces washing down the current of history than a coherent film.

Reeling Backward: "The Purple Plain" (1954)

"The Purple Plain" is two movies in one, each of which work decently independently but don't really meld together in any sort of satisfying or even logical way.

It's one of Gregory Peck's darker roles, playing a Canadian pilot in the British Royal Air Force assigned to Burma in the waning days of World War II. Squadron Leader Bill Forrester is widely ostracized within the unit, because of his daredevil flying tactics and his churlish behavior toward his fellow officers. The universal assessment is that he's "over the bend."

Despite sharing a tent with a man named Blore (Maurice Denham) for several months, they know virtually nothing about each other -- other than Blore's continuing insistence that Forrester would find his life more purposefully if was married like himself. Little does he know (since Forrester won't say), but Forrester lost his newlywed bride during a London air raid early in the war.

Since then, he's been on a one-man suicide mission in the skies.

The first half of the movie is taken up with Forrester gradually coming out of his shell with the help of Anna, a refugee from Rangoon who is helping the local Burmese refugees along with Miss McNab (Brenda De Banzie), an indomitable Scottish missionary. The quiet, soulful Anna soothes and calms Forrester, and he tells her the source of his pain when his wife was killed.

"After that I didn't want to go on living. You'd think that'd be easy enough in war, but it didn't work. I wanted to die, but I got medals instead."

Anna is played by Win Min Than, a luminous beauty whose appearance in "The Purple Plain" constituted her one and only film role. The romance between Anna and Forrester is notable for its fairly progressive take on interracial romance -- none of the other Brits or Burmese seem to regard it as any big deal. Though it should be noted that their only kiss is filmed from an obscuring angle behind a large boulder. The film ends with an image of Forrester climbing into a bed where she lies sleeping, which was something of a taboo circa 1954.

As soon as the audience gets engaged in this love affair, though, the manly adventure portion commences and Anna is not seen again (except once, briefly) until that ending.

Forrester and his young new navigator Carrington (Lyndon Brook) are assigned to fly Blore to his new assignment. The aircraft depicted in the film are Mosquitos, peppy little two-seat fighter/bombers depicted in other films such as "633 Squadron." Blore is ensconced in a hammock hung in the bomb bay. Unfortunately, one of their engines bursts into flames and they crash-land 20 miles deep into Japanese territory.

Movies of this ilk usually set up a race between the heroic stranded Allied servicemen and the relentless enemy hounding their tails, but here we never see or hear any trace of the Japanese. The only race is between the three men and their own impending demise from exposure to the brutal Burmese heat and lack of food and water.

Forrester determines that no rescue mission will ever find them, and urges them to march to the river that marks the boundary of enemy territory. The pugnacious Blore, a desk job man with little grasp of the intricacies of aviation tactics, insists they stay. Eventually Forrester forces the decision, and they rig up a stretcher for Carrington (whose leg was burned in the crash) and set off.

Director Robert Parrish manages to capture the overheated atmosphere of Burma, showing the sweat pouring off the characters' heads and staining clear through their clothes. He also adds a constant buzz of insects to the soundtrack during the sequence on the eponymous plain, which adds to the oppressive feeling of that portion of the film.

"The Purple Plain" was a box-office hit that was nominated for Best Film in the BAFTAs, the British equivalent of the Oscars.

The story was based on a novel by H.E. Bates, a military reporter who traveled to Burma during the war, and translated for the screen by Eric Ambler. It ends up feeling like two incomplete halves of a good movie. In the second half the central dynamic is the contrast between Forrester, who remains resolute and brave, and Blore, who becomes increasingly unhinged and eventually abandons his fellows.

This would seem to set up the idea that Blore's assertion had been true, that having a purpose in life -- i.e., a family and/or loved one -- allows a man to persevere. Forrester, having found love again with Anna, is able to endure. But this then begs the question of why family man Blore succumbs when confronted with life-threatening challenges.

So Blore is right for Forrester, but wrong about himself?

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Yellow Sky" (1948)

"Yellow Sky" is one of those movies that is about much more than the superficial story on the screen. Ostensibly it's a Western about a group of desperadoes who stumble upon a gold miner and his tomboy granddaughter in the remote desert, setting up a standoff in which the bandits make designs on a fortune in gold dust.

But the film, directed by William A. Wellman, is more about lust -- lust for gold, lust for sex, and most every other type of yearning mortal man can conjure. Each character in some way lusts for something or other that they cannot have, and only by giving up their avarice can they hope to find any peace.

Gregory Peck, in one of his rare villainous roles -- well, he starts out bad, anyway -- plays "Stretch" Dawson, leader of a gang of seven thieves. The opening sequence pretty well defines their M.O.: They ride into a town, belly up to the saloon bar and inquire about the marshal's whereabouts. Determining he's away on business, they casually saunter over to the bank and rob it.

It seems like easy pickings, but the cavalry soon gives chase, picking off one of the gang. Desperate, they ride into the nearby salt flats to escape. The men are fearful about crossing 70 miles of barren desert, but Stretch insists "it's just a place. It can be crossed."

Though hardly important narratively, the desert sequence is highly evocative in fleshing out the members of the gang. Stretch is taciturn and stern, and is most concerned with protecting his status as leader. "I don't like voting," Stretch says repeatedly whenever they talk about letting democracy rule their actions.

His number two is Dude, played by Richard Widmark. Widmark was one of those actors who bounced between playing authority figures and villains, and was always most interesting as an evil-doer. Something about his large forehead, slitted eyes and prominent cheekbones gave him the appearance of a death's head -- particularly when he smiled. Richard Widmark smiling is one of the most unsettling things you'll ever seen in a movie.

Dude dresses like something of a dandy, but has no taste for women. As he reveals to Stretch in a quiet moment, he used to own a ranch and have a girl, but when he was shot and robbed she left him. With only one working lung, Dude is incapable of physical labor. He wants to become so rich he'll never have to sweat again -- and rub it in the face of the people who same him descend into failure.

Harry Morgan, forever Col. Potter from "M*A*S*H*," has a small role as Half Pint, an undersized cowpoke with a quick smile and an affinity for animals. Lengthy (John Russell) is the hothead of the bunch. Bull Run (Robert Arthur) is the youngest bandit, because it is an unwritten rule in Westerns that when more than three people throw in together, one of them must be a tenderfoot.

Charles Kemper has a memorable role as Walrus, the tubby, bearded older cowboy who serves as both comic relief and ready-made pragmatist, ready to blow with the wind.

In the desert Walrus is threatened with death, because he filled his canteen with whiskey back in town. He offers to trade some booze for water, plaintively begging that he will die soon without it, but no one will give him a drink. Stretch seems unbothered by the idea of Walrus dying of thirst, relegating it as a simple matter of a man living with his own poor choice.

They make it through the desert, and come across the ghost town of Yellow Sky. Once booming with money from silver mines, things dried up awhile ago. But an old man (James Barton) and his granddaughter Mike (Anne Baxter) are still around. After slaking their thirst, the thieves' minds quickly turn to questioning why two people would stick it out alone unless they had something to show for it.

The overt sexuality of the movie is pretty striking by 1948 standards. All the men except for Dude quickly take a shine to Mike (Constance Mae is her real name), with animosity brewing as they vie for a place at the front of what they clearly believe will become a line.

Stretch orders them to leave the old man and girl alone, but doesn't follow his own orders. In one creepy scene, he tackles Mike and pins her down, forcibly kissing her. He gets up and quips something about just wanting to show her what he's capable of, but it clearly was the beginning of a sexual assault.

Mike, though, is a deadeye with her rifle, and parts Stretch's hair with a well-aimed bullet as warning/retribution. Inevitably, though, Mike finds herself drawn to Stretch. She's lived alone with just her grandpa since she was a girl, and Baxter's portrayal of a young woman's unmet raging desires surely brought a blush to audiences' cheeks back in the day.

Even the old man has desires. He's been mining gold dust mote by mote for more than 15 years, and has $50,000 worth saved up -- not for the wealth, but so he can revive the town of Yellow Sky again. Once the bandits' motives become clear, he offers to split the take with them, which Stretch agrees to out of sheer convenience, and perhaps because he's taken a shine to Mike.

Dude isn't having any of it, though, and usurps the leadership of the gang. Bull Run is killed in the ensuing melee, and Walrus and Half Pint don't really have a stake one way or the other, simply following the leadership of whoever seems to be in the strongest position at any given moment.

Stretch's transformation into a well-meaning fellow who sticks by his word isn't terribly convincing, nor is the seemingly pasted-on happy ending, where Stretch and what's left of his gang return the money they stole from the bank. Old habits die hard, though, and Stretch forces the bank workers and customers to hold up their hands at gunpoint, before realizing how silly this is.

The screenplay by Lamar Trotti was based on an unpublished book by W.R. Burnett. According to the film's Wikipedia page, the story is loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," but it must be pretty loose indeed. The old man in "Yellow Sky" has no sorcerous powers, unless you count his affinity with the local Apache.

The cinematography by Joseph MacDonald is terrific, with a lot of bright whites and high contrasts that make the scenes seem parched and arid.

"Yellow Sky" is a solid Western, but it's even better when considered for its subtext.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Bravados" (1958)

I think in many ways Gregory Peck was the perfect expression of idealized cinematic manhood: Remote yet full of passion, stern but empathetic, skilled in the ways of violence but reluctant to employ them. Atticus Finch was his ultimate role, but you see these central characteristics of his star persona in most of his films.

Take 1958's "The Bravados," which might be termed a revisionist Western before there was such a thing.

Peck plays Jim Douglass, a rancher turned hunter on the trail of the four men who raped and murdered his wife. He wears a black hat, dark gray clothes and an expression so hardened, it's no wonder the people of the border town of Rio Arriba are afraid when he rides in one day. He is there to witness the next morning's execution of four men who match the description of those he seeks: Two white men, an Indian and a "half-breed."

The sheriff (Herbert Rudley) reluctantly accedes to Douglass' request to see the men, whom he silently stares down one by one. For their part, the four bravados insist they have never seen him before.

The condemned men are a mix of contrasts. Bill Zachary (Stephen Boyd), the ostensible leader, has one of those smiles that make you feel icy rather than warm. He has a lecherous fondness for women that he calls his one weakness, and it seems certain that he led the assault on Douglass' wife.

Ed Taylor (Albert Salmi) is more grounded, has less to say, and is the best shot of the bunch. Alfonso Parral, the half-Indian played by Lee Van Cleef, is the most temperamental, whereas Lujan (Henry Silva) is an oasis of calm in the passionate gang. Lujan is skilled in the ways of the open range, and seems to harbor a veiled contempt for his companions.

While the entire town is at church, the foursome break out of jail with the help of one of their friends posing as the hangman, kidnapping a virginal town girl as collateral. A posse is formed, and Douglass assists them -- in a roundabout way -- and eventually is calling the shots.

Now, the statute of limitations on spoilers lies somewhere well south of 53 years, so I don't shy away from revealing the film's big reveal: After hunting down the four men, and mercilessly slaying three of them -- he shoots Parral while he's literally on his knees begging for mercy -- Douglass learns that they weren't responsible for his wife's death.

It's not exactly a surprise -- director Henry King and screenwriter Philip Yordan (working from the novel by Frank O'Rourke) drop plenty of hints that the protagonist is on the wrong path. The ending, in which the townsfolk cheer Douglass and enshrine him as their heroic savior, has a deliberately bittersweet, ironic note to it.

Joan Collins has small, totally unnecessary role as Josefa Velarde, a former flame of Douglass' from New Orleans who's now running her father's ranch. Her presence serves to soften some of his rougher edges, and like a lot of females in Westerns she's merely eye candy who exists to make the menfolk think of gentler things.

"The Bravados" succeeds ultimately because of Peck's presence, a mixture of brooding, buried rage and misplaced righteousness. The killing in Westerns had always been depicted as the necessary meting out of justice, even the roughshod frontier kind. And here's this odd, contemplative film in which good men do bad things, bad men aren't always deserving of punishment and the innocent, who suffer at both their hands.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949)

"Twelve O'clock High" is a terrific war movie, one more concerned with the toll combat takes on men than any fleeting glory it might bring. But the title is spectacularly misleading.

Given a moniker like that, I think most people would believe it was a movie full of dogfights and aerial combat. There is in fact one fairly long fight sequence -- made up largely of actual combat footage from World War II taken by both American and German personnel. But this 1949 film is more about what happens on the ground in between combat missions.

What strikes me most about this film directed by Henry King -- who had a long career spanning the silent era through the Golden Age, from 1915 to 1962 -- is that it's not structured anything like other war pictures of that era, or most Hollywood films in general.

The main character, played by Gregory Peck, doesn't show up until nearly a half-hour in. The supporting characters aren't just there to make the star look good, but fit organically into a group dynamic. The hero doesn't die gloriously in the end, but suffers a nervous breakdown and is unable to take part in the most important mission of the war.

Indeed, the framing device of one the U.S. Eighth Air Force Group 918 members returning to their old, abandoned airfield at Archbury features not the guts-and-glory commander, but his mild-mannered adjutant (a job title that's essentially military-ese for secretary). He finds the old Robin Hood toby jug that had been used at the group headquarters -- turned outward on the officer's club mantle to indicate a mission the next morning -- for sale in a thrift store, buys it and returns to the grown-over field to reminisce.

Even the poster for the film is misleading. It shows Peck toking on a cigarette wearing flying goggles, with the faces of the other cast mostly obscured as they're arrayed behind him. It even features Peck with a nurse at the bottom, implying some sort of romance. In actuality, this is the only woman who appears in the movie, and it's for about two lines of dialogue.

The set-up is the 918th is part if the early air war against Germany in late 1942, and have been stuck with the label of the cursed group that always seems to suffer the highest casualties. The commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), is beloved by the men and they by him -- too much so, in fact. Davenport is accused of "over-identifying" with his men, too concerned over losing them than accomplishing their critical missions.

They even have to endure the taunts of "Colonel Haw-Haw," a German radio broadcaster very much in the tradition of Tokyo Rose, who seems to know how many planes the 918th lost during that day's mission, and even the names of the planes and their captains. Things have recently grown much worse with the advent of low-altitude daylight missions -- "precision bombing" is what the brass (inaccurately) calls it.

Davenport is relieved of his command in favor of Brigadier Gen. Frank Savage (Peck), who's determined to be a by-the-book man who lights a fire under his pilots and crews. He gives them a rousing greeting speech -- so rousing, in fact, that every single pilot in the group asks to be transferred out.

"Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won't be so tough," Savage thunders. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

The movie spends quite a lot of time contrasting the different leadership styles of Savage and Davenport, with plenty of faults to be found in each. Savage's harsh methods eventually pull the 918th out of its nosedive, but not before nearly ending in disaster when an inspector general is dispatched to find out why all those transfer requests have been held up.

And Savage bends his iron ways somewhat to accommodate the needs of the men. In fact, by the end he's the one arguing to the boss, Major General Pritchard (Millard Mitchell), that his crews are not just faceless numbers but human beings -- a virtual copy of Davenport's earlier perspective.

"Twelve O'clock High" is based on the novel by Berine Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett, who also wrote the screenplay (with some alterations by King). Real events and people highly influenced both the book and the movie (not to mention a short-lived 1960s television series).

Most notably is the character of Jesse Bishop (Robert Patten), who received the Medal of Honor for heroic actions, which is where the movie begins. A B-17 crash-lands into the Archbury field -- Hollywood stuntman Paul Mantz piloted the plane by himself to achieve this amazing shot -- after a harrowing ordeal. The captain's head had been split open by an enemy shell, causing him to go into a crazed state and try to wrest the controls away from Bishop, his co-pilot. Bishop flew another two hours, flying the plane with one hand while fighting off his deranged commander with the other, and completing the bombing run.

This is an almost exact account of Lt. John C. Morgan, who really did win the Medal of Honor under these circumstances. Bishop is later killed on a subsequent mission -- one of the events that help send Savage over the edge -- but in reality Morgan survived the war, though he was shot down and was interred at a P.O.W. camp.

In the movie, Bishop is the only man on the base who Savage intitially respects, and uses him as his liaison to reach out to the other pilots, convincing them to drop their mass transfer request. Over time, though, Savage grows closer to some other offers, notably Maj. Joe Cobb (John Kellogg) and Maj. Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger), the aforementioned adjutant.

Stovall is an interesting odd duck. He's an older bald man, a "retread" from the first World War who gave up a successful law practice to reenlist, but was told he was too old for anything but desk jockeying. Stovall loved Davenport perhaps more than any other man in the group, but his first loyalty is to the 918th, so he becomes Savage's first conscript in the battle to gain the men's trust.

It's a terrific, understated performance, and Jagger deservedly won an Oscar for it.

The other major character is Lt. Col. Ben Gately (Hugh Marlowe), the number two man under Davenport. The son and grandson of war heroes, Gately is labeled a coward and malingerer by Savage, who demotes him from Air Exec to crew captain. He orders Gately to paint his plane with the name "Leper Colony," and has every sulker and misfit in the outfit assigned to him. Gately shows his true stripes in the end, though, hiding a cracked spine through three successful missions.

It's a rather unique role for Peck, in that there's not a trace of cuddliness or Atticus Finch-esque nobility to Frank Savage. He's a man with a job that needs to get done, and everything in his existence is subservient to that goal. We never find out a single thing about Savage other than his military duties -- does he have a wife? children? -- as he exemplifies sacrifice and self-reliance.

Like "Battleground" and other WWII pictures I've been privileged to discover, "Twelve O'Clock High" is a war movie with more soul and depth than I'd have ever guessed capable of Hollywood of that era.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "On the Beach" (1959)

Subtle as a sledgehammer, "On the Beach" is a movie about people waiting to die. Anyone who watches it will know exactly how they feel.

The 1959 film is set in the post-nuclear apocalypse. The entire world population has been erased except for Australia, and they'll soon be gone when the weather brings radiation poisoning to the holdouts in five months or so. Gregory Peck is captain of a U.S. submarine that escaped the bombs, and is sent out by the remaining joint Australian/American leadership to survey the spread.

(Even in 1959, scientists knew it wouldn't take five months for radiation to spread. But audiences probably didn't.).

Directed by Stanley Kramer, "On the Beach" was written by John Paxton from the novel by Nevil Shute. It's really heavy-handed stuff as the characters try to put a brave face on their impending doom, and take a break now and then to wail about how mankind could have been so stupid as to play around with nuclear weapons.

The story is set in 1964 -- the near-distant future. Peck plays Dwight Towers, the sub commander who still speaks about his wife and two children as if they're alive. He's not bonkers, or at least not more so than any of the other people trying desperately to maintain an even keel.

Anthony Perkins plays a young Australian naval officer assigned to Towers as a liaison, and Donna Anderson plays his nervous wife. Ava Gardner stars as Moira, a friend of theirs who soon gets caught up in romance with Towers. Gardner gives a vibrant, fetching performance as a woman with a big personality and an excess of passion, but there's a layer of self-hatred underneath.

Fred Astaire plays Julian, an English scientist who bears a guilty conscience, since he was one of those who helped build the bomb.

The most interesting thing about the movie is its depiction of how society adapts after the bombs have fallen. The short version is, not very much. They still have electricity, telephones and plenty of booze -- which all the characters help themselves to generously. About the only major change is that everyone gets around by bicycle or horse, since there's little gasoline for cars.

Although Julian does own the last functioning Ferrari in the world, which he intends to race in the upcoming (and last) Australian Grand Prix, despite being a bit long in the tooth for this sort of thing, not to mention a total novice as a race car driver.

The movie is quite dull and repetitive. There's lots of scenes of men and women sharing drinks and trying not to talk about the radiation that's coming to kill them.

Eventually, Towers and his crew do set out on their mission. It includes a side trip to San Diego to track down a mysterious Morse Code signal they've been receiving.

I don't mind a movie that's depressing, but "On the Beach" is simply a great bore. The anti-war and anti-nukes message is delivered so stridently, it feels more like a lecture than a forbidding cautionary tale.

1.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Spellbound"

I found another Alfred Hitchcock movie I don't like.

Few, if any, Hollywood directors were as productive and consistently good as Hitchcock. From the time he started making pictures in the U.S. in 1935 until his last big hit in 1964, he directed 37 films, while starting up an important television franchise, too. It's simply astonishing how many classics came out of that three-decade period: "Psycho," "North by Northwest," "Vertigo," "To Catch a Thief," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Lifeboat," "Notorious," "Strangers on a Train," "Rear Window" -- it goes on and on.

But Hitch also made some clunkers, although a lot of people are reluctant to admit it. I never cared for "The Birds," which its silly plot about killer pigeons, and "Marnie" is absolutely laughable.

I'd never seen "Spellbound," which is considered to be one of his major works, until recently. And it was a real let-down.

There's the approach to psychoanalysis that's absurdly simplistic -- all you have to do is get the patient to remember their repressed memories, and voila! No more crazy.

Add to that the cliche of a man and woman meeting and immediately falling in love. Especially Ingrid Bergman as a cold, calculating psychiatrist who's willing to pitch her entire career and go on the lam with a man she's only just met, while he was posing as the new head of the clinic where she works. Turns out he's an impostor with amnesia who believes he killed the doctor he replaced.

So, here are the facts:

1. He's nuts. And maybe a murderer.
   
2. In the course of 24 hours, she falls in love with him enough to ignore point #1.
3. They run away together, her theory being to cure him before the police capture them.

Not exactly brainiac behavior, and her character is supposed to be super-smart.

Also, "Spellbound" contains bar none the worst fake skiing scene in cinematic history. They're careening down a mountain together, going really really fast. The long shots of the stunt doubles look like they're going down a 45-degree grade at least 30 mph. But in the close-ups, their bodies stay perfectly smooth, never jostling up and down or side to side. They look like two people standing on an escalator.

I've never gone in for a lot of feminist film theory, but I have to say the much-touted misogyny of Hitchcock is on full display here. Every single male character makes some kind of cutting remark about Ingrid Bergman in particular and the female gender in general. "There's nothing I can't stand more than a smug woman!" "Women make the best psychoanalysts ... until they fall in love. Then they make the best patients!" "Listen to yourself, it's baby talk!"

Obviously he got a lot better, but in one of his first film roles, Gregory Peck is just cringe-worthy. I lost count of the number of times he swooned. I think Peck prepared for this role by practicing to faint without hurting himself. Then he comes out of his spell, flashes a big smile and pours on the showbiz charm. Granted, the character is supposed to be crazy, but did he have to be so smarmy?

Hitchcock is deified more than just about any other American film director, and deservedly so. But let's not blind ourselves to the fact that amidst all those great films, he made some flicks like "Spellbound" that are worthy of ridicule.