|
The horizon behind the opening credits is convex and verdant, a long shot sustained as a trio of returning Confederates ride past a flock of sheep toward the camera, James Arness calmly dismounts and rescues a lamb stuck in the mud. The family ranch in Texas starts looking paltry to the former Major (Robert Ryan), the "false prosperity" of the booming city has its appeal. The Yankee tycoon (Raymond Burr) plays "a rough game of poker," he's got the fortune and the lady (Julie Adams) coveted by the protagonist, who recruits a cattle-rustling gang from an encampment of military dregs. Bullied farmers and crooked judges figure in the rise of the emperor, "and when I'm on the top, people will swear that I've done nothing wrong. Nothing wrong at all!" From the Civil War to the new frontier is a continuum of corroded integrity, Budd Boetticher curbs its sprawl for a compressed canvas. "Pretty much a fatalist" is how the antihero describes himself, his widowed lover detects "rather a strange code of honor." Plainspoken morality belongs to his younger brother (Rock Hudson), the sort of feller who pretends to cough after a toast as to not betray his familiarity with whiskey before his mother's disapproving gaze. (More vivid are Dennis Weaver as the trigger-happy henchman and Rodolfo Acosta as a Zona Libre despot delighted to have his picture on a box of fancy cigars.) Dad (John McIntire) heads south to sort things out, a Pietà follows the overreacher's shrug: "It wasn't in the cards." Karlson in Gunman's Walk serves his own sagebrush formulation of family and violence. With Judith Braun, Frances Bavier, Tom Powers, John Hubbard, Douglas Fowley, Walter Reed, Raymond Greenleaf, Dan Poore, Frank Chase, and Mae Clarke.
--- Fernando F. Croce |