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Rationality in the wilderness is the compressed parable, "a law book, a horse and a gun" are called for. The circuit judge (Joel McCrea) materializes in the prairie, the traveling shot is his view of a trailside burial, it yields to Main Street festooned with storefront signs bearing the culprit's surname. "It's a frontier, sir. The garment of social conscience fits loosely." "I'm here to tighten it." The town-builder (John McIntire) has a steel grip on the populace, the trigger-happy scion (Kevin McCarthy) has not stood trial for the killing, thus the judicial quest. The newcomer is compared to a preacher but packs a hidden punch, he deftly disarms a taunting henchman and dunks him in a watering trough for good measure. The district attorney (John Carradine) is bought and paid for, a cheery skulker with a windy warning: "As a poet said, your Honor, there are determined men who act by night." Jacques Tourneur winnows down Louis L'Amour and gets Aesop, a refined moral abstraction in uncanny Ansco Color. (Ascetic hues reign, the better to set off McIntire's red vest in the baronial ranch or the ginger feline leisurely lolling on the marshal's desk.) "A state of mind," given contours by the conflicted witness (Nancy Gates), the grieving widow (Jaclynne Greene) and, above all, the bigwig's bold, whip-cracking niece (Miroslava Stern). The search for justice squeezes through a rocky canyon and comes to a head in a pale green field, the beautiful upshot is a curving pan from the dusty outdoors to the hard-won order of a courtroom. "Did you ever hear the recipe for making tiger stew? First, you catch a tiger." Tourneur's own Wichita runs parallel, and consequences extend from Boetticher's Buchanan Rides Alone to Polanski's Chinatown. With Emile Meyer, Robert Cornthwaite, Walter Baldwin, Emmett Lynn, and Roy Roberts.
--- Fernando F. Croce |