Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: S. Sylvan Simon, who replaced George Marshall due to “disputes”
Starring: Glenn Ford, Ida Lupino, Gig Young, William Prince, Will Geer
From: Columbia
A film noir/Western sandwich? In my last movie review for a day or two (I'll be out of town for about 36 hours), I'll explain what I mean.
Recently, a review from a mutual on Letterboxd inspired me to check out this rather interesting Western which is also a film noir. While most assuredly flawed, the idea is so interesting and some performances did stand out, there are no regrets in visiting the Criterion Channel to spend 90 minutes w/ something based on an actual legend. Lore states that there is a huge cache of gold buried in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. One of the several stories purportedly related to this tale has a man named Jacob Waltz discovering loot that was taken by several Hispanic men and hidden but Apache Indians killed said men & tried to bury the treasure for all time... until Waltz had the dumb luck of finding it.
According to the movie, Waltz was a real A-hole, which was a real surprise to his grandson. To explain the plot, the framing story is set in the late 40's, and this grandson (who sounds like John Wayne but to be frank, actor William Prince does not have the star power of Wayne) is also on the hunt for this buried treasure. Meanwhile, someone mysterious is shooting those who might be close to solving the puzzle... this framing story is total noir w/ constant narration, some memorable genre one-liners and it does explain the version of the legend they're using. After that, Jacob Waltz appears and as it's Glenn Ford, things perk up immediately.
As an aside, the treasure is known as the Lost Dutchman mine and this is due to dumb Americans. At the time many confused “Deutsch” with “Dutch” and that's why among other things there's a group of settlers from several hundred years ago known as Pennsylvania Dutch who aren't from the Netherlands but rather Germany. Ford at times speaks w/ a German accent, but the performances is still good despite that inconsistency.
Once he finds the gold, of course everyone else becomes greedy avaricious jerks who want to know where the gold at, but obviously he's not telling. Ida Lupino plays a rather strong-willed woman who has a real milksop of a husband who she browbeats & otherwise controls. She tries to use her wily ways to seduce Waltz for the treasure; as the rest of the town knows, the husband (played by Gig Young) literally becomes a cuckold!
The movie is definitely uneven; the 1940's footage is not that great and is like stale bread in a sandwich that otherwise has tasty meat & various toppings. There are some rather strong moments in the Western that could have easily been a noir on its own had the setting been 1940's Arizona instead of the Wild West. Ford and Lupino shone the brightest in this movie which has a “greed is bad” message that isn't quite well presented as in a classic like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre but that's a tough comparison for many pictures. Overall I'll give the movie credit for attempting some different ideas and it manages to be good despite its flaws-it also served as a nice chance of pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment