Wolff rating: GOOD
Plot summary: Cowpoke and drifter drives cattle to Klondike country trying to separate himself from trusting others.
Biased, pithy comments: This is another tricky ``GOOD'' rating. This movie has a fairly simple set of one-note characters (with the exception of Calvet's French-Canadian gal, where Calvet has added depth to her underwritten part) and a fairly simple ending, so you can't really recommend it for plot. At the same time, the performances are fantastic---it's like seeing Olivier doing Shakespeare to see Stewart, Mann, Brennan, and MacIntire tackle these classic roles straight out of Western legend. The Canadian wilderness, too, never looked better, and the verismilitude f the production design never made me think that the movie was shot in the 50s; it looked all too real. This movie and ones like it (say, ``Shane'') are the kind of Western-as-American-Myth, Western-as-Greek-Tragedy movies that are studies in character and freedom rather than plotting and action.
Other Notes: There's a lot to work with here in terms of critical theory---Brennan and
How many times I have seen it:
Starring: James Stewart