zardoz-13
The fourth big-screen adaptation of author Owen Wister classic novel "The Virginian" stars Joel McCrea as the eponymous hero and Brian Donlevy as the villainous Trampas. McCrea looks a bit long in the tooth to be cast as the title character. Director Stuart Gilmore's "The Virginian" concerns a transplanted Easterner on horseback who serves as foreman at Judge Henry's ranch in Wyoming. Barbara Britton co-stars as 'a wisdom-bringer" from Vermont who gets off on the wrong foot with McCrea. This is a traditional western lensed beautifully but primarily against studio backdrops and Hollywood backlot towns is comparatively dull. This morality play draws its gravity from a superlative performance from Sonny Turfs as Steve Andrews, a never-do-well, cloven-hoofed cowboy who prefers to rustler rather than earn his living the legal way. Steve wanders back and forth from the wrong end of the trail to work briefly for The Virginian. Steve and the Virginian are close, old friends. Brian Donlevy is dressed from Stetson to boots in black and plays Trampas as a thorough-going bastard. He ambushes our hero after Steve and the other rustles are strung up by the neck. The romance between the hero and heroine is complicated somewhat because she doesn't like the Virginian standing up for her. Molly Stark Wood resents the fact that everybody in the cattle town of Medicine Bow has her attached to the Virginian. The finale between the Virginian and Trampas in the streets of Medicine Bow could hardly be termed suspenseful. A tame oater at best with a straight-up, honest McCrea, with the sympathetic but doomed Tufts taking top honors. The target practice that Trampas and Steve have in the bar is amusing. Trampas blasts three whiskey shot glasses out of the air. When Trampas slings one shot glass aloft, he fires at it and we hear the intact glass strike the floorboards. Barbara Britton makes a pretty heroine.
edwagreen
The typical western of the 1940s and 1950s is shown here where a woman seeks adventure from a dull life in 1885's Vermont to go out west and teach. There she finds Joel McCrea, a rancher, involved in trying to prove that Brian Donlevy, dressed in black to depict evil, is the cattle rustler.Faye Bainter must have been gunning for another supporting actress nomination in one scene where she tells our heroine about frontier justice. She was quite effective there. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for McCrea's performance. He was rather dull in a role which would have been perfect for Gary Cooper.Our schoolteacher is never shown in the classroom but can lecture McRea on transitive and intransitive verbs. That was ridiculous for this period peace.Naturally, the two get off on the wrong foot and there are complications during their courtship due to frontier justice. Remember cattle rustlers were automatically hung.
alexandre michel liberman (tmwest)
Having seen recently "The Ox Bow Incident" I wonder what happened in the years between when "The Virginian" was written and Ox Bow came out. I think people realized that even in the old west a man had the right to a trial. The Virginian is the story of teacher who leaves Vermont and goes to Wyoming. There she meets the Virginian (Joel McCrea) who falls in love with her. There are three features in The Virginian that makes it above average: 1) the West seen through the eyes of a woman who comes from a civilized East. 2) the shocking severity in relation to the cattle rustlers, where even friendship does not count. It is hard to agree with it or accept it, but people at the time the book was written used to think of the West as a totally different world. It is interesting because it shows us the way of thinking at that time. 3) The showdown at the end, at the day of the wedding, it has a lot to do with "High Noon", which was made much later.
trixie32
Owen Wister, himself, is fascinating to me. The movie version of his book doesn't include the rather excellent banter between the schoolmarm and the hero, nor does it include the evidence of growth and maturity in the early antics of the hero and his friend, Lin. What great fun they had before falling for the schoolmarm. You have to read to get that.Molly appears a bit ditsy in the '46 version and a bit underdeveloped in the book. Thank goodness for the remake with Bill Pullman and Diane Lane. Molly seems to have more depth with Lane playing the role.The '46 version is great, the '99 version is great, but I hope you get to see both to fill in the gaps each seems to have.Its a great plot, fabulous development of romance, and the ending is intense (more so in the '99 version though).
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