Dir: Fritz Lang | Cast: Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Jackie Cooper | US Western drama. 1940
Reviewed by Richard Chatten
Fonda actively disliked working with Lang on this sequel to Fox’s great success of the previous year; which actually managed to be more characteristic of Lang than his subsequent western, ‘Western Union’.
An enthusiastic promoter of Technicolor, Darryl Zanuck deserves credit for giving Lang the opportunity to work in colour at such an early date. Thanks to George Barnes’ atmospheric photography the result is a film much darker in tone than either of the two westerns that followed.
While the scenes in which Victor Killian plays a hellfire preacher and which the Ford brothers reenact on stage Bob’s killing of Jesse have an authenticity then rare to westerns; while the showdown in which Frank corners Bob Ford in a darkened barn is classic Lang.
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