HANGMAN'S KNOT (1952, Columbia)

D: Roy Huggins. P: Harry Joe Brown. W: Roy Huggins. Ph: Charles Lawton Jr. M: Mischa Bakaleinikoff. St: Randolph Scott (Major Matt Stewart), Donna Reed (Molly Hull), Claude Jarman Jr (Jamie Groves), Frank Faylen (Cass Browne), Lee Marvin (Rolph Bainter)

Such was the calibre of the westerns that Randolph Scott made with director Budd Boetticher between 1956 and 1960, it is difficult to resist inspecting the films that immediately preceded them for signs of things to come. Hangman’s Knot, with the Ranown axis of Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown in situ, rewards investigation in that respect, even if it lacks the pithy writing of Burt Kennedy, which distinguished five of the seven films in the Scott-Boetticher cycle. The tone here is somewhere between the Ranown cycle and the six westerns Scott made with Andre de Toth (1951-54), which formed a satisfying sequence of their own.

Once again the star plays a character charged with protecting an endangered group, in this case a detachment of Confederate soldiers under his command, as well as the civilians trapped with them in a way station – the kind of remote setting favoured in the Ranown series. Outside a posse waits, ostensibly to arrest Scott’s troops for ambushing and robbing a Union gold escort, but really to steal the precious ingots for themselves. Major Stewart’s men attacked the convoy unaware the Civil War had recently ended, making them technically thieves and murderers. While Stewart defends their honour as soldiers and Southerners to their dubious captives, he must also keep his trigger-happy comrade Rolph Bainter in check and devise a way of slipping past the jackals lying in wait.

Scott’s role as duty-bound professional is a comfortable fit, although Huggins’ script never gets to the essence of the man in the way that Kennedy would manage with such acuity in his Ranown scenarios. There is some effort in that direction for the characters portrayed by Marvin – it is suggested that Bainter has been brutalised by warfare – and former child star Claude Jarman Jr, best known for The Yearling (1946), who plays a callow youngster in Stewart’s command orphaned by Yankee action. There are sufficient sparks in the scenes between Scott and Marvin, certainly, to make one wish the tension between them had been sustained to the last, as it was so profitably in Seven Men from Now (1956). Bainter is not an outright heavy, but his presence adds a volatile component that leaves a void once it is eliminated. Nor is there any hint, beyond implying their common pre-war background, of the kindred nature of hero and villain – one of the philosophical underpinnings of the Ranown films.

Nonetheless, Hangman’s Knot, Huggins’ sole directed feature, contains sharp etchings of people under pressure, amply demonstrating its author’s feel for character. (Huggins later found his métier in character-driven episodic television, creating Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip and The Rockford Files, among other titles.) He is particularly sensitive towards the female supporting roles – former Union Army nurse Molly, reluctantly tending to Stewart’s wounded men while trying not to fall for him, and Margaret (Jeanette Nolan), daughter of the station agent, frozen in grief having lost in the war both her husband and now her son, a member of the slaughtered convoy. The performances of Donna Reed and Nolan – brilliant as Lady Macbeth in Orson Welles’ 1948 adaptation – introduce trace notes of vigour and pathos.

A western cannot thrive on pathos alone, of course, and the dominant texture is reassuringly rugged. There is early use of blood squibs, and a particularly dynamic high-speed stagecoach-chase typical of action wrangler Yakima Canutt. (Less convincing is the stunt doubling for Scott and Marvin for their big punch-up in the station – the paucity of camera angles in the cramped space makes the actors’ stand-ins all too obvious.) Huggins was fortunate to have the services of Charles Lawton Jr, another of Scott’s Ranown comrades, who shows command of both natural locations and the stuffy confines of the way station. He really comes into his own during the nocturnal climax, which segues from flame and smoke to lacerating rain, with Lawton handling these difficult elements commendably.

An agreeable entry in the Scott canon, Hangman’s Knot is ultimately too conventional to be considered a true precursor to the Ranown cycle, complete with the promise of romantic fulfilment that was denied his drifters and loners in the Boetticher films. There is, at least, a ‘signature’ look to the landscape – after all, if Monument Valley is widely regarded as ‘Ford country’, it seems fitting to link Scott with Lone Pine in the same terms. Kevin Grant