D: Gerd Oswald. P: John Beck. W: Jason James. Ph: Joseph LaShelle. M: Harry Sukman. St: John Derek (Brock Mitchell), John Smith (Miley Sutton), Carolyn Craig (Ginny Clay), Nick Adams (Tracy Mitchell), Gage Clarke (Chad Deasey)
“It’s not easy to join the human race
again once you’ve been drummed out”
A
companion piece to Oswald’s The Brass Legend, this film similarly corrals ideas from touchstone westerns –
High Noon and The Gunfighter – into a punchy story about onerous reputations, violent
reprisals and the rush to judgement of a small community fearful of a lone wolf
in its midst.
In
a performance keyed to the tenor of the psychological strain of western so
popular at the time, John Derek alternates between furrowed brow and wild-eyed
glare as a man “with a name to live up to – and a past to live down”, as the posters
put it. It is a common scenario: Brock has been forced to kill, more than once,
to see off foolhardy challengers; he only wants to settle down; his peers –
even Ginny, the girl he loves – doubt he can ever tame his animal instincts.
Whipping
up their suspicions is Deasey, a crooked attorney. Brock killed his brother two
years earlier – in self-defence according to Brock; to eliminate a love rival, as
Deasey maintains. He pressures the bank manager to curtail funds to Brock and
his younger brother, who have a business plan geared to the arrival of the
railroad, and hedges his bets by employing a gunman, Sutton, ostensibly as his
bodyguard.
As
Deasey poisons the air against him, Brock adopts a hunted expression, his quick
temper aiding his enemy’s cause. When a young man seen in Ginny’s company comes
to apologise to Brock, so angry is the latter at this presumption of his violent
intentions that he almost throttles the boy, playing into Deasey’s hands and
diminishing his standing even further among the townsfolk.
Clearly
there is no smoke without fire – a realisation seized upon by numerous Fifties
westerns that put their violent protagonists under a microscope. Without the
sustained examination of character that distinguished the likes of The Gunfighter and The Searchers, however, Brock amounts to little more than a
brooding outcast. Fortunately Derek was well versed in troubled or
misunderstood personae, earning plaudits early in his career for such roles in Knock on Any Door and All the King’s Men (both 1949). He would
never recapture that high ground; studio brass sacrificed him to the teen market
instead. Nevertheless, building on a decent showing as James Cagney’s wayward
partner in Run for Cover (1955), he does
a creditable job as what the New York
Times called “a young man at his life’s crossroads”, increasingly introspective
(“I’m afraid… of myself”) in the face of social ostracism.
The
supporting roles and performances are more perfunctory. Adams and Craig are somewhat
anodyne as Brock’s brother and love interest respectively – her part in
particular is poorly developed – but the villains make a stronger contribution:
Clarke, a TV journeyman, spiteful and spineless as the vindictive lawyer;
Smith, later co-lead of the Laramie
series, surly and swaggering as the hired gun. His bar-room/street fight with
Brock is one of the film’s highlights.
As
in The Brass Legend, Oswald was
constrained by a tight budget and schedule – around a week – but compensated
with ingenuity. He blocks half the screen, for example, with a man’s profile to
disguise the limited number of extras in a crowd scene. He makes intelligent
use of deep focus, notably early in the film when Brock returns to his hometown
after a year in jail, the slowly gliding camera picking up the hostile looks
and furtive motions of wary onlookers. LaShelle’s monochrome photography is
excellent throughout, especially on the rare occasions when the camera escapes
the confines of the town to roam the rocky heights of the famous Iverson Movie
Ranch.
The
closing stages shirk some conventions while satisfying others. With Brock’s
brother slain by Sutton and Deasey’s scheming exposed, it is remarkable that it
is the heroine who urges her man to pick up his gun and take revenge, and the
hero who demurs – up the point where he has no choice but to intervene. Fury at Showdown presents the rare spectacle
of a protagonist modifying his ways and maturing through adversity, without unsubscribing
entirely from the code of masculinity on which the western has always been predicated. Kevin Grant
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