D: Roy Rowland. P: Joseph
Bernhard. W: Niven Busch. Ph: Bert Glennon. M: Heinz Roemheld. St: Barbara
Stanwyck (Rela), Fred MacMurray (Wes Anderson), Ward Bond (Cole Gardner),
William Ching (Tom Anderson), John Dierkes (Sheriff Daws)
“If ever a ghost can ride and shoot, that’s what
the ghost of Wes Anderson’ll do”
This B-western opens
strongly, with a lynch mob dragging a prisoner from jail before hanging him and
throwing his corpse in a river. Unfortunately, they have made a mistake. The
real ‘moonlighter’ – nocturnal cattle rustler Wes Anderson – was in a different
cell. Their victim was an innocent drifter. Director Rowland may not
distinguish himself with the rest of the picture, but this initial sequence
powerfully conveys the rush to judgement that was all too common in the Old
West. And not just in that region or period, of course. It is significant that
a black man – historically, much more likely to have been the object of a
lynching – is also in the jail, watching fearfully as the hangmen go about
their grisly business.
What is set up as an
outcry against injustice – Wes escapes in the melee and swears revenge against
the “self-appointed hangmen” who came there to murder him, in a foretaste of Three Hours to Kill (1954) and Hang ’Em High (1968) – segues into a
run-of-the-mill story about wrong turns and redemption, complete with a
melodramatic love triangle that is all sputter and no
spark. Aside from the novelty of 3D photography (watching the film flat, it is
difficult to imagine how this would have enhanced the experience – there are no
obvious ‘in your face’ moments), the big selling point was the reunion of
MacMurray and Stanwyck, nine years on from Double
Indemnity, in another love-hate liaison. Both stars go through the motions,
hampered by a weak script that fails to establish a credible basis for their
relationship or for the increasingly incredulous narrative contortions around
them.
A cynically humorous
scene, in which Wes attends what is theoretically his own funeral, extorting
the undertaker’s fee from the attendants at gunpoint, maintains the promise of
the first 15 minutes. Things go awry once he returns to the family farm after
his vengeful crusade and finds Rela, his old flame, set to marry his brother,
Tom. Wes begrudgingly wishes them well. At this point, we could almost be
watching a different film. On the flimsiest of pretexts, Tom, newly suspended
from his job as a bank teller, decides to join Wes and his partner, Cole
Gardner, in a raid on his former employer. Even the actor playing Tom seems nonplussed
at this turn of events. His character had been positioned, albeit cursorily, as
the sheep to Wes’s lone wolf. His decision to follow the same maverick path –
“You went after what you wanted and I’m going after what I want” – makes no
sense except to set up the third act, in which Rela, mourning Tom’s death in
the robbery, swears to punish Wes for leading his brother astray.
Niven Busch knew how to
write a classic western: the deliciously overripe Duel in the Sun, based on his novel, was his most famous creation, followed
by the enthralling noir offshoot Pursued
and the tempestuous Stanwyck vehicle The
Furies. He was off his game here, however, recycling chunks of dialogue that
would have sounded stilted in the Thirties, never mind the early Fifties, when
the western was at the apex of its maturity. Rowland, for his part, really
should have worked harder to iron out the wrinkles. The rather superficial
performances from the leads can perhaps be excused in the circumstances. They
flatly emit Busch’s stale clichés and strain for credibility during the closing
stages, a typical Busch scenario that pits lovers against each other at
gunpoint. Lacking here is the swirling passion that led Duel in the Sun to be nicknamed “Lust in the Dust”. Instead, the
rapid superseding of rancour by reconciliation is a hallmark of Hollywood at
its most banal.
Although Rowland peaks
early, he stages the climactic scenes with some vigour, including a waterfall confrontation
that is literally cliffhanging. The black and white photography is consistently
rich and deep. Western fans will also appreciate the presence of Ward Bond,
although his role as a backstabbing outlaw scarcely represented a challenge to
his abilities, as well as a weaselly cameo from Jack Elam in the lynching
scene.
MacMurray and Stanwyck
spent much of the Fifties in the saddle. Their best westerns lay ahead of them
– MacMurray in At Gunpoint, Face of a Fugitive and Quantez; Stanwyck in Trooper Hook and the delirious Forty Guns, the perfect showcase for her
redoubtable screen persona. If the stars appear ill at ease in The Moonlighter – and neither party
reportedly looked fondly on the project – it was not for lack of affinity with
the genre. Kevin Grant
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