We love this Fritz Lang western even though it’s not particularly good; only in hindsight do we realize that the brilliant director’s intentions may have been compromised. High-key lighting does Marlene Dietrich no favors, but she scores good scenes performing with Arthur Kennedy (revenged crazed cowpoke) and Mel Ferrer (tranquilized gunslinger). Lang fans will be impressed by the gaudy, over-bright restored Technicolor, and we can always blame Howard Hughes.
Rancho Notorious
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date January 10, 2023 / 21.99
Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, William Frawley, Jack Elam, George Reeves, Frank Ferguson, Dan Seymour, John Doucette, Dick Elliott, Russell Johnson, Charlita.
Cinematography: Hal Mohr
Production Designer: Wiard Ihnen
Dietrich’s wardrobe designed by: Don Loper
Editorial Supervisor: Otto Ludwig
Original Music: Emil Newman
Written by Daniel Taradash, Silvia Richards
Produced by Howard Welsch
Directed...
Rancho Notorious
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date January 10, 2023 / 21.99
Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, William Frawley, Jack Elam, George Reeves, Frank Ferguson, Dan Seymour, John Doucette, Dick Elliott, Russell Johnson, Charlita.
Cinematography: Hal Mohr
Production Designer: Wiard Ihnen
Dietrich’s wardrobe designed by: Don Loper
Editorial Supervisor: Otto Ludwig
Original Music: Emil Newman
Written by Daniel Taradash, Silvia Richards
Produced by Howard Welsch
Directed...
- 1/31/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
What happens the moment gunmen go South of the border in American westerns? Implied foreign policy, that’s what! Updating an old ‘MGM Video Savant’ article from 1999, CineSavant takes a look at a fistful of big Hollywood shoot-out epics that formed less-than-optimal public impressions of international relations. You know, the Friendly Neighbor Policy, only with guns. The essay rewrite was first reprinted at Lee Broughton’s Current Thinking on the Western page, ‘An Internet Resource for Scholars of the Western Worldwide.’
The Foreign Adventurism Western
CineSavant Article
Discussing the films
Vera Cruz (1954),
The Magnificent Seven (1960),
Major Dundee (1965),
The Professionals (1966),
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Robert Aldrich, John Sturges, Sam Peckinpah, Richard Brooks
While enjoying an escapist, ostensibly apolitical Hollywood western, did you ever get the feeling that the filmmakers were commenting on foreign policy?
Back in the early 1970s the best studies of American genre films seemed to emanate from English critics.
The Foreign Adventurism Western
CineSavant Article
Discussing the films
Vera Cruz (1954),
The Magnificent Seven (1960),
Major Dundee (1965),
The Professionals (1966),
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Robert Aldrich, John Sturges, Sam Peckinpah, Richard Brooks
While enjoying an escapist, ostensibly apolitical Hollywood western, did you ever get the feeling that the filmmakers were commenting on foreign policy?
Back in the early 1970s the best studies of American genre films seemed to emanate from English critics.
- 6/11/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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