Two fine actors, Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, at the top of their games. They were very different men but they had one thing in common: neither of them treated making movies as anything other than a means of earning a living. Quinn was reserved by Hollywood standards. He made no public service announcements or any such thing. Even his autobiography is sluggish. Quinn started in bit parts, usually as villains because of his dark looks. I think he played a romantic lead once in his career. Ot wasn't so much a career as a business, yet, he turned in some magnificent performances, as in "Viva Zapata."
In contrast, Kirk Douglas' "Ragman's Son" is one of those autobiographies that is so unusually frank that it unwittingly exposes the author's weaknesses because he simply doesn't see them as weaknesses. He seemed to put a dollar sign before most of his transactions with others. He lacked empathy and treated some helpless people with the utmost cruelty. He ridiculed the notion of movies being "art." Yet, he too was memorable in many of his films, especially as a man possessed by some kind of Dybukk, as in "The Juggler" and "Champion."
The guilty son, Earl Holliman, was a staple of films in the 1950s and his frequent appearances always puzzled me because the poor guy is fundamentally uninteresting. He hits his marks and recites his lines but he always sound as if he's whining about something. His features are equally dull, a dished face and two big ears. Caroyn Jones is the lady in the case, bitter, cynical, but won over at the end by Douglas' rectitude.
There is effective direction by John Sturges. Sometimes it's subtle but mostly functional. All the usual conventions of the traditional Western are followed. Every man wears a pistol strapped to his leg and there is danger everywhere, but, as in other Sturges flicks, no one is muddy. Ranches all about but no one is muddy. Nor do we see anyone on Quinn's cattle ranch doing anything with cattle. Sturges seemed most attracted to town Westerns, where a man could get a drink at a decent saloon and find a game of Red Dog. Every man, no matter his state, has been shaved closely by the studio barber.
The story in some ways resembles "3:30 To Yuma" but it's more taut, less mechanical. Earl Holliman is the weak wastrel son of cattle baron Quinn. He pursues and rapes a beautiful Indian woman, not knowing that she's the wife of Douglas, the Marshall of a nearby town. Douglas discovers the culprit's identity and shows up at the ranch to take him back. Quinn and Douglas are old friends and Quinn tries to dissuade Douglas from making the arrest. The streets line with Quinn's men ready to shoot Douglas as he tries to board the train with his prisoner and the tension grows. Come to think of it, at a slightly higher level of abstraction, it's "Rio Bravo", in which the sheriff is holed up with a prisoner guilty of murder and the whole town is waiting to gun him down.
It's a tragic situation and a moving one. Quinn is in the more difficult position. He doesn't want Douglas killed but neither can his pride allow his son to be hanged. In the end, justice is done but a price is paid for it.
In contrast, Kirk Douglas' "Ragman's Son" is one of those autobiographies that is so unusually frank that it unwittingly exposes the author's weaknesses because he simply doesn't see them as weaknesses. He seemed to put a dollar sign before most of his transactions with others. He lacked empathy and treated some helpless people with the utmost cruelty. He ridiculed the notion of movies being "art." Yet, he too was memorable in many of his films, especially as a man possessed by some kind of Dybukk, as in "The Juggler" and "Champion."
The guilty son, Earl Holliman, was a staple of films in the 1950s and his frequent appearances always puzzled me because the poor guy is fundamentally uninteresting. He hits his marks and recites his lines but he always sound as if he's whining about something. His features are equally dull, a dished face and two big ears. Caroyn Jones is the lady in the case, bitter, cynical, but won over at the end by Douglas' rectitude.
There is effective direction by John Sturges. Sometimes it's subtle but mostly functional. All the usual conventions of the traditional Western are followed. Every man wears a pistol strapped to his leg and there is danger everywhere, but, as in other Sturges flicks, no one is muddy. Ranches all about but no one is muddy. Nor do we see anyone on Quinn's cattle ranch doing anything with cattle. Sturges seemed most attracted to town Westerns, where a man could get a drink at a decent saloon and find a game of Red Dog. Every man, no matter his state, has been shaved closely by the studio barber.
The story in some ways resembles "3:30 To Yuma" but it's more taut, less mechanical. Earl Holliman is the weak wastrel son of cattle baron Quinn. He pursues and rapes a beautiful Indian woman, not knowing that she's the wife of Douglas, the Marshall of a nearby town. Douglas discovers the culprit's identity and shows up at the ranch to take him back. Quinn and Douglas are old friends and Quinn tries to dissuade Douglas from making the arrest. The streets line with Quinn's men ready to shoot Douglas as he tries to board the train with his prisoner and the tension grows. Come to think of it, at a slightly higher level of abstraction, it's "Rio Bravo", in which the sheriff is holed up with a prisoner guilty of murder and the whole town is waiting to gun him down.
It's a tragic situation and a moving one. Quinn is in the more difficult position. He doesn't want Douglas killed but neither can his pride allow his son to be hanged. In the end, justice is done but a price is paid for it.