Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

FightingWesterner Cowboy Joel McCrea pals around with pretty eastern-bred schoolteacher Barbara Britton and squares off against black-clad cattle rustler Brian Donlevy and McCrea's amiable pal, who threw in with the rustlers in order to make some easy cash.This version of the popular novel takes way too much time to get moving, spending a majority of the first fifty-or-so minutes on the uninteresting wooing of Britton by McCrea. The last thirty-five minutes are okay, with decent action and suspense scenes, though never quite as good or plentiful as you'd like them to be. However, the hanging scene does pack a wallop.The best thing this has going for it is the old-fashioned Technicolor and that old Hollywood sheen.

zardoz-13 The fourth big-screen adaptation of author Owen Wister classic novel "The Virginian" stars Joel McCrea as the eponymous hero and Brian Donlevy as the villainous Trampas. McCrea looks a bit long in the tooth to be cast as the title character. Director Stuart Gilmore's "The Virginian" concerns a transplanted Easterner on horseback who serves as foreman at Judge Henry's ranch in Wyoming. Barbara Britton co-stars as 'a wisdom-bringer" from Vermont who gets off on the wrong foot with McCrea. This is a traditional western lensed beautifully but primarily against studio backdrops and Hollywood backlot towns is comparatively dull. This morality play draws its gravity from a superlative performance from Sonny Turfs as Steve Andrews, a never-do-well, cloven-hoofed cowboy who prefers to rustler rather than earn his living the legal way. Steve wanders back and forth from the wrong end of the trail to work briefly for The Virginian. Steve and the Virginian are close, old friends. Brian Donlevy is dressed from Stetson to boots in black and plays Trampas as a thorough-going bastard. He ambushes our hero after Steve and the other rustles are strung up by the neck. The romance between the hero and heroine is complicated somewhat because she doesn't like the Virginian standing up for her. Molly Stark Wood resents the fact that everybody in the cattle town of Medicine Bow has her attached to the Virginian. The finale between the Virginian and Trampas in the streets of Medicine Bow could hardly be termed suspenseful. A tame oater at best with a straight-up, honest McCrea, with the sympathetic but doomed Tufts taking top honors. The target practice that Trampas and Steve have in the bar is amusing. Trampas blasts three whiskey shot glasses out of the air. When Trampas slings one shot glass aloft, he fires at it and we hear the intact glass strike the floorboards. Barbara Britton makes a pretty heroine.

edwagreen The typical western of the 1940s and 1950s is shown here where a woman seeks adventure from a dull life in 1885's Vermont to go out west and teach. There she finds Joel McCrea, a rancher, involved in trying to prove that Brian Donlevy, dressed in black to depict evil, is the cattle rustler.Faye Bainter must have been gunning for another supporting actress nomination in one scene where she tells our heroine about frontier justice. She was quite effective there. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for McCrea's performance. He was rather dull in a role which would have been perfect for Gary Cooper.Our schoolteacher is never shown in the classroom but can lecture McRea on transitive and intransitive verbs. That was ridiculous for this period peace.Naturally, the two get off on the wrong foot and there are complications during their courtship due to frontier justice. Remember cattle rustlers were automatically hung.

bkoganbing This story, originally written by novelist Owen Wister is the granddaddy of the western genre. Western novels before that were usually about real life characters, Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp for example: that put them in these two dimensional heroic settings. Those things were nicknamed "Penny dreadfuls" and that they were.Wister, who spent some time in the west, and was a good friend of cowboy president Theodore Roosevelt, developed his characters out of the people he met in the west. The strong silent hero, the demure schoolmarm, the cold hearted villain, all these appear in The Virginian and they're stock characters in westerns. But these are the original prototypes for thousands to follow. Owen Wister set the standard for folks like Zane Grey, Luke Short, Louis L'Amour,etc. to follow.Joel McCrea was a fine actor, a combination of the best features of Gary Cooper(who did the role in an earlier version), Jimmy Stewart and a younger John Wayne. Nobody has done a better job in playing this character including Cooper. Brian Donlevy is the villainous Trampas and he never disappoints. Sonny Tufts probably has the best role in his career as Steve, The Virginian's friend who turns to rustling with Trampas. Barbara Britton is properly demure as the schoolmarm.This novel, the play that Wister wrote based on it and all the versions to follow had the Presidential imprimatur. Teddy Roosevelt loved this book and recommended it to the youth of America. I remember a similar White House imprimatur for a western coming in my teen years. Back around 1965 the folks had CBS decided Gunsmoke had run its course and they were ready to pull the plug on the show. Well, up stepped Lady Bird Johnson to the plate and she declared that Gunsmoke was her favorite television show. That did it, the show ran almost another decade.The crux of the story centers around the relationship with The Virginian and Steve. After warning him once, The Virginian catches Steve with stolen cattle and since there's no organized law in the territory, proceeds to hang him forthwith. The story then revolves on how The Virginian and others around him view the distasteful, but necessary duty he had to do.I've often wondered how Theodore Roosevelt felt about that part of the plot and what he might have said to his good friend Wister. There is a famous story from his days in the Dakota Territory about how Roosevelt set out to trail some rustlers and caught up with them. There was no law within miles of where they were. But Roosevelt took them back to where there was a federal marshal and turned them over to the surprise of many including the marshal.No doubt The Virginian was a great example of the manly virtues of the strenuous life that Roosevelt passionately advocated. But I often wonder what he and Wister might have talked about concerning this aspect of the story.Remember folks if you see this and complain about clichés, remember the clichés started here.