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Canyon Passage
All you do to me is talk talk
1946
Review: July 20, 2007
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Starring: Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Patricia Roc, Ward Bond
Why not, I guess.
THE SETUP:
Much moral ambiguity in the interlocking tales of a Pacific Northwestern town.
DISCUSSION:
So there I am, innocently paging through the New York Times, when suddenly I’m like “WHAT?! Jacques Tourneur directed a Western? And it’s supposed to be great?” So obviously this shot straight to the top of my Netflix list, and I soon found myself confronted with a frills-free 2-movies-on-one-disc version [which still looked pretty good], not the exciting remaster job featured in the paper. Whatever.
We begin in Portland, Oregon in 1856. Logan, played by Dana Andrews, comes in looking for lodging during an intense rainstorm that has turned all the streets to muck. Logan looks like a genetic meld of Sean Connery and Live Schreiber, which is fine with me, although I preferred him more before his shaved to make himself look respectable.
So there’s this dude George, played by Brian Donlevy, who is the kind of big, handsome dude of movies of this type who we are to understand are morally suspect inside and boring to marry, although they are consistently engaged. And so is George, to the spirited Lucy, this redhead, Susan Hayward, who is obviously quite taken with Logan, and fascinated and excited yet repulsed by his womanizing ways. George asks Logan to escort Lucy to Jacksonille [not the one in Florida], during which they flirt and display their attraction, and Lucy evinces her unrelenting fascination with Logan’s love life.
So they arrive in Jacksonville and we meet George and there is some passive-aggressive conversation between he and Logan over who really loves Lucy. Then Logan retires to bed with a bunch of money under his mattress, and it’s not too long before someone’s coming in to steal it. The guy gets away by jumping out the window, but Logan has a pretty good idea it’s this huge thug named Honey. We also find out that the Indians have been killing some of the Miners, and Logan makes a speech to Lucy about how ”things have got to be dead even” with him, that is, he says he’s excessively fair. The situation in question is when he refused to have a guy condemned to death for a crime because while there was a ton of circumstantial evidence, Logan needs concrete, undeniable proof when a man’s life hangs in the balance. Or so he says. We also meet Caroline Marsh, Logan’s love interest. Lucy is obviously pretty startled when she sees how much Logan likes Caroline.
Soon Logan is once more asked to escort Lucy somewhere, and she keeps on harping on his restlessness and how he keeps pursuing the women to the point where you want to offer her an overflowing cup of Shut The Fuck Up soup. There’s a somewhat interesting scene in which a guy is talking about the Indian attacks, and he acknowledges that the settlers stole their land, yet is furious that the Indians don’t just get over it and, like, deal. Along the way one has noticed that in this movie there are a tremendous number of Europeans in the West, and that Hoagy Carmichael is running around as a sort of observer, singing songs that comment on the action. In here we’ve seen Logan quite ballsily kiss Lucy right in front of George, and found out that George doesn’t really love Lucy, but someone else.
SPOILERS > > >
So then there’s this couple, Liza and Gray, getting married, and the whole town comes together to build a house for them to live in. We also see that George has gambling and debt problems, because he dreams of the high life. Then the Indians show up and glower! Then Logan and Honey—who maintains he did not try to steal Logan’s money—have a surprisingly bloody brawl. Then the people who watched the fight are castigated for watching the fight.
Then there’s a trial in a saloon for some crime that George committed, and they’re going to sentence him to death. This charge is led by a very young Lloyd Bridges. Logan offers a lot of resistance, saying that they only have circumstantial evidence, and they should have absolute proof, because we’re talking about sentencing a guy to death here. They are not convinced. This whole trial is a huge deal. Then—Indian attack!
After we hear a woman refer to the Indians as “the red beasties,” we see Honey try to come in out of the wilderness to stay with the townspeople, but Logan forces him to stay out. He is soon slaughtered by the Indians. So Logan—who is so adamant about not condemning someone to death without solid evidence, is, in effect, condemning Honey to death without concrete evidence that it was him who tried to steal the money, but it’s different, because it was HIS money. I found this to be the most interesting part of the film. Then the Indian attack is over, Caroline breaks up with him, George is killed, which means that Lucy is now available… and since Logan is going to San Francisco, she decides to go along as well.
< < < SPOILERS END
Suffice to say I am not a huge fan of Westerns. The only reason I would watch one is like if Jacques Tourneur was directing one or—gulp! There are a few gorgeous shots and the whole thing is well-done, but if I didn’t know it was Tourneur going in, I never would have known, OR considered the direction to be anything special. This is a little different from most Westerns [as far as I know] in that it is this very thoughtful drama-driven piece, centered mostly around a moral problem. I suspect that this movie is probably a lot better than I think it is, it’s just that I’m not familiar with the whole Western movie idiom and don’t really care to be. So I suspect those who are looking for a thoughtful Western would be really into it, and this film has many fans and supporters. Me, I was amused by the first half, then just wanted it to be over.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If the idea of a pensive, thoughtful Western appeals to you.
