This rock-solid Western is brisk, terse, and full of excellent performances..and for once, a Jimmy Stewart film doesn’t find its leading man stealing the show! Oh, Stewart, as the money-craving-yet-ultimately-noble bounty hunter Howie Kemp, is very good—a sequence in which a wounded Kemp begins raving in the middle of the night is particularly outstanding—but he’s a bit more inconsistent than usual here, occasionally seeming to be going through the motions. He’s vastly superior in It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington…even Destry Rides Again, a fellow Western from 14 years earlier. The real star here is the rugged Robert Ryan as Ben Vandergroat, an outlaw with a $5,000 reward on his head. With his curly locks and face full of stubble, Ryan perfectly balances boyish charm, which comes in handy for manipulating those weaker than he, and a cutthroat self-interest. Janet Leigh (as Ben’s faux-niece Lena), Millard Mitchell (as haggard Jessie Tate, the oldest of the bunch with dreams of living out his life in comfort), and Ralph Meeker (as Roy Anderson, a womanizer who was dishonorably discharged from the Army) all hold their own with aplomb. The chemistry throughout the crew is excellent, and a good thing too: aside from a brief encounter with a band of Indians, nobody else even makes a guest appearance! Vandergroat’s repeated attempts to set the partners—who have no history together—against each other as they attempt to turn him in and collect their $5,000 is extremely convincing: in the lawless plains with only horses as witnesses, there’s a real sense of foreboding, like anything is fair game. An edginess lingers over The Naked Spur, particularly at night. There’s a predictability to how things end up, particularly between what evolves as a triangle of love and loyalty between Howie, Ben and Lena, but it’s written well enough to overcome that. All in all, a very strong entry into a genre that can get repetitive at times, carried predominantly by its cast and the steady hand of Mann behind the camera.

74/100

I’m not a fan of screwballs in general, and I thought the only Hawks contribution to the genre that I’ve seen, Monkey Business, was pretty terrible. So it could be argued that I was setting myself up for disappointment by watching Bringing Up Baby in the first place, a film in which Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn bicker back-and-forth at breakneck speed over dinosaur bones, missing clothes, their priorities, and a leopard named Baby. Its reputation makes it almost required viewing, though, and seen through the prism of low expectations, I was actually pleasantly surprised. The script is light and charming, and I actually laughed out loud a few times. Grant plays the timid Dr. David Huxley with the proper restraint and tics. Hepburn, though…I’ve gotta resign myself to the fact that I’m just not a fan. Her voice grates on me, and her poofy hair and bone structure does as well. She has her moments, including in this and especially in George Cukor’s Holiday (where I did think she was perfectly cast), but I just don’t find her an appealing leading woman, though she is properly positioned as a mischievous lady rather than a sexpot in most of her films. Anyway, in Bringing Up Baby, her mannerisms and whining kept me from enjoying her mind games with Grant very much. There’s a good deal here to admire for those who are warmer towards both Hepburn and screwballs in general, though.

57/100

Billed in some circles as the original Before Sunrise, Vincente Minnelli’s The Clock doesn’t come particularly close to reaching those hallowed grounds, but its structure and conclusion certainly make the comparison understandable. Joe (Robert Walker of Strangers on a Train fame) is a soldier from small-town Minnesota on leave for two nights in Manhattan before returning to duty. Overwhelmed by the bright lights and skyscrapers, he begins nervously chatting it up with strangers, including Alice (Judy Garland), whose high heel mistakenly breaks when she trips over Joe’s foot. Though Alice initially finds Joe a bit grating, she gradually warms to his small-town naiveté, and takes him to the Museum of Natural History. So begins a rapid-fire courtship, which begins in earnest when the pair meet under the clock at the Astor Hotel, and continues throughout the night and following day, when they scramble to tie the knot before Joe’s ship sails. Like Before Sunrise, the protagonists in The Clock dominate the screen—though milkman Al Henry, played by James Gleason, has a larger role than any supporting actor in Linklater’s film—and much of the picture is spent watching Joe and Alice wander around a city, talking and getting to know each other. But while Walker and Garland are both pretty good individually, their chemistry never feels quite right…there’s always something slightly forced about their interactions (by contrast, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy slip into their roles effortlessly). And, though it can be chalked up to the era, The Clock is worlds more melodramatic, with a heavy score and instantaneous marriage wishes. There’s plenty to admire, though: the emotional bond between an awed small-town soldier and a tired-of-her-life city girl rings true,  and several sequences, such as Joe stroking Alice’s hair on Al’s milkman bus, are reminiscent of Before Sunrise‘s most sublime moments. The manner in which he discovers, and she rediscovers, New York City is quite beautiful. Minnelli’s direction isn’t invisible like Linklater’s, but he does take a step back and allow Walker and Garland to tote most of the load. Even if the duo isn’t up to the task in full, it’s the right decision: too much directorial interjection would have sapped any magic The Clock possesses away.

65/100

Here we have a Buster Keaton vessel that’s not helmed by Keaton himself, and it regrettably shows. James Horne’s College is a slapstick tale of the bookish, wildly clumsy high school scholar Ronald (Keaton) who takes up athletics in college to impress his infatuation Mary (Anne Cornwall) with disastrous—and sometimes humorous—results. It’s fairly easy to predict how this one will develop from early on: Ronald gives baseball, discus, javelin, and several other sports a twirl before stumbling into some success with Crew (it’s unlikely it would have been repeated). And, while Keaton’s vast talents are enough to keep College moderately enjoyable—and at just 66 minutes, it’s breezy enough—there’s a more methodical feel to the entire proceedings than we’re accustomed to from his best work, which has more of a freewheeling, if controlled, feel to it. Sherlock, Jr., Our Hospitality, The General, One Week: all have a frenetic energy to them, full of exciting physical stunts, but also a restraint in the romantic relationship that’s similar to Chaplin’s films. College feels a bit like a poor man’s version of Keaton’s pictures. It’s harmless, even amusing, but also completely forgettable, something that cannot be said of his finer works. The spark that makes Keaton such a dynamic filmmaker is missing under Horne’s direction, making College barely eke out a tepid recommendation.

55/100

This early Lang entry feels very much like a Dreyer or Bergman film, with its deeply faith-based structure and imagery: Death’s character, of course, conjures up Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal. Its powerful visuals, though, feel like Lang through and through (though the other two directors certainly could have done the same caliber of work)! Set in a small village, Destiny follows a young woman whose fiancé is snatched up by Death and held captive in a huge windowless tower erected on a plot of land that Death, disguised as a merchant, purchased in the local graveyard. Unwilling to go down without a fight, the damsel begs and pleads with Death to release him: showing the slightest hint of softness, he agrees to give her a chance to save her lover in three alternate worlds, and we’re whisked away to these three “stories of the light.”  They span the globe—Italy, China, and Persia—but alas, the frantic woman is unable to save her lover in any of them. She’s ultimately put to a moral test, when her chance at reuniting with her fiancé hinges on her ability to sacrifice a small child. Destiny touches on many themes—the universal pall that death can cast over the world, the many shapes that it can take, the resolve of the believer, and, as the title implies, the scope of fate and whether it can be altered. Lang would keep many of these themes in his back pocket for later works, though they usually lingered under the surface instead of taking such a prominent place in the spotlight. If it’s not quite as finely honed as his greatest works, it’s a terrific film that deserves mention among the upper-second tier of his filmography.

76/100