NFR Project: 'The Tall T' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “The Tall T”

Dir: Budd Boetticher

Scr: Burt Kennedy

Pho: Charles Lawton Jr.

Ed: Al Clark

Premiere: April 2, 1957

78 min.

Much as actor Jimmy Stewart was united with director Anthony Mann on a series of five Westerns from 1950 to 1955, so it was with Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher. This collaboration concocted a set of seven exemplary Westerns between 1956 and 1960 that remain essential viewing.

All but one of the Scott-Boetticher films were penned by Burt Kennedy, who would go on to become an illustrious Western writer/director in his own right. This was Kennedy’s second Western, after the success of Seven Men from Now (1956), the first Boetticher/Kennedy/Scott collaboration.

This set of films, which became known as the “Ranown cycle,” explored all the classic themes of the Western. None was an “A-list” production; these are genre pictures meant to beguile a dedicated audience. Each featured Scott as a upright, terse cowpoke who’s on the side of right. In each film, he overcomes the usual obstacles and vanquishes the always-charming, well-spoken villain.

What makes these films distinctive is how good the writing is, and how smart Boetticher and company are in delineating it. The movies are set in the desert scrubland, out on the unforgiving frontier, where man and beast are put to the test. They are proving grounds for morality.

In this landscape, decisions have often-deadly consequences. These movies have a firm grasp of right and wrong, and all of them illustrate a basic faith in the individual and the human conscience. Scott is no anti-hero. These are traditional Westerns, but here the plot plays out like a modern and monumental mythology.

Here, Scott plays Brennan, a rancher who hitches a ride on a passing coach. The coach is ambushed by bandits, who decide to hold the newly married, affluent couple inside hostage. The witty leader of the bandit trio, Usher (Richard Boone) keeps Scott around, seemingly for laughs . . . but actually because of the sympathy he feels with him. In a word, sentimental, his fatal undoing.

The heroine (Maureen O’Sullivan) is abandoned by her cowardly husband, who is slaughtered by bandit Chink (the great Henry Silva!). The woman and Brennan are watched over by Chink and Billy Jack (Skip Homeier), who manage to slay them and then sset up a showdown with Usher himself. It’s a battle for survival, as both captives know that as soon as the ransom is paid, they’re dead.

Boetticher serves the screenplay with efficient affection, creating memorably staged scenes, brining a new and captivating insight to the vastly overplayed requirements of the genre. There is a freshness of gaze here. Scott, 58 at the time, is a lean, well-lined presence – the spirit of the Old West come to life.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: What’s Opera, Doc?