Feindschaft

Two prospectors come across an abandoned covered wagon - abandoned, that is, except for a baby. They have a disagreement, one stays to raise the baby and the other leaves, leaving his partner holding the bag, er, baby. Fast forward twenty-odd years, and the baby grows up to be William Boyd. The two prospectors are deadly enemies, and the grown-up baby tries to bring them together. Added bonus; the one who left now has a pretty daughter, a development not lost on the boy.

The story is fairly interesting and could have been more so if the movie hadn't been cannibalized and crucial scenes removed for other movies. Several reviewers have mentioned some scenes have been taken out and with them much of the excitement was drained from the film. In addition, the acting is slow and deliberate giving the movie an artificial, stilted feel and will catch modern audiences off balance. On the whole, though, it is worth a look due to the peculiar nature of the subject matter, and to see Clark Gable as a bad guy minus his customary charm, and William Boyd before he hit the bigtime as Hopalong Cassidy.

The star of this film is William Boyd, who made a bunch of westerns for Pathe in his time. As a matter of fact, on the opening credits,Clark Gable isn't even listed. Later, when they name the entire cast he is mentioned, but he comes way behind top rated Boyd and even now largely forgotten Helen Twelvetrees.

Two pioneers, Cash Holbrook and Jeff Cameron, are trekking across the desert when they find a deserted encampment with one survivor, a baby boy. The two fight over where to go next. Jeff Cameron wants to stay at the waterhole because "it is a grub stake" - all people driving cattle through will need this waterhole. Cash Holbrook wants to continue on to grazing land so he can raise cattle. He calls Jeff stubborn, and takes the baby too, daring Jeff to shoot because if he does, the baby will fall from Cash's arms and break his neck.

About twenty years pass and Cash has become a wealthy cattleman. Not being ambitious in the old west has cost Jeff. He married, but his wife died in this harsh environment, and all he has left is his daughter, Mary Ellen (Helen Twelvetrees). In all of this time Cash and Jeff have agitated one another - Jeff is still angry at Cash for stealing the baby boy that is now a man, refusing to let Cash's herd use his watering hold for any price and makes him go 27 miles around. One night it is coming to a showdown. Cash is going to stampede his cattle to Jeff's watering hole and show him who is boss. Jeff and his daughter are prepared to shoot it out to stop him. Along comes a stranger - Gable as Rance Brent, and with him instantly taken with Mary Ellen, Rance decides to back them up in the shootout.

Cash's adopted son comes out and stampedes the cattle away from the watering hole to prevent the deadly shootout. Cash is angry, and throws Bill (Bill Boyd) out. Bill went to mining school, discovers tungsten on Jeff's land, and enters into a mining partnership with his dad's sworn enemy.

Now this is where the movie is weird. Bill is acting Gandhi-like saying that he takes neither side, he just wants Cash and Jeff to be friends again and that neither is bad or wrong. I beg to disagree, because to me Cash IS a bad man up to this point. First he uses Bill the infant as a human shield, and when Bill keeps something from escalating into bloodshed, Cash throws that son out of his life.

In the meantime, Jeff and Bill's mine is yielding lots of ore, and out of nowhere - certainly not out of any dialogue that I could perceive - Bill and Mary Ellen are in love. Meanwhile somebody is sniping at the drivers who are taking the ore into town to the railroad, and then some dynamite disappears and the mine is blown to smithereens. Everybody on Jeff's place blames Cash, and it is up to Bill to stop another potential showdown and shootout. I'll let you watch and find out what happens.

This film has absolutely no background music, which was common in early films, and much of the dialogue is very pedestrian. However, it is a good chance to see Gable in his first sound film, and although he hardly utters a word, you can see the beginning of "that Gable style".

The only thing I can say after watching this movie is that I saw some history. This movie is over 90-years-old as of today and it looked it. The picture quality and the sound were a tad above awful and the acting was not far behind. Cinematic issues aside, this movie had a very simplistic plot and I still had a hard time following it. It was too hard to make out the faces to know who was who and who did what.

Two traveling companions, Cash Holbrook (William Boyd) and Jeff Cameron (J. Farrell MacDonald), found an abandoned baby boy. What do you think their next course of action was? If you said locate a family for him then you're wrong. They got into a lifelong feud over the boy. They split right then and there over who should raise the boy and Cash Holbrook was the victor in that respect. He raised him and named him Bill Holbrook (William Boyd).

Years later, when Bill was an adult, we got to see what became of Bill and the two men. Cash was the wealthy owner of a cattle company while Jeff was a struggling rancher who owned the rights to a local watering hole. Jeff's watering hole was the only thing Cash wanted of his.

Bill would eventually split from his father and go work for Jeff. Actually, Cash kicked his adopted son out of the house which prompted Bill to go work for Jeff. Why was Bill run off by his pa? Bill had the audacity to suggest that Cash work with Jeff to help mine some tungsten on Jeff's land. For such a blasphemous suggestion Cash ran off his beloved adopted son.

Would Jeff and Cash ever become friends again? Would Bill ever reunite with his adoptive father? It wasn't very compelling stuff, but what else were you going to watch in 1931?

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It's a different kind of western, with little action, all right, but it has a good plot and excellent performances, especially from the veterans William Farnum (Cash) and J. Farrel MacDonald (Jeff). Their interpretation of two friends turned into enemies because of a baby boy they found in the desert is wonderful. Helen Twelvetrees (Mary Ellen) is a flesh and blood Betty Boop and shows with her faces the transition from silent film heroines to those of the sound era. The plot has a simple, but coherent structure that leads to a happy ending. In the whole, "The Painted Desert" has not much of action but it's an enjoyable western movie to watch.

The Painted Desert is best remembered as Clark Gable's first substantial role for good reason. The future King of Hollywood's natural, dynamic style of acting stands out in this extremely creaky early talkie Western. In an unrewarding heavy role Gable speaks in his trademark relaxed, cocky manner, while other, more experienced actors such as J. Farrell MacDonald, early silent era star William Farnum, and a stiff-as-a-board Bill Boyd deliver their lines one distinctly enunciated word at a time as if speaking toward a microphone hidden in a cactus. Admittedly Boyd wasn't much of an actor in spite of his good looks and sunny disposition, but MacDonald and Farnum were. Blame an under-financed sound department and uninspired direction by Howard Higgins, who also co-wrote the murky script for this lumbering oater. Those who would excuse the stiff direction and acting as caused by unavoidable problems with early sound equipment should first take a look at Joseph Von Sternberg's Morocco (1930), released the year before The Painted Desert, but showing a marvelously sophisticated and artistically pleasing use of sound. Other than Gable, the only other actors who managed to rise above the restraints of the over-compensating sound technicians and Higgin's stodgy direction were gorgeous leading lady Helen Twelvetrees and Boyd's beautiful white horse.

That's not to say that The Painted Desert doesn't have some good points -- especially for die-hard Western fans. Most of the low, low budget must have been spent carting the actors, crew, and equipment around several scenic Arizona locations, including the sure-enough Painted Desert. Sets by art director Carrol Clark and costumes by Gwen Wakeling were well turned out and authentic looking. Oldblackandwhite, who is one of the vanishing breed of Texans still preferring the Stetson style to the ubiquitous Beaver Cleaver ball cap, wishes he could find the hatter Ms. Wakeling used for this picture. The sets and costumes, along with a folksy, real-to-life dialog, as plodding as the delivery was, gave the movie an authentically quaint, rustic 19th century ambiance missing in many a better produced Western.

Best of all, and almost worth the price of a DVD -- a cheap one anyway -- was having a tense, climactic, sixgun showdown between two elderly gentlemen! But there wasn't much else to get excited about in The Painted Desert. Mainly for curiosity seekers, dedicated Clark Gable fans, fanatical Western aficionados, and the usual desperate insomniacs. Neither the best nor the worst from Old Hollywood's Classic Era.