Feuer am Horizont

A nice picture indeed. It is an epic western, powerful and straightforward at the same time, a fine adaptation of a Saturday Evening Post Novel located at Portland area, Oregon, in 1856. It has got a good casting including Hoagy Carmichael playing his own songs (one of them, Buttermilk Sky, became a big hit). The colored photography in Technicolor is wonderful. An authentic gift for the eyes. The Skinner's music is excellent, the natural stage beautiful, the action grand. It tell us about the pioneer fight between themselves and against the Indian. If you like western movies, do not miss this one. If you do not, here is a good chance to start knowing healthy and amusing movies. If you declare yourself satisfied with it, as I hope, I do recommend another Jacques Tourneur western, Wichita (1955), with Joel McCrea and Vera Miles. You will be not disappointed. 7/10

"Canyon Passage" though advertised as a western, plays more like a pioneer frontier drama with most of the characters looking like miners or loggers rather than the traditional Hollywood cowboys. To its credit and that of Director Jacques Tourneur, the set pieces look authentic and you believe that you are in the Oregon wilderness of the 1850s.

Logan Stewart (Dana Andrews) runs a freight business out of the small settlement of Jacksonville. The story opens with Stewart escorting Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward), the fiancé of his friend local banker George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), back from San Fransico. Therin you have the eternal triangle even though Stewart is to marry Caroline Marsh (Paricia Roc) who is living with the family of Ben Dance (Andy Devine).

Camrose however, has a gambling problem. He is running up a large amount of IOUs with gambler Jack Lestrade (Onslow Stevens). Stewart bales him out with the promise that he will quit gambling. Town bully Bragg (Ward Bond) has it in for Stewart. They brawl in the local saloon.

Camrose meanwhile, has continued to gamble. To cover his losses, he is stealing gold from the deposits left on deposit with him. One of the miners returns unexpectedly and Camrose murders him to keep his secret. When Stewart leaves town, Lastrade sets Bragg after him without success. In the forest, Bragg murders a young Indian maiden which starts an Indian war and....................................

Dana Andrews to me, never made a convincing western hero. His fight with Bond is totally unbelievable as the slightly built Andrews bests the hulking Bond. Bond by the way, turns in an excellent performance as the brutal and lustful Bragg. Susan Hayward is beautiful with her res hair afire in glorious Technicolor. Donlevy, also excellent, plays Camrose not as a villain but as a man caught by the evils of his addiction to gambling.

Others in the cast include Lloyd Bridges as Johnny Steele a robust young minor and Hoagy Carmichael as wandering minstrel Hi Linnet (who among others sings his classic "Ole Buttermilk Sky". Andy Devine's two sons Ted and Danny play his sons in the film. Director Tourneur had worked with the legendary producer, Val Lewton earlier in the 40s.

A beautifully photographed film with authentic looking set pieces.

A bland, generic title disguises a sublime little Western which, despite being one of a string of prestige genre pictures shot in color around the same time – like DUEL IN THE SUN (1946) and California (1946; included in Volume 2 of Universal’s “Classic Western Round-Up” series) – only in recent years did its reputation soar considerably through the championing of renowned admirers like Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Rosenbaum. It is also important in that it marked Jacques Tourneur’s first film in color and for being the first of several Westerns he would go on to helm, the most distinguished of which was the black-and-white STARS IN MY CROWN (1950) with Joel McCrea.

All the familiar Western ingredients are present (love triangles, crooked bankers, bar-room brawls, Indian attacks, impromptu court hearings turning into lynch mobs) but which are literally rendered fresh once more by impeccable handling and production values – the beautiful color photography (courtesy of color lighting expert, Edward Cronjager), skillful music accompaniment (composer Frank Skinner) and a splendid cast who rise up to the occasion of breathing life into their three dimensional characters: Dana Andrews’ restless hero, Brian Donlevy’s likable rogue, Susan Hayward’s feisty heroine, Ward Bond’s mean town-bully, Hoagy Carmichael’s balladeer-cum-cynical observer, etc. Besides providing notable roles also for Lloyd Bridges (as a hot-headed miner), Stanley Ridges (as Hayward’s lawyer father), Onslow Stevens (as a tubercular conman) and Rose Hobart (as Ridges’ enigmatic, exotic wife), screenwriter Ernest Pascal – working from material originally published by noted Western writer Ernest Haycox – adds the nice touch of introducing English émigrés (Patricia Roc and Halliwell Hobbes) into this community, which further aids the film in standing out from the crowd of similar fare.

CANYON PASSAGE is undoubtedly one of the most vivid portrayals of pioneer life in the Old West ever brought to the screen, certainly on a par with John Ford’s DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939) but arguably working on a greater level of sophistication: for one thing, the relationships between the characters are more complex in nature than they at first appear (practically every major character is engaged to marry someone but is truly in love with somebody else) and the fact that Tourneur boldly chooses to have some of the film’s major events take place off-screen – Donlevy’s killing of the miner whose money he has been pilfering (which leads to the trial in the bar), Ward Bond’s slaying of the Indian girl (which leads to the climactic Indian attack), Andy Devine’s death at the hands of the Indians, Donlevy’s own ‘execution’ by the villagers, etc. – also hints that we are watching is indeed something quite special.

Director Jacques Tourneur and leading man Dana Andrews went on to collaborate on two more films a decade later – the superlative occult chiller, NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957; which is apparently getting a fully-loaded release on R2 DVD later on this year) and the obscure Cold War thriller, THE FEARMAKERS (1958). One final note about CANYON PASSAGE: multi-talented Hoagy Carmichael composed and sang four songs for the film – one of which, “Ole Buttermilk Sky”, became a hit tune and was, sadly, also the film’s sole Academy Award nomination!

I never did think of "Canyon Passage" as a western -- more like a frontier-homesteader movie, but it still had the adventure and drama that makes a fine film. I agree with those that said there is something mysteriously appealing about this film, as I have remembered it since it came out in 1946 when so many other movies have long faded from memory. Ward Bond was not known for playing villains, and this performance was truly scary and sinister. Lloyd Bridges plays the friendly good guy that characterized his roles, and Dana Andrews is perfectly cast as the leader. The film is rather hard to find, and I am hoping a DVD will one day be available. It is well worth watching and collecting.

Canyon Passage (1946)

This is a tale with a not so subtle moral message--the man who is modest, just, and hardworking is the better man. And he'll get the sassy girl, the one who is currently attached to the gambling big spender who is the good man's friend and opposite. Dana Andrews plays the virtuous leading man perfectly--he's strong without being a tough or outrageous strong man (like John Wayne) and he's also kind, with a smile the shoots off his sombre face like a flash of light. That's he's popular with women is no surprise, but he's committed most of all to being a successful businessman, and a restless one, roving from outpost to outpost in beautiful Oregon.

His counterpart is the likable but flawed Brian Donlevy, who is really the perfect choice here because he isn't the kind of paradigm we will quite fall in love with. The woman who steals the show is Susan Hayward. And then there is Hoagy Carmichael, playing a role he often plays, the musician wise man who sees everything and understands it before anyone else. It's a great group, supported by hundreds of others (yes--an ambitious film) and directed with a subtle, fast touch by the unsung great, Jacques Tourneur.

So, in short, "Canyon Passage" was surprise and a total pleasure. I couldn't take my eyes off of the photography and the rich color, good pure Technicolor with the redoubtable Natalie Kalmus coordinating. The plot is strong, and Andrews is terrific in scene after scene. Westerns are sometimes difficult to see from the 21st Century without putting it into some history of film context, but this one works as a drama, pure and simple, a drama set out west in the late 1800s. The movie is also unique in being set in the lush mountains near Portland, Oregon. The scenery is gorgeous in the big sense, but every small scene is lush and forested and rainy--almost the opposite of that dry, open, blue sky norma in a "Western" strictly speaking. Interiors in golden lamplight lead to exteriors of dripping greens and blues, or the delicate grays of night.

Even the music is great, especially the lighthearted and clever songs by Carmichael. (The great Frank Skinner handled the rest of the score.) Edward Cronjager is one of the dozen great cinematographers of classic Hollywood as it moved into color, and in this you can see why. It's a complex film, visually, and it never lets up. Especially the night scenes (where the lights and sets could be controlled perfectly) are vivid and have that controlled beauty of great studio (and location) Hollywood. If any of these elements sound good, I wouldn't miss this film.