Feuer am Horizont

I was lucky enough to buy a British DVD copy of this little gem - an excellent transfer. Mostly set in the gold-mining town of Jacksonville, Oregon, it's a Technicolor western with a great story, fascinating characters, excellent acting, lovely music, beautiful art direction, costumes and fabulous outdoor scenery. Right from the opening, you get a good feeling of what it was like in Oregon, how people lived and thought; and we're quickly plunged into their lives. Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward are at their best and most beautiful, photographed by Edward Cronjager. Andrews, a scout, turned trader, is not his usual taciturn hero. There's a lightness to him. Susan Hayward's cheeky independence is very appealing, and she looks particularly fresh and beautiful. Patricia Roc, makes her USA movie debut as Dana Andrew's maidenly sweetheart, and Ward Bond is a really scary villain. His menace from his first appearance is palpable I've never seen him photographed to such unnerving effect. Brian Donlevy plays a likable banker, who has a gambling problem, and is accused of murder. Andrews helps him escape a lynch mob, but I'll give no more away. There's even time for a few songs from local minstrel, Hoagy Carmichael. This is director Jacques Tourneur's first western and it seems to me that he brings a very European eye to the production - the overall colouring is ravishing.

Dana Andrews is a merchant/entrepreneur on the Oregon frontier during its period of pioneer settlement in the 1840s. He's got two women interested in him, Susan Hayward and Patricia Roc, a weak business partner in Brian Donlevy who's addicted to gambling and a big and mean man played by Ward Bond who wants to kill him. And of course there are the ever present Indians around.

Canyon Passage is directed by French expatriate director Jacques Tourneur and I have to say Tourneur did a good job in immersing himself in American frontier culture. I don't think John Ford could have done better with the story, the cast, and the superb outdoor photography that puts those B studio westerns to shame.

Patricia Roc who was a big name in Great Britain made a couple of American films at this time. Until the boundary was finally fixed at the 49th parallel, British settlers would not have been uncommon in the Oregon territory so the casting is not as strange as one might normally think. Ms. Roc didn't make much of an impression on American audiences and she was back in Great Britain shortly thereafter. Not too many British players of the period could boast a western in their credits though.

Susan Hayward is strangely subdued in this film. She looks a bit out of place in this one. She's far better suited to an urban setting. Later on she did films like Untamed and Garden of Evil, but far more of her fiery personality was shown in those roles than in Canyon Passage.

Ward Bond is the villain here, a misanthropic loner of a man, brooding and strange. I guess you can best compare his role to that of Judd Fry in Oklahoma. Has the same kind of problems relating to people, especially those of the opposite sex, that Judd does. It's one of Bond's two or three best performances on screen.

The popularity of Canyon Passage was helped in large measure to the Hoagy Carmichael-Jack Brooks ballad Ole Buttermilk Sky which Hoagy also performed in the film. It was a big hit that year both for Hoagy himself and others who recorded it. Carmichael was an amazing triple talent in the entertainment field as composer, actor, and singer of his own and other's songs. His best known movie parts besides Canyon Passage would be in Young Man With a Horn and The Best Years of Our Lives.

Tourneur keeps the film moving at a steady pace and gets quite a lot crammed into the 90+ minutes of the film. Western fans who like their films slow and easy will take to this one.

Canyon Passage is directed by Jacques Tourneur and is adapted by Ernest Pascal from the novel written by Ernest Haycox. It stars Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Ward Bond, Susan Hayward, Lloyd Bridges & Patricia Roc. In support is Hoagy Carmichael who offers up ditties such as the Oscar Nominated "Ole Buttermilk Sky". Music is by Frank Skinner and cinematography by Edward Cronjager.

More famed for his moody black & white pieces (a year later he would craft one of film noir's best pics in Out of the Past), Canyon Passage finds Tourneur operating in glorious Technicolor on Western landscapes, the result of which is as gorgeous as it is thematically sizzling. The story follows Andrews' Logan Stuart, a former scout turned store & freight owner who has landed in Jacksonsville, Oregon. Also residing here is the girl he is courting, Caroline Marsh (Roc) and his friend George Camrose (Donlevy) who plans to marry Lucy Overmire (Hayward). However, there are problems afoot as George has a serious gambling problem, one that will send this tiny town into a vortex of turmoil. Affairs of the heart also come under great pressure, and to cap it all off, the Indians are on the warpath after the brutish Honey Bragg (Bond) kills an innocent Indian girl.

The first thing that is so striking about Canyon Passage is the town of Jacksonville itself, this is a vastly different Western town to the ones we are used to seeing. Built in a sloping canyon that helps to pump up the off kilter feeling that breathes within the picture, it's also green, very green, but in a most visually interesting way. The greenery and red flowers give a sense of harmony, a sneaky way of diverting the viewer from the smouldering narrative, for we find that Tourneur is delighting in not only painting a pretty picture that belies the trouble bubbling under the surface of this apparent place of prosperity, but he's also revelling in using various camera shots to embody the unfolding story and the characterisations of the principals. This really is a film that begs to be revisited a number of times, for then you find with each viewing comes something new to appraise, to pore over to see just why Tourneur did something in particular. The host of characters are varied and have meaning, each given impetus by the uniformly strong cast - the latter of which is also a testament to the supreme direction from the Parisian maestro.

I honestly feel that if this was a John Ford film it would be far better known & appraised accordingly. At time of writing this review it's still something of an under seen and vastly under rated Western, and this in spite of it garnering praise over the last decade or so from some big hitters in the directing and film critic circles. Cronjager's Technicolor photography is rich and piercing, where Tourneur and himself expertly utilise the Diamond Lake and Umpqua National Forest exteriors to expand mood of the story. Skinner's score is excellent, as is Carmichael's (wonderfully creepy characterisation) musical input, while the costuming is top dollar. Now widely available on DVD, there's hope that more people will seek this out. With the number of finely drawn sub-plots, and the wonderful visual delights and directorial tricks, Canyon Passage is essential viewing for Western and Tourneur purists. For sure this is a film that rewards more with each viewing, so just keep your eyes and ears firmly on alert and enjoy. 9/10

Tourneur's first Western is yet another of the director's unjustly misunderstood works. What at first appears to be vague or meandering tale is in fact an infinitely personal work with a subtle direction. Of all Tourneur pictures I have seen, "Canyon Passage" is the most endlessly fascinating. Here is a movie rich with pictorial beauty and simplicity, yet every time I watch it, I discover new things. The meaning often shifts and turns, revealing new depths, emotions, insights. You will probably not going to notice its emotional richness if you have just seen it once.

When I first saw "Canyon Passage", I was a little puzzled by it, especially the relationship between Dana Andrews' Logan and Brian Donlevy's George, but successive viewings and Chris Fujiwara's book were extremely helpful. "Canyon Passage" is far from a typical or ordinary Western, even though it concerns with theme of the affirmation of the American Myth or the cohesion of community. Most of the events occur off screen, the dialogue alludes to previous events that took place before the movie starts, the Hoagy Carmichael songs are unforgettable and become more timeless with each viewing. The three separate songs lyricize the narrative much like the timeless unifying song in Tourneur's masterful "Stars in My Crown"(1950).

Please give it another chance. It helps a bit if you revisit it from time to time to appreciate its neverending beauty and subtlety.

Colorful and vivid, Canyon Passage is crammed full of plots and subplots. It starts out looking like a family movie about pioneers in Oregon, but develops into a complex story with several key characters, the most important being Logan Stewart (Dana Andrews) a mule train outfitter whose business partner is compulsive gambler George Camrose (Brian Donlevy). Set mostly in a mining town, with settlers clearing the adjacent land for farms and wary native Americans watching their territory disappearing, it is a story that weaves together hit rich quick miners, gambling, pioneering, and a significant romance that brews between Camrose's girl Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward) and Stewart, with Camrose piling on gambling debts and pilfering the till to pay them off. The precarious peace with the Indians is strained by the building of more and more cabins, and when it finally breaks there is a series of ruthless attacks on the settlers that are uncommonly brutal for a film made in 1946. With Ward Bond as mean and sadistic Honey Bragg, and Lloyd Bridges as gambling miner Johnny Steele, and Hoagy Carmichael as minstrel/philosopher Hi Linnet, this rather unknown western by Jacques Tournier, known more for Out of the Past and Cat People is a real departure from the Wayne/Ford/Hawks pictures of this era.