If not for Ernest Laszlo's competent photography, "Valerie" would be a complete fiasco, exploiting the points-of-view concept of "Rashomon" minus any humanistic insights. In the first scene, a Civil War veteran, 40-year-old rancher John Garth (Sterling Hayden), is arrested for shooting his 26-year-old wife Valerie (Anita Ekberg) and her parents. She survives; they don't.
The trial commences with testimony which is shown in flashbacks. We start with Garth's point of view, in which Valerie is a wine-swilling gold-digger who, once she finds out he is still paying off his father's debts, shuns him in favor of playing footsie with his brother Herb (Peter Walker) and seducing the local padre, Reverend Blake (Anthony Steel), whose child she is carrying when Garth shoots her.
Testifying from a bed in the infirmary, Valerie claims to be an innocent victim. Her parents, recent immigrants, persuaded her to marry Garth, who mistreated her, pouring liquor down her throat before taking her to bed, and striking her. In her distress, she sought only rapport with her brother-in-law and only counsel from the handsome Rev. Blake, who eventually rescued her and returned her to her parents' homestead, where Garth found and shot them.
Who's telling the truth? Who cares.
Lurid marketing focused on Ekberg's upper assets, including whorls of blond hair, and I was rather amazed none of the buttons popped off her taut blouses and bodices, which are typical of the total lack of subtlety in the entire melodrama. Ekberg plays her part and displays her parts well enough, but Sterling Hayden breaks his own personal record for stiff acting.
The whole debacle was cheaply filmed at the Iverson Ranch in California, the location of a raft of TV westerns from "The Lone Ranger" to solid fare like "Gunsmoke" and "Bonanza," any episode of which is better than "Valerie."
