Frank Patch - Deine Stunden sind gezählt

This revisionist western talks about the inevitable unfolding after many years. About 20 years, of the accumulation of injustice, immorality in Cottownwood Springs, Texas, at the turn of the 19th and 20th century! There is almost no positive characters in the described events and main characters. Among the worst, in addition to the violent, marshal Frank Patch (convincingly played by Richard Widmark), is the vile Lester Locke (played by Carroll O'Connor), one of the initiators of the conspiracy against Marshal F. Patch. Marshal Patch has mostly fallen into a hopeless life trap with his reckless actions. Illegally, in delicate situations he decides how he "thinks" it is right. So he once let, the killer from behind, Andrew Oxley (played solidly by Kent Smith), go unpunished in order for the latter to raise the victim's son Will Oxley. BTW , marshal F. Patch was a gunfighter until he was hired 20 years ago by the leaders of Cottownwood Springs. In principle the gunfighter is badly character, who often resolve ordinary conflicts outside the law or per wild west law - by showdown. Ordinary people rightly despised them. Most of the leaders of the place have their dishonorable secrets that marshal Patch mostly knows about.

Although for some it is an unusual ending that marshal Patch experienced (for some, the very scene of the clay pigeon in which Patch found himself is debatable), it did not surprise me. I think the intention of the main authors of the film was to show that local cowardly leaders are capable of organizing illegally the brutal removal of marshals.

Famous directors Robert Totten and Don Siegel as well as sciwriters: Joseph Calvelli (screenplay), Lewis B. Patten (novel) deserve praise for this above-average film.

Cinematography by Andrew Jackson) i Art Direction by Alexander Golitzen, Howard E. Johnson and Set Decoration by Sandy Grace, John McCarthy Jr. are well done - although there is one visible mistake: decorated barn through which local leaders pass!

Music by Oliver Nelson is satisfying.

R. Widmark, with his characteristic cynical, repulsive style, played very well the character of the antipathetic, arrogant, self-confident, bad marshal F. Patch. This role suited him like the ace on ten!

There's the solid acting of Lena Horne, once a famous African-American entertainer, in the role of Claire Quintan. She is the girl F. Patch in the film. Both the girl from the brothel and hers owner.

Carroll O'Connor (as Lester Locke) convincingly plays the character of a cunning conspirator against F. Patch.

Of the other famous actors, John Saxon stands out, albeit less on screen, as Lou Trinidad - convincing as a marshal in a nearby town. He is an acquaintance of F. Patch and who correctly advises him to leave Cottownwood Springs - to give up position of the marshal. Seeing that things have gone too far - unfavorably, he makes a correct proposal. Patch has no other way out if he wants to save his head!

This maybe the greatest film ever directed by the elusive Allen Smithee whose name comes up on the credits of this and many other films that directors can't or don't want to claim credit for a variety of reasons. Robert Totten and Don Siegel directed it and neither wanted credit for their own reasons. So unlike Come and Get It where both Howard Hawks and William Wyler directed it and both are listed, this one was credited to the elusive Mr. Smithee, that pseudonym invented by Hollywood for one who doesn't want the credit.

Usually they don't want the credit because it's a stinkeroo. But here this is a good western about an aging town marshal whose time as come and gone and won't see it.

Richard Widmark is that marshal and the local bordello madam, Lena Horne is his girlfriend or one of them. The film opens with an irate husband looking to gun him down played by Jimmy Lydon. Of course he's no match for the lawman and this spurs the town council to look for a way to finally be rid of him. The town elders are such veterans as Larry Gates, Morgan Woodward, David Opatoshu, Dub Taylor, and Kent Smith.

It becomes pretty obvious that Widmark won't take the hint and they start running out of options. For one of them it ends in tragedy.

Carroll O'Connor plays the most interesting role here, a far cry from Archie Bunker. He owns one of the saloons and his reasons are more typical, law and order has been taking away business for too long. O'Connor is a slime ball who first tries to use others to do his dirty work.

The others are the ones who brought Widmark to town in the first place, but now Widmark is a law unto himself. He has his own way of interpreting what needs to be done and the skill with a weapon to enforce it.

As you can imagine it's a pretty bloody picture, but a great lesson to be learned when you allow a man on horseback to run things.

I'm imagining though, millions of years from now; Aliens excavating our planet and through the efforts of folks like the American Film Institute come across the collected works of Allen Smithee. In their textbooks it's going to read that Smithee was a mediocre talent of whom little is known, but this one film is a great one amongst a lot of mediocrity.

"Death of a gunfighter" belongs to the crepuscular western genre which would become prominent in the seventies with such works as "the shootist" .The hero (masterfully played by Richard Widmark as brilliant as ever) is definitely a man of the past ;twenty years go ,when he began his job of a marshal ,the street was not safe and the way of the gun was the only one .Now,the town longs for respectability,for a "modern" Police .The unsung hero has not realized that history is a jet plane : there are photographs in the rooms and the first automobiles (like in Sam Peckinpah's " ballad of Cable Hogue") will pretty soon leave the horse-drawn carriages far behind .

The title speaks for itself :the marshal's fate is sealed as soon the movie begins .The old people are blasé or tired .there are two young lads ,one of them an orphan is excited by his employer's daughter ,and although she throws him a line twice,he can't make up his mind to go all the way;the other one ,after a tragic loss,thinks he can take laws in his hands and become a gunfighter like his enemy.

The atmosphere of the movie is gloomy : it begins with a woman in mourning and ends the same way.A priest is saying prayers in the saloon as a man is dying.A wedding is to take place after a funeral.This is not your average action-packed western ,it looks like a dirge

A Western that shows how the "West growed itself up and got itself civilized".Richard Widmark gives what is probably his last great performance as a Sheriff whose way a doing things don't sit right with the "powers-that-be" personified by town merchant Carrol O Conner.This movie ,like Invitaion to a Gunfighter made some years before it reveals just how gutless and desperate the power-brokers are when there's no one to do their bidding.The film still holds up (even with the much mentioned two directors)though it has that "back-lot"look to most of it.John Saxon has a brief but memorable piece of work in this must see film for western fans or good movie fans.

Someone by the name of Joseph Calvelli is credited with the screenplay of DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER - I know him not from the proverbial bar of soap, and on the strength of the illogical, awful script, I hope not to see his name again.

Director Alan Smithee is in fact bipolar: he is the name used by Directors Don Siegel - whom I admire very much - and Robert Totten, whose film GUNSMOKE I watched so long ago that I do not have a firm opinion on its merits anymore.

With a bipolar Alan Smithee and a substandard script writer, things inevitavly go south with this production and Andrew Jackson's pedestrian cinematography does not function as Deus Ex Machina either. Sadly, those failures pull the rug from under the feet of the acting ensemble.

Richard Widmark posts his trademark quality performance as the trigger happy Marshall Patch (a fitting name, the unfortunate lawman is going through a bad patch despite his basic decency); capably assisted by main villain Carroll O'Connor (then famous for his comic TV show, ARCHIE BUNKER'S PLACE), suicidal Kent Smith, and David Opatoshu as leader of the city elders trying not just to oust but to actually kill Widmark.

I have always liked Don Siegel for his respet of cause and efffect in the plot, but here he must have allowed the other part of Alan Smithee to smite his ass, and the final scenes of a moribund Widmark marrying Lena Horne and staggering about the town with a shot in the leg and another in his left shoulder just reek of impossibility. 6/10 is actually generous, as I really like Widmark and Siegel.