Bella y bandolera

And what an amazing cast too for a western which the topic reminds the early fifties Warner ones, starring Randolph Scott, speaking of mythic figures of western. A western that also looks like a Republic Pictures movie, maybe because of the presence of Forrest Tucker. But Scott Brady, Jack Lambert - very impressive - are also worth enjoying in this fast paced, colorful action western. George Brent was not useful of westerns and the result is rather good. But Jane Russel steals the show, because of her amazing performance. Trucolor has rarely been so great in a western, but that's my own opinion.

To begin with, it looks awful. A previous reviewer wrote that it is colorized. This is inaccurate. It's shot in some ghastly process known as TruColor that renders the blues and reds into a hideous aqua marine/pink tint so that it resembles some kind of a western mermaid flic. Second, the acting sucks. I generally like George Brent but here he is not so much phoning it in as, to employ a stereotypical Native American analogy appropriate to this racist film, smoke signaling it in. And Jane Russell has rarely been this bland. As for the story and screenplay it is overly complicated, with three men in love with the title character and two competing gangs of outlaws, and under written with only one of the three male pursuers given a personality (for the record, that'd be Forrest Tucker who delivers the only interesting performance). Add the above mentioned bigotry, with the white characters making fun of the lone native American (played by a Caucasian actor, natch) for his poor English, and set the whole thing in the mountains, pine forests and birch forests of...Oklahoma!...and you end up with one lousy, dumb ass movie. C minus.

PS...All my auteurist friends tell me that Alan Dwan is a great film maker. Based on this, which is admittedly the only Dwan western I've seen, the guy's not fit to hold Boetticher's view finder.

Jane Russell, in a modest performance, is cast as the West's most notorious female outlaw, a role previously played on screen by Gene Tierney in "Belle Starr" in 1941 and by Isabel Jewell in "Badman's Territory" in 1946... Director Allan Dwan could not take any interest into the unworthy storyline or the determinedly pedestrian cast... In addition, the harsh colors are no asset to the proceedings...

Belle Starr (Russell), an outlaw's widow has a misunderstanding with Scott Brady and the three outlaw Dalton Brothers... She joins with Forrest Tucker and Jack Lambert in a holdup rampage, gaining an even more unpleasant reputation... Later she returns to her old favorite place of resort disguised sufficiently so that no one recognizes her...

Because gambler-saloonkeeper George Brent has $50,000 in funds that Jane is longing to gain, she persuades him to take her as a partner at his saloon... As the new presiding mistress of the establishment, Jane finds time to sing "The Gilded Lily" and to understand that Brent is basically a good guy after all, even though he is determined on bringing the Dalton gang and Belle Starr to justice...

Montana Belle which probably at best started out to be an average B western product from RKO got to Howard Hughes's attention because it starred his protégé Jane Russell. This make believe account of the famous female outlaw Belle Starr got cut and recut and edited down to a mess of a story if you're looking for coherency. The film was made in 1948 and released in 1952 and that's always bad news.

Like Jane's first feature, The Outlaw, certain western legends who never in real life met up with each other, have dealings in the Hollywood west. In The Outlaw, it's the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid story rewritten to have Doc Holiday's participation. In Montana Belle, Jane as Belle Starr is rescued by Bob Dalton played by Scott Brady. But later when she mistakes a doublecross she forms her own gang with Forrest Tucker and Jack Lambert as a most stereotypical Indian.

In the meantime another guy with his hormones in a tizzy over Jane's titanic weaponry is George Brent, gentleman gambler and owner of the largest liquor&gaming establishment in Guthrie, Oklahoma. He's going to reform Jane and separate her from her disreputable outlaw companions. Nice work if you can get it.

You can't say too much about the story, Howard Hughes muddled this one, the same as he muddled, The Outlaw, Jet Pilot, and My Forbidden Past. One thing he didn't do for which we can thank the Deity is that he didn't cut Jane's number, The Gilded Lily from the film. It's definitely the best thing about Montana Belle.

But over at Republic they were shooting westerns with all their B stars that had more coherent plots than you see here.

I'm watching this on the Grit channel. It has been colorized, and the color is awful. And the beauty of a good black and white image seems to be gone too. Sad to ruin it this way.