Le Passage du canyon

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" 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.

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.

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!

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.