Valerie

For a western, this film couldn't be more original. Well-to-do emigrants from Vienna settle in the west to make a new beginning in life. We never learn what they left in Vienna or anything about their background, but they are well off, and with their European continental education they feel obliged to have their daughter married well including a generous dowry - $15,000, which is a vast sum in the Wild West. Their great mistake is that they have no idea of what America and its western mentality is about.

Anita Ekberg is the beautiful daughter, and her parents accept her first suitor, who is Sterling Hayden, without knowing anything about him except that he has vast riches and lands. So he appears as the perfect match for their daughter.

The film opens up by Sterling Hayden making a visit and gunning down three people, one of them being his wife. Not until late in the film we learn who the other two victims are. Anita Ekberg survives, which was not according to Sterling Hayden's plan.

The case is that he was a major in the civil war and branded and damaged for life by his experiences of the inhumanities, atrocities and brutalities of a civil war. Of course, neither Anita Ekberg nor her parents have any idea of this until it becomes too late.

She has two friends, though, who gradually get initiated in the difficult situation she has found herself stranded in, one of them is Sterling Hayden's younger brother, who knows everything too well, and the other is Anthony Steel, a reverend who comes to town in time for the final act and reluctantly gets involved in a hopeless case history.

The acting is excellent throughout, Sterling Hayden's acting is among his best, you have never seen Anita Ekberg exposed and vulnerable like this, and Anthony Steel is the gentleman of the play. Peter Walker plays the brother, who has been more or less muzzled all his life, with admirable restraint, but grows the stronger character for the necessity of always having been put down.

In brief, it's one of the best psychological thrillers ever made for a western.

This film is awful. Shouldn't be called a western. Ekberg and Hayden are atrocious. Dumb story line and could't wait for it to be over. Ugh.

"Valerie" is a movie that only gets better the more you watch of the film. Up until the last 15 minutes or so, I wasn't that impressed with the story (or Miss Ekberg's acting) but it all got very exciting towars teh end...making it well worth seeing.

The story begins with a mass murder. John Garth (Sterling Hayden) leaves a home after a shooting which left three people dead and his wife shot and close to death. The film shows both his account and hers of the events leading up to the shooting...a shooting he claims was in self defense. What really happened?

In some ways, this story is like the classic Japanese film "Rashomon", though instead of three viewpoints you have two...and teasing apart what REALLY happened is a bit easier in "Valerie". It's a simpler story...but still well done. As I mentioned above, my only quibble was some of Ekberg's acting....it often wasn't great and her accent was a bit thick, so, if possible, watch with captions.

I've seen another movie entitled "Valerie" but it was a bit different from movie I saw last with same actors, and actress! The story was similar in that the husband thought his wife was cheating on him with his brother and with their church pastor. I remember events being different how Sterling Hayden told Valerie that he paid her parents for her hand, not they paid him. Her parents didn't have a lot of money. True that she didn't love him cause she was courting both his brother outright, and the pastor on the sneak. I'm NOT understanding why if he had lots of valuable land then why would he accept money from her parents selling Valerie to him?!? He wasn't a poor man! I know this is weird but I know I watched two different versions of this movie at different times. The first time I watched movie I DIDN'T catch it from the beginning but saw enough to remember movie. The second one I saw last night was a bit different. The same storyline and characters but the details were a but different.😒🤔

Like in "the iron sheriff" ,which also features Hayden as the lead,the movie begins when many important events happened .

In this whodunit disguised as western, the hero wanted to piece together the past ,meeting several suspects ,during his son' s trial .We watched the story through different eyes .

The same goes for "Valerie" which is nothing but a long flashback;whereas the scenes are told by the hero or his lawyer or by the showdown's victim,the story takes an entirely new meaning .The main inspiration is not the traditional western,but rather Japanese Kurosawa's "Rashomon"(1950) -which was remade by Martin Ritt as ""the outrage" (1964) The story sustains interest throughout ,except for the final scenes which are botched.Anita Ekberg possesses enough ambiguity to pass for an angel or a demon.Sterling Hayden is ,as usual,an imposing individual,even in the scenes of his trial when he is supposed to keep a low profile.