Valerie

This independent film from Unite Artists has got one unusual story for a western. The plot is definitely not western, the themes are universal and could apply just about in any setting.

Valerie has Anita Ekberg in the title role and she's a recent immigrant to the USA and her parents have arranged a marriage with ranch owner Sterling Hayden.

What happens is that there's ben a wild shooting and both her parents are dead and Ekberg gravely wounded.

There's a formal hearing and we see and hear how these events came to pass.

This Rashomon like tale with two different points of view is one interesting film. As both tales are told big credit goes to Sterling Hayden and Anita Ekberg. Playing the same characters it's like watching two films in a row.

You'll have ti see what the outcome is. i will say that irrefutable evidence is brought in showing the real truth.

The western was generally a male-dominated genre, so it is unusual to come across one bearing the name of a female character for its title. Even a film like Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar", which features two strong women played by Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, bears the name of one of the male characters. "Valerie", however, is not a typical western. Most westerns from the fifties tended to revolve around a few well-worn themes- Cavalry versus Indians, lawman versus outlaws, wagon train, range war over grazing rights, cattle drive, etc. This one is different. Indeed, it might be more accurate to describe it not as a western but rather as a courtroom thriller or domestic melodrama which just happens to be set in the Old West. Unlike most westerns, the story could, with only a few minor changes of detail, be transferred to virtually any other part of America- or, indeed, to many other countries- at virtually any other period in history. This perhaps explains why it was made in black-and-white; although colour was increasingly becoming the norm for traditional westerns in the late fifties, monochrome was still commonly used for psychological dramas.

As the film opens, a wealthy rancher named John Garth is tried for shooting his beautiful young Hungarian-born wife Valerie, critically wounding her, and murdering her parents. Most of the story is told in a series of flashbacks, using for a framework the testimony given in the courtroom by various characters. The two main witnesses are Garth himself and Valerie, who has by now recovered sufficiently to give her evidence from her hospital bed. As might be expected, the two give very different accounts of their marriage. His testimony is that she was a cold, unloving wife who was unfaithful to him with his own brother and with the local preacher, the Reverend Blake, that her parents constantly interfered in the marriage and that the shooting was either a crime of passion or self-defence. She testifies that he was a brutal, foul- tempered husband who wrongly and unreasonably accused her of adultery in an attempt to justify the violence he wreaked on her in his frequent rages.

The film has been compared to Kurosawa's influential "Rashomon", which also told its story from several different viewpoints, although as another reviewer points out, there is a difference. In Kurosawa's film the various conflicting viewpoints were all presented as equally valid, implying that truth is something subjective, whereas here truth is treated more objectively. One of the parties is telling the truth and the other is lying. Which of the accounts is true and which is false is revealed in the final denouement.

This made Valerie a difficult role to play, as the actress playing her needed, effectively, to play two quite different characters, both the innocent wronged wife which Valerie claims to be and the heartless, promiscuous seductress which is how her husband depicts her. The role therefore needed someone more accomplished than the Swedish sex symbol Anita Ekberg who always, or so it seemed to me, got by more on looks than on talent, at least in her English-language movies. (She was perhaps fortunate that the early part of her career came in the fifties, at a time when the film industry seemed particularly obsessed with voluptuous blondes- Monroe, Dors, Mansfield, Bardot, Van Doren, et al.) Here she is rather disappointing, failing to portray either of the two Valeries with any great conviction. Sterling Hayden, however, is more convincing as Garth, possibly because the difference between the two versions of Garth's character is not as great. Even on his own testimony Garth is an unhappy, tormented man, haunted by memories of the Civil War in which he was responsible for torturing Confederate prisoners in order to extract information from them. The Reverend Blake is played by Ekberg's real-life husband, Anthony Steele.

I had never heard of this film until I caught it when it was recently shown on television, and I note that mine is only the third review it has received, suggesting that it is not very well known. Yet despite the weakness of its leading actress, I feel that this is one of those westerns that deserves to be better known. Its German-born director Gerd Oswald handles his material well and the unusual subject-matter makes the film a welcome and refreshing change. 7/10

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.

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.