La valle dei monsoni

An American drama; A story about a Viennese surgeon and his daughter, refugees in a small North Dakota town. When the winds of the Dust Bowl threaten they are led away from doom by a farmer leader to Oregon whence he falls in love with the daughter but their future together is complicated by her past. This film's first half is tightly scripted, a contempory tale of 1930s hardship and hostile environments, a celebration of the pioneer spirit. Then comes a theme about migration and scenes become shallow as the character stories fall away, then tension with anti-Nazi propaganda, then a love triangle. This busy progression gave the film an over-engineered feel and perhaps inevitably it led toward a mediocre end. It has good production design and it is photographed handsomely. The cast performed adequately well too. John Wayne has vigour in his part while Sigrid Gurie manages with her poorly written part, but they lacked chemistry.

As part of a program relocating European refugees, Viennese surgeon Charles Coburn is sent to Dust Bowl-stricken North Dakota where people are in desperate need of a doctor. Where's John Wayne figure into all this? He's the unelected leader of the town that falls for Coburn's daughter (Sigrid Gurie). This is an odd movie. A mixture of WW2 flag waver, social messager, and western (Duke leads the modern equivalent of a wagon train). The plot is also a bit of a mess. A short time after the doctor arrives in North Dakota, the decision is made to pack up all the townsfolk and move to Oregon. Why not just send Coburn and Gurie to Oregon first and explain that these people had to relocate there and need a doctor? I guess then we couldn't have had the scenes of Gurie insulting the poor townsfolk who have just given them a home. I kept expecting Duke to say "Go back and try your luck with the Nazis if you feel that way about it."

Coburn is likable but this isn't the kind of role he was best suited for. And the less said about his attempt at an accent, the better. John Wayne does fine but this is just another forgettable role made between John Ford films as his star was still on the rise. Sigrid Gurie is the latest in a string of tepid romantic interests for Duke that would continue throughout the 1940s. He was paired with many fine actresses, but the chemistry was often just not there. It's not a bad film, just not a good one. Kind of boring and more than a bit disappointing they didn't explore the Dust Bowl story longer.

In a subdued and understated role, John Wayne is excellent.

Other commenters have placed the action in North Dakota and in Oklahoma, but I never heard a home stated. In fact, I thought the script specifically avoided mentioning one. (Maybe like the Simpsons' Springfield?)

The situation and the timing would seem to indicate Oklahoma, but in truth it really doesn't matter, and the film can be seen as somewhat of an allegory, as representative of the dilemma many poor farmers faced during the Dust Bowl and Depression days.

Regardless, it is worth saying again that John Wayne gave one of his best performances, that his character was a different one from what he so often played and he demonstrated that he was by gosh an actor!

The chief bad guy also stood out, and should have, being played as it was by the great Trevor Bardette.

The subplot, the almost thwarted love story, was poignant and timely, and there was a wonderful line spoken by the Wayne character: "We get all tangled up in other people's feelings and duties and obligations," a fact that gets so many people, and even nations, into trouble.

"Three Faces West" is a very good movie, with great direction, some superior camera angles, and possibly some great stock footage, as well as great acting, from Wayne to the atmosphere players.

All of that with an intelligent script makes it well worth watching.

Beginning like 'The Wind' and ending as a more upbeat 'Grapes of Wrath', the original title sounds like a western, but it actually starts as a very contemporary tale of a pair of Austrian refugees arriving in America after fleeing the Anschluss.

Both the director and one of the scriptwriters - one of the Hollywood Ten, no less - were later blacklisted, so I hope they avoided discussing politics with John Wayne on the set.

Viennese surgeon Charles Coburn and daughter Sigrid Gurie arrive in America and are placed in a rural area of Oklahoma. They stay in a large old house with John Wayne and Spencer Charters. Pretty soon, despite Gurie's homesickness, they are involved in the social and political life in the area.

This is the famous Oklahoma dust bowl era when drought and poor cultivation practices brought about a drying up of once fertile farm land. Wayne and the other farmers do their best to save the land, but in the end except a government offer to homestead new farm land created by a dam built in Oregon, I presume on the Columbia River or one of its tributaries.

Gurie of course falls big time for the Duke. But she hears that Roland Varno who saved them from the Nazis and who she thought dead is still alive. Wayne of course leads a modern day wagon train to Oregon with automobiles instead of Conestoga wagons. He's got his own problems with Trevor Bardette, another farmer who's constantly trying to undermine his leadership.

23 years later John Wayne made McLintock which is more a serious statement of his conservative political and economic philosophy than one realizes. In Three Faces West we have him accepting a government program's help, albeit a self help type program. The film though is couched in terms good enough to satisfy any free marketeer.

One thing I could not understand. Roland Varno purportedly risked his life to save Gurie and Coburn from the Nazis. But when both of them meet up with Varno in San Francisco, he's now a big time Nazi supporter and wants to take them back to Vienna to aid in his new cause. They are taken aback and walk right out on him.

I'm somewhat taken aback myself. For the life of me I don't understand Varno's about face. The script gives us no explanation. It's a big hole in the plot.

Three Faces West also labors under the handicap of coming out in the same year as The Grapes of Wrath. A much better film about the dust bowl and its economic effects.