Bravados

"Los Bravados" proves that Henry King totally mastered the western style among many others.Much more interesting than his precedent effort "the sun also rises",this work casts Peck as a desperate man eager to take revenge of four outlaws who killed and raped his wife. he arrives in the town where the criminals -or rather the men he thinks are the criminals- are to be hanged.

The first thirty minutes are the more convincing.The soundtrack is particularly remarkable:first we hear the hammers of the men building the scaffold;often there's no music at all and this ominous noise creates an agonizing atmosphere.Then ,later,the whole congregation attends the service in a baroque church and the canticles provides the movie with an even more sinister soundtrack.The editing shows in parallel the outlaws' escape and the people praying in the church where Peck gazes upon a madonna and her child:this picture will frequently come back in the movie as a leitmotiv:it's the image of forgiveness.

Because what makes this western worthwhile is the absurdity of the vengeance it depicts.Once a victim,the hero becomes a criminal.But as the priest says ,a lot of people kill and they do not feel any remorse. King's obsession seems to be the reconstruction of the family as well:Peck and his little girl with Collins ,and the half-breed who succeeded in convincing him that he's not responsible for his misfortune.And anyway ,for this director whose body of work stretches on 50 years ,forgiveness and love are many-splendored things.

The Bravados (1958)

Unlike John Wayne Westerns (especially the John Ford ones), a lot of Westerns from the 1950 like the Anthony Mann films are a little edgy and psychological. This one, starring a laconic Gregory Peck, is big and beautiful and classic, and it has some of that darkness to it that makes it more contemporary.

To be sure, it's still a product of the clichés of the genre. A loner is on the trail of some bad guys, and for much of the movie he hunts them down across some astonishing landscape. A woman from his past gets in the middle of it, at times, and the townspeople aren't sure what to make of him.

Peck is a great lead, and he's got a strong, if predictable, supporting cast. The woman in question is a young Joan Collins, more famous for her "Dynasty" years. Also of note is the sets and lighting--if sets is the right word. There are so many gorgeous scenes, both in town and in the wilderness, and they are filmed with such great light, it's actually worth watching just to watch. And many of the night scenes are filmed with a bold darkness, the color stripped down and everything hard to discern. This isn't actually Technicolor, but a new competitor, DeLuxe, and the restoration (at least on the Netflix streaming version) is superb.

If you like Westerns, this is one not to miss. If you don't, I think it's still really enjoyable, and might just get you looking for more. The director here, Henry King, is a Hollywood stalwart who took his hand at almost everything (from 1915 into the 1960s). And so you see a pro at work here, working within the genre, but intelligently.

John Wayne's Ethan Edwards, Jimmy Stewart's Howard Kemp, or any number of roles Kirk Douglas has played have nothing of the intensity of Gregory Peck's Jim Douglas in The Bravados.

Peck is perfect casting for the part because he's playing against type. If Atticus Finch's wife had been a homicide victim, I think this is how we would see him. Totally lose a moral compass and become a relentless stalker. It's what makes The Bravados work, because we identify Gregory Peck with an innate decency.

Peck's house was robbed and his wife raped and murdered by intruders. Peck has a line on them, they're four killers who've been caught and scheduled to hang for a bank robbery in a town several miles away where a bank teller has been killed.

But they escape with the help of the hangman, Joe DeReda soon to become a stooge. These are a quartet of the nastiest villains ever, Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Lee Van Cleef, and Henry Silva all of whom have played villains with relish on the big screen. One of them, Boyd, in fact is a rapist, they take young Kathleen Gallant the daughter of the town's dry goods merchant along as a hostage.

Charles Bronson never executed bad guys with as much relish as Peck did. They are convicted murderers who've escaped, there's no law to answer to.

Peck may be doing some public service homicides, but there's a higher law he must answer to for the preservation of his own soul. In fact the ending brings quite a twist to the tale.

The Bravados is one of six films directed by long time 20th Century Fox director Henry King who is most known for doing nine films there with Tyrone Power. In fact the first couple that Peck did were probably properties that were meant for Power, but Darryl Zanuck switched them for his new up and coming leading man.

This one however is all Gregory Peck's film, I'm not sure Power could have done a better job. Peck gets some able support from the villainous quartet and from Joan Collins as an old flame he finds that has settled in the town the four have savaged.

Special mention should go to Andrew Duggan as the priest in the town where apparently everyone is Catholic. Duggan does a good job as the padre who gives just the right spiritual advice and counsel to a troubled soul.

Themes like rape were not exactly subject matter for westerns before the Fifties. The Bravadoes succeeds both as Saturday matinée shooting and as serious adult drama. It shouldn't be missed when broadcast.

This is a smart western, it is not about the hero quick-drawing against four anonymous opponents at the same time, it is about moral.

For quite some time, you are not sure exactly where the movie is heading. The beginning is slow, with the goal to present the hero (Peck). He is doing just about the same silent, dry western hero as in "The Gunfighter". But the tempo goes up and the plot reveals, step by step. We get very convinced that the four criminals are quite bad men, and the worst is clearly the ruthless Bill (Stephen Boyd), ready for rape and murder any time it suits him.

Joan Collins, however, is mostly annoying, subject of an implied love story that the movie fortunately doesn't go deeper into. She has little importance to the story. It seems she is there only to tack on a touch of romance.

The movie manages to make each and every one of the bad guys (six of them if you count right) sharp and live, we get to know them. We also get to know a few others. The most famous villain actor here is clearly Lee van Cleef, who makes a great job as Parral, but the best character actor is really Joe DeRita (one of the Three Stooges) as Tucker/Simms, who is, incredibly, uncredited despite his fairly big role, central to the story. This means that both casting and script are very good, the script gives room for acting and the actors are capable of delivering.

From an action/western perspective, the movie fails on one thing: It could make more dramatic endings when people are killed, spend a little more time on their last seconds so we kind of follow them down. Now, a death is too much like flipping a switch. We don't have to use slow-motion every time, but a second or two extra would have helped in some places. In some cases, I feel that the movie really doesn't want to show too much violence and blood, but in at least two occasions it isn't that simple, it looks rather like if the director or producer was careless with some important scenes. These all to obvious mistakes lower the total a bit, but they don't ruin the movie, it just takes it below the absolute top.

But what the movie doesn't fail in is to deliver a message, a message of right and wrong, life and death, who has the right to kill. This is where it shines. After all is said and done, you find that there is still a lot more to say, more to think about, and the movie stays with me a lot longer than the average western where the difference between right and wrong is obvious and crystal clear.

This late Henry King movie is one of his most under-rated films. It's a revenge western, powerfully scripted by Philip Yordan and directed with commendable restraint by King. Gregory Peck, (at his most stoic), is the rancher bent on bringing to justice the four men he believes raped and killed his wife. The men are a leering Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Henry Silva and an over-excitable Lee Van Cleef. Joan Collins, by this time entrenched in her first American sojourn, is in there, too, but she's the weakest thing in the film. There is a crisis of conscience and a spiritual reawakening to be reckoned with and the film does pose some interesting questions of morality but there's tension and the pleasures that come from a good western, as well. One for rediscovery.