Une nation en marche

Joel McCrea plays the man who did the daring deeds that made the Wells Fargo Company a byword for a national company, from transporting live oysters to Buffalo to California gold to Washington.

It's one of those big clunky movies that defined the A western in the 1930s, reeking of Manifest Destiny, and for a movie like that you needed Cecil B. Demille in charge, or Frank Lloyd. Here, with a a huge and sprawling cast of characters, it's held together by McCrea's scenes with his real-life wife as his character's wife. McCreaoften seemed awkward and unsettled in his roles, an aspect that was exploited brilliantly for comedy by Preston Sturges. Here he shows a tenderness and vulnerability that is surprising. Of course, we can attribute some of that to his screen lovemaking being with his wife. But Lloyd, although he was typecast as a director of epics, was far more capable than planning the big scenes, and it shows here.

Since getting a channel exclusively devoted to Westerns, I've seen movies that are never seen on regular channels, like Wells Fargo.

Joel McRea, whom I'd enjoyed immensely in These Three, is impressive in a Western. He's rugged and tough, but goes beyond the stereotype, and is sensitive and understanding. He ages from his 20's to his 60's believably. The story of courier service extending out west makes me want to read more about these pioneers of exploration.

Though it does capture a little of the pioneering spirit of the folks travelling west, it's just too episodic and becomes even a bit dull. It gets off to a lively enough start as we meet "Ramsay" (Joel McCrae) who is bidding for a contract to shift goods from the east coast past the terminus of the railway and out into the rapidly populating wilderness. It's while he is trying to prove he can get live oysters to the table that he encounters the broken down carriage of "Justine" (Frances Dee) and her mother (Mary Nash) and so soon has a little extra romantic impetus as his career starts to expand just as quickly as his network of deliveries. Along the way he has to compete with the postal service, ambitious competitors and marauding Apache but little prepares him for the impact of the Civil War. By now he is managing the service as far as California, and it's their goldmines that are funding the Yankee army. This news isn't wasted on the Confederacy who decide that these shipments could be diverted, and this puts their travels in even more danger as well as causing consternation at home with a family who might just have Johnny-Reb sympathies. When the story focuses on the adventure elements, it works fine. McCrae holds it together well enough as the stagecoach gets chased, burned and robbed. Sadly, though, as civilisation reaches the Pacific coast it rather stupefies those action scenes and replaces them with something altogether more mediocre.

This film is a very fictionalized account of the early days of Wells Fargo---long before it metastasized into the gigantic mega-bank that charges innumerable service fees like it does today. However, instead of focusing on the big-wigs at the company, it focuses on a fictional man, Ramsay (Joel McCrea) and his many difficulties he had establishing banking, transportation and mail services in the wild west. It also focuses on his marriage--one that eventually became very rocky and problematic.

The problem with this film is that it is extremely episodic--with giant jumps in time here and there. As a result, it comes off more like a Cliff Notes version of a story instead of a rich and complete on. Compacting the story much more would have helped immensely, as the characters come off as very stiff and distant to the audience. Not a bad film but one that really should have been a lot better considering the large budget and cast. More money should have been spent on the script and less on extras and sets.

And I am not sure that everything here is accurate; anyway I don't consider it as a western. I did not find it interesting at all, it is destined to film goes to fill in their knowledge in terms of films, that's all. It is mostly talk, talks, the kind of films that Republic Pictures gave us in the late forties. I prefered Frank lloyd for MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, IF I WERE KING or RULERS OF THE SEA; after all, Frank Lloyd was a sea adventures film maker, not a western one. I prefered his LAST COMMAND, his last movie. But this one is an epic film, which tells a part of American history. As a French, Hmmm.