Femme de feu

Hadn't seen this movie in years so I decided to watch it again. I have to say there was a lot that I had missed in previous viewings. Mainly this is definitely a noir western. The basic plot is a staple of westerns, cattlemen versus sheepmen and a range war, but the characters walked straight of the 1940s. You have Veronica Lake as the femme fatale using her charms to twist multiple men to do her bidding. There's Joel McCrea as a flawed hero and Don DeFore as his friend with a dark side. Donald Crisp plays the by the book sheriff, arguably the only major conventional western character in the movie.

Definitely worth watching if you've never seen it before. If you want another noir western to watch try Blood On The Moon with Robert Mitchum.

I won't comment on what has been written by several others here, regarding the noir-ish qualities of the material. I do want to mention some things that caught me off guard, in a very good way, from the moment the film began. First off, the writers and director de Toth were confident enough in their material not to spoonfeed their audience. Indeed, the first few minutes are so opaque it seems as if we may have come in in the middle of the film. In reality, we've come in in the middle, not of the film, but of the characters' lives, and the filmmakers allow us to figure out what's going on much as a stranger arriving in town would have to figure out what this drama is that's occurring around him. Adding to the intelligent and innovative approach to the story is the cinematography of Russell Harlan. Harlan, who shot Red River, Lust for Life, The Big Sky, and To Kill a Mockingbird, certainly knew how to place a camera and light a scene. For de Toth, Harlan's camera moves almost constantly, innumerable dolly shots (far more than in a typical film of this day) both reveal and obfuscate the settings in such a way as to keep the viewer always a little off-balance as to where the action is moving next. It's a skillful means of unsettling the viewer. The casting as well performs similarly. Joel McCrea is a familiar figure in Western leading roles, but here he's both a reformed drunk and so soft-spoken and comparatively passive as to be almost the antithesis of what we expect. Veronica Lake gets one soft scene with her hair down and almost peekabooing, but for the rest of the film it's up tight on her head, and she's up tight in the role. She's an interesting case, a pitiable femme fatale, a nice girl at first pushed then willingly galloping down the wrong road. Charlie Ruggles, typically a comic father type, here is stern but not heartless, wrongheaded but goodhearted. And the best piece of off-beat casting in the film is light comedian Don DeFore as the rascally, promiscuous, and deadly Bill, a gunman with a seductive smile and the grim good humor that one both fears and wants to protect. DeFore's performance is the best I've ever seen him give, and it made me wish he'd done more like this. Thankfully (and oddly), the script gives him plenty of screen time, much more in fact (toward the end) than one would expect, given that he's not the lead in the picture. There have been bad good-guys like Bill in scores of Westerns before and since, but few with the charisma and style that Don DeFore brings to this one. All in all, I was amazed by the complexity and shades of gray in this film, which I completely expected to be just another good old shoot-em-up. Well worth watching.

She may have been tiny, but she could hard-eye stare as well as any man, and make you believe it. It's that quality that this complex Western turns on, and fortunately the blonde Veronica Lake delivers in spades. It's not like she's the only good actor in the cast. There's the reliable Joel McCrea as the good guy, the commanding Donald Crisp as the sheriff, and Don De Fore in a sly role as McCrea's buddy, showing both an easy grin and a tricky set of values.

Usually it's two patriarchal land barons who feud over territory. Here it's not. It's the tiny Lake and bad guy Preston Foster who are duking it out, both fair and foul. What makes this Western more interesting than most is that Lake and DeFore fit somewhere between the poles of good-guy bad-guy. You never quite know what they'll do next because their moral compass sometimes wobbles. Being a woman with a lot of ambition, Lake has to finagle men into doing her shooting for her, and guess how she does that. And being a man who likes women, DeFore has figure out how to balance his loyalties. That makes for some interesting situations.

Director Andre DeToth (check out his unpronounceable real name) is the perfect overseer for a plot that features quiet treachery, hidden motives and raw violence. Maybe that's because his middle-European background was steeped in just trying to survive. Nonetheless, his sardonic view of human nature reminds me of an early version Sam Peckinpah. In fact, the latter hired de Toth to direct several episodes of Peckinpah's brilliant TV series The Westerner (1960). In that same vein, note de Toth's unflinching camera when filming the night battle near movie's end and when filming the treacherous backshot on Foster's front porch. It's clear he's bumping against Production Code strictures on what can be shown and what can't.

Ramrod is an underrated Western with an adult story-line. You may, however, need a score card to keep up with the various twists and turns. Still and all, the scenery's great, the acting top-notch, and the action where it ought to be. In my little book, that's definitely a can't-miss package.

Some reviewers complain of a slow pace, but that wasn't my impression. The story is told in a straightforward, understated manner, trusting the audience to connect the dots and not wasting thirty seconds on a scene if it can be done in ten. It moves at a good pace most of the time, even though, at the end, the payoff is a bit easy and conventional. Because of that, it turns out not to be as good as it promised during the first part, when there was plenty of tension and psychological work.

The unusual setup is a strong point, subverting the trope of the beautiful lady rancher harassed by the evil local despots who want to run her out of her ranch. In this case, the lady rancher is as evil and petty as them. She boasts "From now on, I'm going to make a life of my own. And, being a woman, I won't have to use guns." She may not use them personally, but plenty of men are going to die because of her war, which is more a vanity project than really necessary for her to live her life.

I'm not a big fan of McCrea or Lake, but they are helped by a capable supporting cast.

I also need to mention the stunning scenery, shot in black and white. The camera doesn't linger in it often, though. More than the traditional open spaces of a western, here the story is sometimes claustrophobic and dark. It's kind of a hardboiled noir film.

I find it underrated, although it could have stuck the landing better.

This was a surprisingly brutal western, more like a film noir from the late 1940s, with rough characters who shot first and thought later.

Among those with the rough attitudes was the female lead, Veronica Lake, who was nearing the end of her short career. Without the makeup and long blonde hair, she didn't look that pretty. The good guys were played by Joel McCrea and Donald Crisp.

Almost everyone in this film gets shot or killed. Many critics labeled this a B-movie but it sure had a lot of well-known actors for that label. Preston Foster, Don DeFore and Lloyd Bridges also star. The only actor who sounded B movie-ish was Arleen Whalen. Despite her good looks, I can see why she never made it to stardom.

I like black-and-white but this was film that would have looked better in some nice Technicolor with the great mountain scenery that was featured.