La horde sauvage

The best, worth seeing, in this film is Barbara Stanwyck, she is by far the best actress in the entire cast. Everyone else, including Barry Sullivan, Scott Brady, Mary Murphy, etc., is good, but only functional around her. I try to imagine what it would have been like if Barbara Stanwyck had worked with Sergio Leone.

When Barbara Stanwyck's era of Hollywood superstardom came to an abrupt end in the early fifties, she refused to quit and became the star of a number of feminist westerns which cast her as a tough yet sensuous aging woman in tight pants and a cowboy hat, oftentimes the leader of an outlaw gang. She'd make one minor classic of this variety, Forty Guns for Sam Fuller. The Maverick Queen has a bigger budget (and was shot in color) but lacks the energy and magnetism of that later film - both, however, co-star he with Barry Sullivan, a highly underrated leading man who enjoyed far greater success on TV (including a two year stint as Pat Garrett on The Tall Man) than in the movies. Babs struts around in tight pants and we're not supposed to notice that she could easily pass for her boyfriend's mother. And as the badguy, her former boyfriend the Sundance Kid, there's Scott Brady - who played The Dancing Kid in JOHNNY GUITAR, the very best of the odd westerns that cast visibly aging former big name female stars in cowgirl roles. (Joan Crawford, in that film's case). This is handsomely produced by strictly minor stuff. We're supposed to cry when Babs "gets it" in the end, but I can still recall kids in the Rialto theatre in Patchogue, Long Island laughing out loud at the end way back when.

Barry Sullivan is a Pinkerton agent. He's sent to gather information on the Hole In The Wall Gang. Barbara Stanwyck, who fronts for them and is Scott Brady's lover -- he plays the Sundance Kid -- falls in love with Sullivan. There's also a subplot about Mary Murphy, whose cattle keep getting rustled.

It's hard for me to judge this movie, because I saw it with the visuals wrecked. Released by Republic at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, I saw it in TV-standard pan-and-scan, wrecking cinematographer Jack Marta's compositions and reducing every shot to an undistinguished series of close-ups and medium close-ups. The story is one of those A Westerns from the 1950s, meant to star a woman or two in trousers, but with the action carried by the men. I'm pretty sure that if you got to see it at its proper aspect ratio, you'd like it a lot. The way I saw it, though, reduces it to mush.

Stanwyck's portrayal of the outlaw woman Kit Banion is an all-time classic. This role sets the standard for strong western women in the cinema. Stanwyck perfect for the role of the beautiful and strong-willed Kit Banion, leader of the Wild Bunch outlaw gang who can ride and shoot with the best of them. Stanwyck more than holds her own, matching wits and pistol shots with outlaws and lawmen alike. However, her lawless days are numbered when she falls in love with a Pinkerton agent (Barry Sullivan) who infiltrates the gang. Good supporting cast with familiar supporting actors. Visually pleasing with great western scenery, shot on location in southrn Colorado. Exciting action scenes liven up a sometimes plodding script. Well worth watching. A must see for fans of classic westerns.

Perhaps the first thing to note about this film is that the Maverick Queen herself, Kit Banion - cattle trader, saloon proprietor, hand in glove with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, and the richest woman in Rock Springs - doesn't actually appear until ten to fifteen minutes into the action! Even then, we initially assume she must be a minor character; surely the lady of the title song must be Lucy Lee - sweeter, younger and far less hard-faced - the girl the hero has already rescued in the first scenes? (Mary Murphy, just two years into her career, as opposed to Barbara Stanwyck, at this point a full twenty-five years into - and almost at the end of - hers.)

But Kit soon takes charge of the situation; and she can look after herself. There is a scene which cleverly subverts the audience's expectations, in which she is attacked and her lover rides to the rescue - only, before he can arrive, she saves the situation single-handed by deliberately sending her opponent over a cliff. When her would-be saviours arrive, they find her already bruised but triumphant. And in the final gun-battle, it is she who takes an active part when her lover is wounded, forcing him to keep moving, shooting without hesitation to protect him and taking a bullet in his defence.

The outlaw gang in this film are not the usual brutal but dim-witted cannon fodder provided for the hero's benefit, either. As it turns out, they've spotted the plot twist long before the audience (or before me at least!) When the fugitives hole up in a cabin, the pursuers actually take advantage of their superior numbers to surround the cabin and force their way in - and later on, instead of obligingly shooting it out, they simply set fire to the building in order to smoke out their quarry. The hero's ruse to lead them off fools them for a while - but as soon as they see through it, they jump to the right conclusion and head back in time to foil the planned escape.

The casual amorality of the outlaws is also well depicted. Sundance's disappearance after he gets the worse of a struggle with Kit is greeted by Cassidy with no more than "Well, I guess he deserved it", and his subsequent return is accepted with an equal shrug: "Thought you were dead, but I'm glad you ain't." There is no question, for example, of the rest of the outlaws hesitating for a moment to attack when they ride up just because Kit happens to have two of their number held at gunpoint.

My main problem with this film is that none of the principal characters seem to have any real motivation for what they are doing. Jeff at least has a plot rationale for his inconsistent actions - and for why we never see beyond his surface - but neither Kit nor Sundance seem to have sufficient justification for acting clean against their own best interests. In both cases, they are presumably intended to be in the grip of an overwhelming and unreciprocated affection - but Sundance spends the entire film chasing Lucy Lee rather than the woman who has supposedly prompted him to wild jealousy, and the Maverick Queen also displays an unjustified and distinctly surprising concern towards her. After all, not only did we see Kit cold-bloodedly engineering this same girl's bankruptcy for her own profit earlier in the film, but she also has to know by this stage that Lucy is her rival for Jeff's affections!

But whether due to bad acting or a poor script, Kit doesn't really give the impression in any case of having fallen passionately enough for Jeff to make it plausible that she should give up everything for him. Kit Banion is no lovable rogue with a heart of gold; she is depicted as a ruthless and hard-headed businesswoman - albeit with a slightly unusual turn of trade - who is deliberately toying with a young newcomer in order to pay out the lover of whom she has tired. At some point this is presumably supposed to betray her into genuine affection, but for all the kissing in evidence, it somehow fails to convince - particularly when faced with Jeff's lack of response.

Lucy too remains something of a cipher. Her early appearance, when we naturally assume she is the title character, leads us to expect that she is going to have a much larger role than ultimately transpires, but in fact, that initial scene more or less sums up her entire function - to act as a (repeated) plot device so that Sundance's pursuit of her can allow Jeff to get the better of him, and to provide the token 'good woman' required as the hero's love interest. There is no convincing relationship of any kind established between her and Jeff, any more than there is between Jeff and Kit - or Kit and Sundance.

All these characters come across as masks, without little or nothing real going on behind their faces. There is quite an intelligent plot going on in the background, but I simply couldn't find it in me to care very much about what happened to any of them. That lack of engagement on the part of the audience is, I think, the fatal flaw in this film.

I gather it is a Zane Grey adaptation. The virtues of the plot - such as they are - are owed entirely, I would guess, to the source novel. Any essence of the original characters would seem to have got lost in the translation from page to screen. Given its intelligently-drawn villains, morally ambiguous title character and cleverly set-up twist, the material might have made even a great off-beat Western...I'm afraid, however, that this isn't it.