Le Mustang noir

Universal Pictures splurged a little with this one going on location and using color for this entertaining B western populated with a cast of familiar western faces for Red Canyon. The film is based on a Zane Grey novel about a cowboy trying to catch a beautiful black stallion and leader of a pack of wild horses. The horse can fly and he might make a good race horse Howard Duff reasons. Might even impress Ann Blyth the daughter of the local Ponderosa owner George Brent.

What Ann and George don't know about Duff is that he's also the son of a local outlaw leader John McIntire. Many years back McIntire and his gang killed Ann's mother during a gunfight.

The plot goes about as you would expect it to go but the western vistas in Kanab, Utah are a beautiful sight. Add to the folks already mentioned people like Jane Darwell, Edgar Buchanan, Chill Wills, and Denver Pyle all who are most familiar western faces and in roles you would expect them to be in and it adds up to nice western entertainment.

No new ground broken in Red Canyon, but well cultivated old ground indeed.

This movie is very similar to the 1946 movie with Fred McMurray called "Smoky". This movie starts out well with the Howard Duff character undertaking the perceived impossible task of capturing a horse called Black Velvet. The horse is incorrigible and cannot be trained but then allows Ann Blythe to train it. So in essence the movie turns into sort of a girl and horse love affair. It seems the movie would have been so much better if it continued with the original story-line which is why I give a low rating. There are other twists but won't go into details and spoil for those who have not watched.

This western belongs to the films that Universal pictures has made about horses, remember Harry Keller's SIX BLACK HORSES, films destined mainly for young audiences, where the story is not important, but only the horse matter instead; or you also had Phil Karlson's BLACK GOLD. But that remains a good little lost gem, produced by Aaron Rosenberg, a good producer for this kind of feature. Splendidly photographed, that may help you to forgive and forget the bland acting, despite the presence of Edgar Buchanan and his "cartoon" character voice.

Zane Grey gets the full Technicolor treatment, with Howard Duff trying to catch and train the greatest mustang ever, but requiring Edgar Buchanan and top-billed Ann Blyth. She's a tomboy, from the top of her perfectly marcelled hair, to her sculpted eyebows, red painted lips and ivory skin. Duff may be the man who catches Black Velvet, but it's Miss Blyth's mysterious power over horses -- horsepower, I call it -- that gets the animal trained.

It's one of Universal's "Shaky A" westerns, with quite a cast. George Brent, Chill Wills, Jane Darwell, Lloyd Bridges, but the beauty of it is not in the story as directed by George Sherman, but the way that Irving Glassberg's camera captured Ford country: so bright you can't look, air so clear, you can see everything. It's shot in Ford Country, but Ford's cameramen made the landscape a mythic dreamscape, where the cowboys shake off dust that no one ever raises, just the godlike wind. In Sherman's movie, everything is just as bright, but when people trod on the red, dry ground, they're the once who raise the dust; and everyone, comic sidekick Buchanan aside, is always perfectly clean. It's not the godlike land that makes the story here. The land is the setting, godlike people make the story.

The movie based on Zane Grey's novel has a formidable combination of of acceptable performances , espectacular races , drama , and gorgeous outdoors . The hothouse plot drives relentlessly forward with noisy action , thrills , shootouts and turns . It deals with a young girl Lucy Bostel (Anne Blyth) set out to tame a wild horse called Highland Dale and leader of a pack of wild horses , so she can enter him in a race , but this horse is subsequently tamed by Sloane (Howard Duff) . As Sloane has the fastest black stallion in the desert to come to her aid, and of course , they fall in love . Along the way they find adventure, betrayal and romance . However , Sloane has a gunfigher family and and their chief results to be his father (John McIntire despite being only a few years their senior in actual life) and a main member , his brother ( Lloyd Bridges) . From The Studio That Gave You "Canyon Passage" ,

Decent , gleaming Western with noisy action , go riding , pursuits , horse races , and shootouts . This glittering picture results to be an ordinary oater but containing some novelties as the peculiar relationship between a father : John McIntire and his son : Howard Keel , but it also has the usual elements as gundown, horse chases , and treason. There are overwhelming and breathtaking scenes about wild horses running here and there that after were reused for other movies , such as : Cattle Drive and Black Horse Canyon , the latter with Joel McCrea chasing the black house . The picture was well starred by the sweet Anne Blyth .Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Fox (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949). Co-starred by the usually wooden Howard Keel who played a lot of Westerns. Howard career went into a period of moviemaking in which his films were more noted for its entertainment and rousing action than as character-driven pieces. A number of them were routine westerns that paired him opposite some of Hollywood's loveliest ladies : this Red Canyon (1949) , Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949) with Yvonne De Carlo and The Lady from Texas (1951) with Mona Freeman. Other adventure-oriented flicks that more or less came and went included Spaceways (1953), Tanganika (1954),The Yellow Mountain (1954), Flame of the Islands (1955), Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1956) and Sierra Stranger (1957). And finishing as a prestigious TV series actor as Bonanza ,Twilight zone , Combat ¡ and Flaming Road .Both protagonists are well supported by a good support cast , such as : the veteran George Brent , Edgar Buchanan , Lloyd Bridges , John McIntire , Denvel Pyle , the incombustible Chill Wills , and here Jane Darwell steals the show as a sympathetic and laughing spinster aunt .

It contains a rousing and moving musical score by Walter Scharf. As well as glimmer Cinematography in shining Technicolor by Irving Glassberg , being shot on location in Kanab, Paria, Utah, Kaibab National Forest, Arizona , Boynton Canyon, Courthouse Butte, Sedona, Arizona . The motion picture was competently made by George Sherman in B-style , though has some flaws and gaps . Entertainment , atmosphere , action and excitement surge along with the tale under the hand of filmmaker George Sherman , who is clearly more at home with the thrilling scenes than somewhat excessively talking storyline . Sherman made reliable low-budget fares for Columbia between 1945-48, then moved on to do the same at Universal for another eight years . Sherman specialized almost exclusively in "B" westerns there , including the "Three Musketeers" series, which featured a young John Wayne. George directed lots of Westerns as ¨The Last of the Fast Guns¨ , ¨The Lone Hand¨, ¨Santa Fe stampede¨ , ¨Red skin¨ , ¨Chief Crazy Horse¨ ¨Calamity Jane¨, ¨Relentless¨ , ¨Comanche Territory¨ , ¨Dawn at Socorro¨, ¨Border River¨ and many others . He also made occasional forays into action and horror themes, often achieving a sense of style over substance . The only "A"-grade films to his credit were two westerns starring John Wayne: ¨Comancheros¨ (1961) (as producer) and ¨The big Jack¨ (1971) . His last films were realized in Spain as "Find That Girl" , ¨The new Cinderella¨ and ¨Joaquin Murrieta¨. Rating : 6/10 . Acceptable and passable . Well worth watching.