Libre comme le vent

Highly watchable Western based on a story by Thomas Thompson with screenplay by the prestigious Rod Serling ; dealing with confrontation between family members and about fights between cattlemen and homesteaders . The picture gets action Western , shootouts , wonderful outdoors and turns out to be quite entertaining with amazing visual style . This interesting movie is set in post-Civil War ; it features Steve Sinclair (Robert Taylor) , a world a world-weary , prior gunfighter , now living as a peaceful farmer , his wild younger brother Tony (John Cassavetes) , and a previous dance hall girl , Joan Blake , (Julie London) , masquerading as a lady . Tony meets the cabaret girl Joan and impulsively to marry her , returning to run the family ranch . Then , things go awry when Tony arrives on the scene with his new bride Joan Blake . Everyone there is enchanted with Joan ; however , when some settlers (Royal Dano) appear , events go wrong .

Agreeable Western packs drama about sibling squabbles , thrills , shootouts , go riding and some moving action sequences . It's a medium budget film with good actors , technicians , production values and pleasing results . In this case family feuds make for a really thrilling film , as it contains a thoughtful and thought-provoking script regarding to the ranch scenarios , adding ranchers confrontations , joining Western with melodrama . As well as making full of sense , intense drama and intelligence . ¨Saddle the wind¨ was hardly received its fair due and panned by some critics , as Western genre being past their peak of popularity . And the final is poignantly as well as dynamically unexpected , including an exciting duel . Good performances from Robert Taylor as obstinate ex-gunslinger , this is the best movie of Taylor's later work ; John Cassavetes as reckless as well as nutty young brother who gives a mannered but intelligent acting and Julie London as his bride who bears a dark past . Julie London catches the eye carrying out an imaginative and gorgeous acting ; besides , playing an attractive song . Large plethora of secondaries , such as Charles McGraw , Royal Dano , Richard Erdman , Ray Teal and special mention for Donald Crisp as old patriarch baron land . Colorful and glimmer cinematography by George J. Folsey , being magnificently illuminated in Cinemascope and Metrocolor , setting itself against the marvelous backdrop of the Colorado Rockies , actually filmed on location in Rosita , Colorado . Evocative as well as atmospheric musical score by the great Elmer Bernstein , along with a catching song at the beginning composed by Jay Livingstone . However , a first soundtrack was written and recorded by Jeff Alexander but had to be replaced due to extensive re-cutting .

The motion picture was professionally directed in sure visual eye by Robert Parrish providing an abundance of noisy acting , color and stirring happenings . Among his best received works was this brooding western ¨Saddle the Wind¨ (1958) . He was an Academy Award-winning film editor who also realized and acted in movies . Parrish was soon working on some of Hollywood's most prestigious films, cementing his reputation as one of the America's premier editors . Unfortunately, while many of his directorial efforts were visually impressive ,especially his war drama , ¨The Purple Plain¨ , his labour as editor was excellent . As an editor he won an Academy Award for Body and soul (1947), the 1947 Robert Rossen film that starred John Garfield as a money-grubbing, two-timing boxer on the make . Parrish also worked on All the King's Men (1949), an account of the rise and fall of a Louisiana politician that won the Academy Award for Best Picture . Parrish then moved on to direct films during the 1950s and 1960s . He realized a variety films of all kind of genres , such as melodrama : ¨Fire down below¨ , comedy : ¨The Bobo¨ , parody : ¨Casino Royale¨ , a Noir film titled ¨Cry danger¨ , a Sci-Fi picture titled ¨Journey to the far side of the sun¨ , a thriller titled ¨The Marseille Contract¨ or ¨The Destructors¨ and another strange Western called ¨A town called Bastard¨. And of course , ¨Saddle the wind¨¨ resulted to be one of his best films .

This movie will keep your interest in an unexpected way. Probably due to the work of Rod Serling's screenplay. It is well casted and well acted and well directed. John Cassavetes performs magnificently in his role but unfortunately his role is highly annoying. I would have reduced his adolescent behavior and given him a bit more gravity which would have Improved the picture immensely. Rod Taylor and the others played their parts extremely well which always makes a movie enjoyable. The scenery was grand and the music very pleasant and fitting. Excellent work and strongly recommended.

"Saddle the Wind" is the first of two 1958 Westerns in which Taylor plays a reformed outlaw... He is cast opposite a promising newcomer John Cassavetes... The sexy and flamboyant Julie London provides the love interest but her role is poorly defined and almost working from outside the plot...

Robert Taylor is a personality on screen rather than an actor... He plays here an ex-gunfighter who has reformed and is living and working on his ranch peacefully... But fate will not allow him to retire... Cassavetes, his wild young unstable brother shows up carrying a six-gun, and with a sexy dance-hall singer London...

Cassavetes' intensity did add excitement to the show... He shoots down a tough character and with his killer instinct now waked up, he attacks a group of homesteaders led by Royal Dano and sets fire to their belongings... This battle has much more cinematic electricity than the final confrontation between the two brothers...

Strong landowner (Donald Crisp) imposes himself at this point, and asks the two brothers, now troublemakers, to leave the country...

Shortly after that time, Cassavetes gets into a wild and confused struggle with Crisp's men and is wounded, but manages to escape... Taylor goes out to get him...

With some magnificent Colorado Rockies scenery caught effectively by George Folsey's CinemaScope and Technicolor photography, "Saddle the Wind" is modestly effective, humorless Western drama...

This is worth a watch if you are a fan of the more adult-themed westerns of the 1950s. But whose bright idea was it to put Cassavetes in a movie like this? It's a helluva weird choice. His acting style is so different from that of his co-star Robert Taylor that the film barely holds together.

To his credit, Cassavetes shoots for veracity, for a naturalism that brings humanity to a character that could've easily become a cardboard cutout of a psycho. In some ways, he is elevating the worn out clichés of the script, bringing some real life to them. But other aspects of his performance are flat absurd. For example, he periodically attempts some sort of ridiculous "western" accent, then just as quickly he'll drop it; sometimes this happens within a single line of dialog. You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the boy, and I never bought for an instant that he was a tough western ranch kid with lingering Confederate sympathies. And his mood swings, as he goes rapidly from giggling to brooding, are hyper and overdone.

Meanwhile, Taylor is all classic Hollywood "strong & silent type" understatement, bordering on wooden and inexpressive. Their scenes together are oil and water. It brought me out of the story, into awareness that I was watching two actors who shouldn't be sharing the stage together. Their aesthetics are just too different.

In the plus column, supporting character actor Royal Dano is amazing in this movie, utterly convincing as a squatter with lingering Civil War resentments and a legal claim on a piece of land that puts him in direct conflict with the area ranchers. There are some brutal, squirm-inducing, standout scenes where Cassavetes terrorizes Dano. These are really subversive in a way, as Cassavetes' character takes on a role usually reserved for Indians, nameless "Others" who are utterly inhuman and dispensable.

I was also pleasantly surprised at Julie London's performance. She has a few key scenes early in the film and does a fine job, but she's underutilized; her character is sketched quickly, then left underdeveloped as her story thread is largely dropped.

Overall, this could've been a lot better, but it holds some interest for those with a particular love for the sub-genre. And Cassavetes fans will find much to like about his performance, at least for curiosity's sake.

Saddle the Wind is the result of a creative conflict between golden era Hollywood and the cool method acting world of New York in the late 1950's. Both the writer, Rod Serling (of Twilight Zone fame) and John Cassavetes represented the new, "cool" world of New York. Robert Taylor, holder of the record for the longest employment by one studio) represented Hollywood with a capital "H." The director, Robert Parrish, was more on the New York wavelength.

From what I've read, Cassavetes tried to antagonize Taylor with his difficult behavior and, when he failed, got even more outrageous. The New York crew regarded Taylor as incredibly "square." The result of all this is a fascinating conflict of styles. Taylor prided himself on not "mugging" and here his reserved style worked well as Cassavetes' older brother, a retired gunman. The pain of a man watching someone he brought up as son, not a younger brother, turn into an unstable, erratic killer is evident on Taylor's craggy face. The younger brother is in constant motion--he seems to mistake activity for accomplishment.

Through a number of plot twists including disputed land ownership, romance (with Julie London) and brother-to-brother conflict, the film moves quickly and stylishly towards its inevitable end. The photography is excellent, making the best of the glorious scenery. Julie London is underused but does what she can.

In the end, New York and Hollywood work well together to make a highly watchable film. Review by me for the IMDb.