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Libre comme le vent

Original title: Saddle the Wind
  • 1958
  • 16
  • 1h 24m
IMDb RATING
6.6/10
1.8K
YOUR RATING
Libre comme le vent (1958)
Official Trailer
Play trailer2:19
1 Video
84 Photos
Classical WesternDramaWestern

Former gunslinger Steve Sinclair is now a peaceful rancher, but things go wrong after his wild brother Tony arrives with his new gun--and his new fiancée, former saloon girl Joan Blake.Former gunslinger Steve Sinclair is now a peaceful rancher, but things go wrong after his wild brother Tony arrives with his new gun--and his new fiancée, former saloon girl Joan Blake.Former gunslinger Steve Sinclair is now a peaceful rancher, but things go wrong after his wild brother Tony arrives with his new gun--and his new fiancée, former saloon girl Joan Blake.

  • Directors
    • Robert Parrish
    • John Sturges
  • Writers
    • Rod Serling
    • Thomas Thompson
    • Daniel Fuchs
  • Stars
    • Robert Taylor
    • Julie London
    • John Cassavetes
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.6/10
    1.8K
    YOUR RATING
    • Directors
      • Robert Parrish
      • John Sturges
    • Writers
      • Rod Serling
      • Thomas Thompson
      • Daniel Fuchs
    • Stars
      • Robert Taylor
      • Julie London
      • John Cassavetes
    • 33User reviews
    • 22Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Saddle the Wind
    Trailer 2:19
    Saddle the Wind

    Photos84

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    Top cast19

    Edit
    Robert Taylor
    Robert Taylor
    • Steve Sinclair
    Julie London
    Julie London
    • Joan Blake
    John Cassavetes
    John Cassavetes
    • Tony Sinclair
    Donald Crisp
    Donald Crisp
    • Dennis Deneen
    Charles McGraw
    Charles McGraw
    • Larry Venables
    Royal Dano
    Royal Dano
    • Clay Ellison
    Richard Erdman
    Richard Erdman
    • Dallas Hanson
    Douglas Spencer
    Douglas Spencer
    • Hemp Scribner
    Ray Teal
    Ray Teal
    • Brick Larson
    Stanley Adams
    Stanley Adams
    • Joe
    • (uncredited)
    Jay Adler
    Jay Adler
    • Hank
    • (uncredited)
    William Challee
    William Challee
    • Barfly
    • (uncredited)
    Wes Fuller
    • Cowboy
    • (uncredited)
    Nacho Galindo
    Nacho Galindo
    • Manuelo
    • (uncredited)
    Kelo Henderson
    • Cowboy
    • (uncredited)
    Lars Henderson
    • Jamie
    • (uncredited)
    Ethan Laidlaw
    Ethan Laidlaw
    • Barfly
    • (uncredited)
    Irene Tedrow
    Irene Tedrow
    • Mary Ellison
    • (uncredited)
    • Directors
      • Robert Parrish
      • John Sturges
    • Writers
      • Rod Serling
      • Thomas Thompson
      • Daniel Fuchs
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews33

    6.61.8K
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    Featured reviews

    7shiannedog

    They need to saddle the Tony...

    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.
    7the red duchess

    Excellent, subversive Western.

    In the 1950s, the best way to attack an intolerably conformist society was to take a harmless 'popular' genre and subvert it, overturn its assumptions. Sirk did it with the woman's picture, Minnelli with the musical, Hitchcock with the thriller; Robert Parrish does it here with the Western, with a vision of Eisenhower family-values capitalist America as a medieval feudality, where everyone must pay obeisance to a landowner, where the stable family unit consists of a killer and a wild sexual neurotic, and where capitalism is actually destructive to the family and continuity, a sterile thing.

    Whether John Cassavetes is an embodiment of the Western hero gone wrong, the pressure of capitalism turned in on itself, or a rebel without a cause, the film is full of powerful incident - Cassavetes' first insane shooting spree, which he ends by shooting his own puddled reflection; the drunken attack by Cassavetes and friend on a family of homesteaders, uncomfortably reversing the old attacking-Indians routine; the Leonesque showdown between Cassavetes and Ellison backed by his own brother. Very much a post-'Searchers' Western, land here is synonymous with spilt blood not destiny.
    7ma-cortes

    Dramatic and enjoyable Western with very good main and secondary cast , being well shot by Robert Parrish

    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 .
    6RoughneckPaycheck

    Clash of the acting schools

    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.
    7bkoganbing

    Taylor's troubled sibling

    As he got older Robert Taylor got cast in more and more westerns as did so many of his contemporary stars. His first western was in 1941 as Billy the Kid and had Taylor had his way, he would have done a lot more of them sooner. He lived on a ranch in his later years with his second wife Ursula Thiess and their kids and he definitely looked home on the range.

    He plays an older and wiser gunfighter like Gregory Peck's character of the film of the same name who would like to settle down and with the help of Donald Crisp, the big cattle ranch owner in the valley where Taylor owns his spread, he's trying to make an honest living.

    The problem is that Taylor has a younger brother, a wild kid played by John Cassavetes, who wants to emulate his brother or at least the older version of his brother. And he causes a great deal of problems before the end of the film.

    Cassavetes has an interesting part. He could have played it just like Skip Homeier did in The Gunfighter, a punk without any redeeming qualities. But he has to convey enough of a sense of decency so that we understand why Taylor just won't give up on him. I think he succeeds admirably.

    The most interesting best of the supporting roles belongs to Royal Dano. He's a bitter, troubled man himself. His father owned a strip of land and abandoned it 20 years ago. Dano moves back on it and tries to assert his rights. In a situation that could probably be worked out either by men of good will or an honest court, neither is available. The result is tragedy all around. I think that this was probably Dano's best screen performance.

    Taylor and Cassavetes offer an interesting contrast between a studio personality who learned to become a good actor and a New York based method actor. But that's not the only reason one should see Saddle the Wind. A good, but very grim western is the reason.

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    Related interests

    Gary Cooper in Le train sifflera trois fois (1952)
    Classical Western
    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    John Wayne and Harry Carey Jr. in La Prisonnière du désert (1956)
    Western

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      A first score was written and recorded by Jeff Alexander but had to be replaced due to extensive re-cutting.
    • Goofs
      The union "squatter" Ellison is holding a shotgun in all the scenes including when he is shot. After his death, Deneen picks up the gun and it is now a Winchester that he levers a shell into.
    • Quotes

      Steve Sinclair: I tried to bend that kid a certain way. I tried to shape him. He was some kind of tough leather that I had to make soft. But he didn't soften any. He wasn't made that way. He was just rotten leather and he came up hard.

    • Connections
      Referenced in The Swinging Sixties: Movie Marathon (2019)
    • Soundtracks
      Saddle the Wind
      By Jay Livingston and Ray Evans

      Sung by Julie London (uncredited)

      [Played over opening title card and credits; later sung by Joan to Tony in the house]

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    FAQ14

    • How long is Saddle the Wind?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 29, 1958 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • Spanish
    • Also known as
      • Furia maldita
    • Filming locations
      • Rosita, Colorado, USA
    • Production company
      • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $1,479,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 24m(84 min)
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.35 : 1

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