FORTY GUNS (1957)

This Samuel Fuller western opens with a stunning opening shot of three men in a small wagon headed down a desert road in Arizona as a huge party of forty men on horses comes stampeding down the road, parting to go around the wagon. The forty men are the Dragoons, men who work for powerful rancher Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck). The three men in the wagon are U.S. Marshal Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers Wes and Chico, armed with a warrant for the arrest of a man named Swain, who happens to be one of Jessica's Dragoons. In the main storyline, Griff and Jessica begin as antagonists but grow to respect each other, and even fall in love. Getting Swain turns out to be easy, as Jessica insists that she's not the unlawful type. But her vulnerable spot is her reckless brother Brockie (John Ericson) who has just killed the town's blind marshal and gone on a spree of destruction just for kicks. He is temporarily put in his place by Griff but hard feelings remain. In another plotline, Wes is asked to stay in town and take the marshal's place, which he is tempted to do as he has fallen in love with the gunsmith's daughter. Griff's youngest brother, Chico, gets blind drunk and has to be tossed in a trough to sober up, but he soon outgrows his rowdy ways and proves his mettle with his brothers. Brockie continues to cause friction, despite Jessica's attempts to keep him out of trouble, becoming the catalyst for a brutal final shootout.

Between a nice visual style, characters with some depth, and mostly fine acting, this is one of the more interesting westerns of the classic era. Barbara Stanwyck (pictured) had staked a solid claim in the genre in 1950's intense psychological western THE FURIES; here, she is less showy but more realistic, and perfect in the part of the powerful woman whom you expect to be a one-note villain (especially when she is described in a barroom song as "a high-riding woman with a whip") but becomes anything but. John Ericson is believably scary as the out-of-control Brockie. The solid supporting cast includes Dean Jagger as a sheriff mostly under the control of Jessica (at one point she has to remind him, "I'm your boss, not your partner"), Gene Barry as Wes, Robert Dix as Chico, and Eve Brent as the gunsmith's daughter. I was less taken with Barry Sullivan as Griff—he's wooden and uncharismatic, and not worthy of Jessica. But he doesn't really hurt the movie much. The black & white cinematography is beautiful throughout and the climax is genuinely thrilling. Highly recommended. [Criterion Channel]