Man with the Gun (1955)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is an OK film. Yes, each cliché arrives on schedule, each caricature is present and correct, mostly with the recognisable face of a character actor you cannot quite name. Never mind, this is a western. Generally speaking most westerns conform to a formula that pretty much approximates a morality play. Whatever the ingredients good, in the form of a rugged individual, will overcome bad. The women may be innocent and young, world weary and embittered or careworn and wise (or desperate) but most, will love with the hero and one will ride off with him. Robert Mitchum, 'The Town Tamer', is as effective as always. Jan Sterling with the severely styled makeup and hairdo, over sized eyes and turned down mouth is oddly beautiful. Angie Dickinson is strikingly pretty in a small part. The fat baddie appears in child size buggy and duly meets his fate along with and his evil henchman. There are no surprises but it's a satisfying film for a lazy afternoon.

Pretty much a generic Western. Robert Mitchum is a gunfighter named Clint Tollinger who rides into the Western town of Sheridan looking for his estranged wife and daughter. The towns folk learn of his presence and try to hire him to protect them from the porcine Dade Holman and his gang of thugs. They live out of town on a ranch but Holman runs the town and his goons are responsible for a number of killings. The malicious minions include such familiar faces as Claude Akins and Leo Gordon.Okay, okay. This calls for another "gunfighter tries to hang up his guns but is drawn back into violence" plot. But, nope. Mitchum accepts a position as deputy from the impotent old sheriff, Henry Hull, with the proviso that his methods not be interfered with.Aside from Mitchum's nonchalant acceptance of the dangerous job of taming the town, this is a calculated plot, borrowing from both "Shane" and "High Noon," most notably the former. Emile Meyer (Riker in "Shane") is carried over, and so is the meeting of community leaders in which they argue about hiring Clint Tollinger.Some notable features of the movie. Karen Sharpe plays a young woman attracted to Mitchum, despite her engagement to the fiercely independent John Lupton. She's strikingly attractive despite the complete absence of a glabella. Her features are as sharp as her name. She's petite and innocent, true, but looks as if, under the proper conditions, she might eat you alive. Mitchum himself has given some powerful performances, as in "Night of the Hunter" and "Farewell, My Lovely." Here, he doesn't. He strides through the picture with his stomach held in and pistol butts protruding from every place of lodgment, his face as expressionless as those of Mount Rushmore. But a must-see is Brooklynite Ted DeCorsia imitating Lescaux, a villainous Frenchman from New Orleans. Not that New Orleans wasn't quite cosmopolitan at the time. Edgar Degas visited relatives there. During the Civil War, the light-skinned free black community was well educated and prosperous, and the city supported bilingual newspapers. But you ought to hear DeCorsia try to wrap his speech organs around a French accent. It never quite makes it to France but the attempt leads him by a curiously circuitous route through Middle Europe until it reaches someplace like Serbia, at which point the weather changes for the worst, the roads turn to glue, and the effort lurches to an embarrassing halt.The production values are minimal. The town of Sheridan lacks local color. There is no sense of community in its appearance. The only places of business we see are strictly functional. They have signs over the entrances on the order of "Hay and Grain" and "Marshall" and "Palace" and "Sheridan Hotel" and "Red Dog." That's not necessarily a weakness. Howard Hawks' Western ambiance was functional as well, but the towns look lived in. There were PEOPLE on the streets and potted plants in the hotel lobbies and Mexican blankets on the bunks. Here, it seems as if money was saved by not hiring enough atmosphere people. It's a ghost town. The same can be said of the interiors. They seem to have been built yesterday. When Mitchum slams a door behind him, a long vertical crack appears in the plaster next to the hinges. The wardrobe is generic and so is the make up. Mitchum's hair is thoroughly jelled and not a strand is out of place. Karen Sharpe wears a cunning 1950s pony tail.Beginning with the title, it's evident that not a great deal of effort was put into the production, despite the presence of some reasonably good talent before the cameras. "Clint Tollinger", eh? Nobody is named Clint Tollinger. I spent sixty-five months in the Library of Congress and there never, ever was a cowboy or gun hand named Clint, Cole, Wade, or Matt. As a matter of fact, the four most commons names were Ebeneezer and Gouverneur and Chesterfield and Cadbury. All these statements are incontestable although they are outright lies.Perversely, I liked the thing. There was an adult element, even if only hinted at. Mitchum actually ENJOYS killing thugs and burning down their establishments. His eyes glow with pleasure. I thought -- half-hoped -- that the movie would go in that direction but it decided to play safe. Nevertheless, a not-disappointing Western, like all rituals, a fixed point in a changing and depressing universe.

Leo Gordon, dressed in black, shoots a little boy's dog just because it barks at him. "Town tamer" Mitchum at one point runs amok in a saloon. There are some very mean characters in this psychological western, which at least does show that meanness is a major human psychological trait. It also has a pretty good, if brief, "catharsis" moment at the end.Terrific supporting cast- bombastic Henry Hull (Jesse James '39, Return of Frank James '50), excellent but underused Maidie Norman, and an early Claude Akins bad-guy performance. You are guaranteed to notice a very young Angie Dickinson (and her long legs).Mitchum manages to somehow humanize a wooden character but its just a thankless role. Barbara Lawrence is terrific and noticeable and far outshines a boring attempt at "drama" by Jan Sterling. Not really Sterling's fault- the character is written poorly.A good example of film music composition by North. It features a melodic main theme, but also a separate striking dramatic theme. Notice when he brilliantly overlays one theme over the other as Mitchum's character seems to be cracking up.This is a black-and-white set-bound psychological Western, which in other movies can be a formula for dullsville. However, "Man With The Gun" moves at a good pace and is made worthwhile by a great cast. You definitely will enjoy their performances.

"The Night of the Hunter" actor Robert Mitchum plays a tough town taming gunfighter in "Al Capone" director Richard Wilson's modest, but deceptive black & white, 83-minute western "Man with the Gun." Just about everything about this Sam Goldwyn Jr. production looks thoroughly ordinary, but the screenplay by N.B. Stone and Wilson contains layers of subtext that aren't immediately discernible with an initial viewing. Nobody gives a bad performance and the burly Mitchum is agreeably gruff and credible as Clint Tollinger. Westerns about town taming heroes were a dime-a-dozen when "Man with the Gun" came out in 1955. Wilson's freshman effort lacks the epic, widescreen grandeur of Edward Dmytrky's "Warlock" (1959) with Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, and Richard Widmark. Instead, "Man with the Gun" compares more favorably with the Sterling Hayden oater "Top Gun." Things get off to a quick start in "Man with Gun." Vicious gun tough Ed Pinchot (veteran heavy Leo Gordon of "Tobruk") rides into Sheridan City and shoots a dog on the street that is annoying him. The entire town is in an uproar over the shooting because it will frighten their customers. Later, a stranger in gray, Clint Tollinger (Robert Mitchum), appears in town on a horse with a loose shoe. He mends the shoe at Atkins Stable where he learns how to find Nelly Bain (Jan Sterling of "Ace in the Hole") who supervises the saloon girls. This arrangement is a little odd for a western. Nelly doesn't allow men in the door to see her girls and they are only available when they are dancing over at the Palace Saloon. An unsavory New Orleans bred hoodlum, 'Frenchy' Lescaux (Ted de Corsia of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"), runs the saloon for his partner Dade Holman. 'Frenchy' has a taste for the finer things in life and a $2-thousand chandelier hangs in the Palace. Tollinger and Nelly are old acquaintances and Tollinger has been following her. When he tries to contact Nelly, Nelly's maid (Maidie Norman of "Tarzan's Hidden Jungle") refuses to allow him to visit her—on Nelly's orders. Tollinger decides to stick around Sheridan City for a couple of days. While Tollinger is boarding his horse at Atkin's Stable, he runs into Doc Hughes (Florenz Ames of "The Deadly Mantis") and Doc is surprised to see him."You might call him a town doctor, too," Hughes confides in Saul Atkins (Emile Meyers of "The Line Up"), about Tollinger. "Ponca was a mighty sick town. Clint operated on it. The patient lost a lot of blood, but lived." A wealthy rancher, Dade Holman (Joe Barry of "Bell Book & Candle"), and his trigger-happy minions, particularly Ed Pinchot and Jim Reedy (Claude Atkins of "Merrill's Marauders"), have the town under their thumb. One dance hall girl remarks that they "have painted the town bright yellow." Nevertheless, a hot-headed young man, Jeff Castle (John Lupton of {"Rogue's March"), refuses to back down from Holman's gunslicks. He drives them off his property where he is building a house on land that he owns. Holman is dead set against Castle putting down roots. Meanwhile, the rebellious Castle feels that he must prove his masculinity to his childhood sweetheart Stella Atkins (Karen Sharpe of "The High and the Mighty") and she worries constantly about his welfare. After the town council agrees to hire Tollinger for $500, our hero establishes a midnight curfew for the saloons and prohibits the wearing firearms in the city limits. Naturally, 'Frenchy' Lescaux objects to these ordinances, but he willingly surrenders his knife to Tollinger. To give his actions some measure of legality, Tollinger is deputized by the local lawman, Marshall Lee Sims (Henry Hull of "Jessie James") who fixes him up with a contract with a non-intervention cause. Tollinger prefers to act alone and act fast because he feels that time is not on his side.The problem with Richard Wilson's "Man with a Gun" is that there is really nothing new, but he stages everything smoothly enough. In fact, if you look closely, most of everything occurs on sets that have interiors. People walk into and out of buildings and nothing appears to have been lensed on an interior soundstage which gives "Man with the Gun" a sense of authenticity. John Lupton has the best role and Emile Meyer is uncharacteristically cast against the grain as an honest, upright citizen with a daughter. The subplot about Tollinger following Nelly Bain around to learn about his daughter Beth and the failed relationship between Nelly and he is dramatic enough but rather lackluster. We learn that Clint Tollinger learned about guns early when his father was gunned down in cold blood in his own house and the house was burned while young Clint hid in the bushes. The irony here is that Tollinger's father never owned a gun.The chief problem is that we hear a lot about the lead villain, but we don't see him until the last five minutes of this dusty little oater. The Holman character doesn't stick around long either and he never utters a word. Holman's henchmen fare no better. For example, Joe Reedy tries to kill Tollinger with a derringer concealed in his sombrero, but the wily gunfighter is far ahead of him. In other words, the villains resemble ten-pins in a bowling ally with Mitchum's savvy gunfighter knocking them down with minimal effort. The shoot-out at the end isn't as good as the shoot-out with Reedy. The bad guys try to catch our hero in a cross-fire and he outsmarts them. The plotting of the last shoot-out, especially a mysterious tin-horn whiskey peddler role in it, gives it some depth. This city slicker fellow devises his plan based on Tollinger's gallantry to the women folk of Sheridan City. Angie Dickinson shines in a small role as a dance hall girl named Kitty. Essentially, Wilson remade "Man with a Gun" in 1962 in color with Yul Brynner in "Invitation to a Gunfighter."