The Tall Men (1955)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Just perfect...

i must have seen a different film!!

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.

One thing the auteur theorists seemed to overlook when analysing the classic and archetypal Westerns, is the fact that all those post-war greats directed by John Ford, from Fort Apache (1948) to Two Rode Together (1961), were written by the same person – Frank Nugent. However with The Tall Men, we have a Frank Nugent Western directed by Raoul Walsh, and lo and behold it features many of those themes often mistakenly described as Fordian, such as respect accorded to an aging gunfighter, and a hostile yet dignified portrayal of Indians. Still, not everyone directs alike, so this doesn't mean it will turn out exactly like one of the Ford horse operas.Of all Hollywood directors, probably no-one had quite the same affection for the West as Walsh did. Walsh always emphasised the openness and freedom of the plains in his achingly beautiful landscape shots. He contrasts these with a very confined and stripped-down look for his indoor or town-based scenes. He even creates a kind of artificial indoors, for example when Clark Gable and co. settle down after the first day of the cattle drive, with elements as simple as a sloping bank, a tree and a wagon, so as to give all that more impact when we return to the trail. Appropriately for the title of this one, he has his heroes stand tall against the landscape. Although Ford does many similar things (such as contrasting wide-open outdoors with cramped interiors) Ford's landscape scenes often have a slightly desperate, dangerous look to them, with the characters small and vulnerable against the vastness of the scenery, while his homesteads have a safe cosy feel. Walsh on the other hand makes the outdoors look inviting despite its dangers, whereas civilization is dull and restrictive. It's differences like this that bring the diverging characters to the two men's work.But why, you might ask, if Walsh is so good and he's got a Nugent script, is The Tall Man not a timeless classic like so many of the Ford post-war Westerns were? Well you have to remember Ford was a respected, award-winning director, whereas Walsh was these days a potboiler-man. Ford had access to better casts, better crews, bigger budgets, more flexible shooting-schedules, not to mention being more likely to get Nugent's finer scripts, and to be honest the Tall Men is far from Nugent's best. There's also the fact that Walsh is not on top form because he was not well-suited to the Cinemascope aspect ratio (something Ford managed to avoid for all his late Westerns). Walsh liked to compose in depth – landscape shots that emphasise distance, action moving towards the camera, dollying in for emphasis – and the extra width is fairly useless to him. He tends to frame the action towards the middle of the screen as if still using academy ratio, and as such his actors look a little overwhelmed, detracting from the impact they have on screen and sapping the romantic scenes of any intensity.Still, there is much to like about The Tall Men. Clark Gable may have been getting on a bit in years, but he has lost none of his rugged screen presence. Jane Russell is no great actress but she's a tough girl who looks like she belongs out on the trail by Gable's side. Walsh's depiction of the cattle drive sweeping across the plains is among the most breathtaking ever committed to celluloid, and the Victor Young score underpins the imagery with an appropriately sentimental theme. There are some superbly rousing actions scenes too, with a real emphasis on making the audience feel in the thick of it. And despite its not being the most thought-provoking thing Frank Nugent ever wrote, like all his Westerns it paints a convincing picture of larger-than-life heroes, and is imbued with all the roughness and nostalgia that has come to define the genre.

20 Century Fox's THE TALL MEN (1955) is one of their elaborate Cinemascope/colour westerns they were so expert at producing in the fifties. But let's not lose the run of ourselves altogether here for it's not really that good and there are some serious anomalies in the production. Besides a couple of blatant continuity problems, the screenplay by Sidney Boehm and Frank Nugent is unremarkable and quite pedestrian. But most importantly the direction by veteran Raoul Walsh is lame and unexciting. None of Walsh'e fifties movies are very interesting! This once great director of such forties classics as "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941), "Gentleman Jim"(1942), "White Heat" (1949) and his masterpiece "Objective Burma" (1945) appeared to have lost his creative punch in any of his later films. ( His final movie - a western called "A Distant Trumpet" (1964) was an unmitigated disaster!) However,THE TALL MEN is saved primarily by the screen presence of its star Clark Gable and also by the sparkling Cinemascope cinematography of Leo Tover plus the remarkable score by the great Victor Young.From a novel by Clay Fisher THE TALL MEN is the story of two brothers (Gable and Cameron Mitchell), late of the Confederate army, who arrive in Texas intending to make their fortune. They meet and hook up with a somewhat unscrupulous businessman (a surprisingly bland Robert Ryan in a poorly written role) and make a deal with him to drive 5000 head of cattle to Montana. Before the drive they rescue a feisty Jane Russell from the Indians and take her along on the journey resulting, of course, in Gable and Ryan vying for her affections. Along the trail there are some good action scenes when Gable and his Vaqueros take on a gang of Jayhawkers and fend off a well staged Indian attack near the picture's end.(A splendid set piece where the Vaqueros stampede the cattle into the path of the marauding Indians).This was Gable's first real "John Wayne" type western (There are even shades of Howard Hawks "Red River" and interestingly Hawks' younger brother William is producer on THE TALL MEN). Gable had dabbled in the genre before in movies like "Boom Town" (1940), "Across The Wide Missouri" (1951) and the excellent "Lone Star" (1952) but in THE TALL MEN and with dazzling panache he is the real deal herding cattle across the prairie. He had never before done this kind of movie and it suited him extremely well. It's a great pity he never did more of this type of western! (A later one - directed by Walsh again - the abysmal "The King & Four Queens" (1957) is best left in the obscurity it deserves). The supporting cast are uniformly OK with the only real drawback being Jane Russell! An actress I always found most irritating who - with her smart mouth and that snarl-like facial expression - never impressed me as the choice female in any movie. To me she was so unappealing and could emit about as much sex appeal as a Humpback Whale! So how Gable came to choose her as his leading lady is one of the great mysteries of life I guess! She just doesn't compliment him in the slightest! Someone like Susan Hayward or his old MGM co-star Ava Gardner would have been much more suitable!One of the most tangible aspects of the film is Victor Young's extraordinary music! The great composer of such hit tunes from his film scores as "My Foolish Heart", "Love Letters", "Stella By Starlight" ("The Uninvited") and "When I Fall In Love" (from "One Minute To Zero") was no stranger when it came to writing for the great outdoors of the American west. Among his music for westerns are such classics as "Wells Fargo" (1937), "Northwest Mounted Police" (1940),"Rio Grande" (1950), "Johnny Guitar" (1954) and most memorably "Shane" (1953). For THE TALL MEN he composed one of his finest themes for a western! First heard over the credits it is used later in the picture to point up the vast spectacle of 5000 cattle lumbering across the plains. With its appealing key changes and rich engaging orchestration this long loping piece is not only melodic but is wonderfully appropriate! The year after THE TALL MEN Victor Young passed away! He was only 56 years old! That same year he was posthumously awarded an Oscar for his magnificent score for "Around The World In 80 Days". During his career he was nominated 19 times. When he died he had just begun working on his score for a now forgotten film called "China Gate" and had only written the Main Title music. His friend Max Steiner stepped in and finished the score without pay. The music credit on "China Gate" reads "Music by Victor Young - Extended by his old friend Max Steiner".If you can overlook some of the glaring faults in THE TALL MEN like the slim screenplay, the uneven direction, some iffy performances, a couple of continuity problems and the presence of Miss Russell there is some enjoyment to be had from the movie thanks to the stunning widescreen cinematography, Young's awesome score and of course the inimitable Clark Gable strutting his stuff like never before.

There are times when I wonder whatever became of Westerns, especially when I see a film like 1955's THE TALL MEN. An aging Clark Gable and a young Cameron Mitchell are a pair of hell-for-broke brothers recently departed from the Confederate Army who hook up with a cattle baron (Robert Ryan, also beginning to show signs of age) to drive a herd from Texas to Montana. Jayhawkers, Indians and bad weather stand in their way. Gable will of course let nothing stand in his way. Along the route, they pick up a Southern gal (the ageless Jayne Russell) bound and determined to get to the promised land of California. While Russell is strictly window dressing in this one, you can see bits and pieces of the fiery federal agent she played so well in the two PALEFACE flicks with Bob "Painless Potter" Hope. Part of the beauty of this picture is the commanding presence of Gable, who while past his prime, is still tall in the saddle -- when it isn't his stuntman doing the riding. Mitchell is great as the hotheaded, boozing youngster, and it is fun to see him in this and then think of the many Westerns he would make in subsequent years, playing a rugged if not always honest cowpoke both in movies and TV. Ryan is Ryan, that is to say he is the same stalwart and stiff leading man he always played. He always reminded me of Robert Taylor, who also failed to age gracefully -- unlike, say, Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper, who after all were much better actors. But Ryan suffices here in a strictly secondary role to Gable. The studio worked from a rich script by Sid Boehm and crisp direction by veteran Raoul Walsh. The cinematography is outstanding, and the cattle drive itself is absolutely breathtaking. I don't want to begin to think about what it took to shoot the many scenes involving thousands of cattle and horses. This was an "A" production all around, the kind the studios often turned out throughout the latter half of the '50s to combat the (mis)perceived menace of TV. Ads for OPEN RANGE came on while I was watching this on AMC; that much more recent (and increasingly rare) Western starring Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner may be favorably compared to THE TALL MEN.

Great 1955 Western with plenty of horses and cattle traveling across great Western scenery and veteran super stars. Clark Cable,(Col.Ben Allison),"Band of Angels", is bound and determined to travel his cattle through Indian Country and a strong minded woman Jane Russell,(Nella Turner),"The Born Losers", who takes baths in her tub and taunts the men who look in her direction or even swimming in a brook. Robert Ryan, (Nathan Stark),"The Iceman Cometh" plays a tricky character that Col. Ben has to watch carefully and they get themselves into some difficult situations. Great film to enjoy from the 1950's with plenty of action, comedy, drama and romance. Jane Russell gives great female charm in almost every scene. Enjoy