The French New Wave directors loved a bit of auteur machismo and they loved Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns, a tough, lean and smart western with lots to say and a pitiless logic that’s very un-Hollywood. Do not expect a happy ending.
It’s filmed in CinemaScope and Fuller lets us know that immediately. Right after the 20th Century-Fox fanfare and before the opening credits there’s an opening shot of a massively wide panorama, followed by the entrance of a woman in black riding on a white stallion and in her thundering wake 40 (ish) men also on horseback. We have met Jessica Drummond, played by Barbara Stanwyck, the local rancher who is the alpha female of this region.
We’ve also, economically, met the film’s other key players, three guys in a horse-drawn buggy who get caught up in the middle of this onrush. These are a trio of brothers – Griff, a onetime gunfighter now doing federal government business, accompanied by younger, prettier Wes and wet-behind-the-ears whelp Chico. In a John Ford film they’d be played by John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, but here it’s Barry Sullivan (the fighter), Gene Barry (the lover) and Robert Dix (the kid).
In a sketchy plot that’s really allegorical, what little action there is centres on the attempt to rein in lawlessness, represented by Brockie Drummond (John Ericson), brattish brother of the iron-hard Jessica, a ne’er-do-well who we meet drunk out of his skull and shooting up the town. The marshal can’t do it (he’s half blind), the sheriff won’t do it (he’s in the pocket of Jessica Drummond) and so it falls to new arrivals Griff and co to step up, take down the miscreant and bring law and order to this outpost of the old west.
Forty Guns moves like lightning and is only 80 minutes long, but as well as a story about the end of an era – both Jessica and Griff explicitly acknowledge that they are relics of a dead world – it also packs in a little treatise on what it means to be a man. Stand-up guy Griff versus weaselly Sheriff Ned Logan; eager, decent Chico versus spoiled, drunken Brockie.
Female ranchers aren’t that common in westerns, and female gunsmiths even rarer, but Eve Brent plays the film’s other strong woman, Louvenia Spanger, the town gunsmith’s daughter, a crack shot in her own right and a fount of knowledge on all things gun-related. Louvenia is also a feisty and pretty blonde, and has soon caught the eye of Wes, who has also realised that the old ways are gone for ever and that it’s probably time for men like him to settle down.
But can men like Griff and Wes (Chico is too young) simply escape their past? Fuller answers the question with a metaphorical mighty storm suddenly whipping up from nowhere, which catches both Jessica and Griff unaware, throws them together and seals their fate.
The storm is impressively done, considering CGI was decades in the future, but then the technicals in this film are all impressive. Fuller had 1,000 feet of track built for one extended dolly shot through the entire town. Joseph Biroc’s cinematography is elegant and unshowy and Harry Sukman’s score dramatic without getting declamatory.
The performances are good all round, with Sullivan initially a bit wobbly but settling into the groove once the town’s marshal (Hank Worden, seriously bad) has been shuffled off the stage. Stanwyck is Stanwyck – butch and blunt – but the surprise of the film is Dean Jagger as the seriously compromised Sheriff, a performance that’s a little one-man tragedy, almost a film within the film.
You can argue about the ending, which packs a hell of a lot of resolution into a very short space, and upends quite a lot of what we thought we were expecting. Another ten minutes and things might have felt more organic, less rushed.
And you can argue about the film’s working title, High Ridin’ Woman, also the title of a song we hear twice. Is it really about her? Isn’t it about Griff? There’s a lot in here, and it’s really worth watching more than once. Those French New Wavers were usually right.
PS – the Criterion Blu-ray (linked to below) is really top notch.
Forty Guns – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
