Station West (1948)

Don't Believe the Hype

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I could never think of Dick Powell in a western, I knew him from a musical (42nd Street), comedies and as a director. But in this film he comes out well in the main role as Haven. He plays it as a Dashiell Hammett type of hero, like Sam Spade of "The Maltese Falcon", like Humprey Bogart in the West. The whole film follows the same style, including Jane Greer as Charlie, the beautiful villain. If you want to know what Burl Ives looks without a beard, here is your chance. He is the hotel clerk who creates the appropriate ballads. There is also Agnes Moorehead, an attractive woman (she was 48) , as the mine owner. The film requires an extra effort to follow the story as everything happens very fast.

Dick Powell, a favorite actor of the Noir genre, stars as military intelligence officer Haven, a smart aleck undercover investigator looking into the deaths of two soldiers. Everything appears, on the surface, to be fairly cut and dried, but a good script and excellent acting creates the moody atmosphere necessary to turn this unassuming western town into a darker place where things are not always as they seem. The plot is tight and the viewer should be prepared to pay attention lest she or he miss important plot points. Greer's performance is flawless, and even the actors who have few lines or quick cameos (Burr's performance comes to mind here), fully invest in their characters.The filming is rather innovative for the time, with realistic hand-held shots peeking through tree branches, at saddle level, or in the case of the aforementioned fight scene, employing angles that join Powell and Williams as they brawl on the dusty bar-lit road. Lanfield invites the viewer into the scene, creating a first person viewpoint that is entirely intimate.There are a few flaws in the writing, but on the whole, viewing Stations West is an excellent way to spend 80 minutes. Very entertaining!

In the movie they Might Be Giants, a delusional jurist explains that he loves westerns because they show the clear delineation between right and wrong, which is when I realized why I vastly prefer mysteries to westerns; I like a more complex world view in which the good and evil dichotomy is not so apparent.Station West is a rather unusual movie in that it looks like a western and has a western-themed score but in terms of story and acting is more akin to 40s tough-guy detective flicks, with more moral ambiguity than you'd see in a John Ford movie. It's not dark enough to be called film noir, but it has some of those elements, and the relationship of Haven and Charlie is very Hammett-Chandleresque.The movie is enjoyable and briskly paced, with good performances and decent dialog. At the same time, Powell is a bit too unsympathetic for me, with a fairly callous disregard for the results of his actions. And the plotting is a little lazy, with that convoluted, poorly explained style you get in most of the Philip Marlowe films. But if you like 40s detective movies this is a good bet.

In the Films of Dick Powell, it's pointed out that Powell had done a western only twice before in his musical period. Cowboy from Brooklyn and Riding High had modern western settings.Only Station West was done during Powell's time as a noir star and he brings the genre west with him. Done in the obligatory black and white photography, Station West is a moody atmospheric thriller.It's not a mystery because you pretty much know who the bad guys are early on. But it does show Powell's dogged determination to find out who committed a gold robbery in which two soldiers were killed while guarding the shipment.Powell gets good support from Jane Greer as town saloon owner, Agnes Moorehead as a mine owner, and Raymond Burr as a shyster attorney. Burr is a revelation. Usually the villains he did before doing Perry Mason are pretty strong characters. He's quite the weakling here.Powell never made another western feature film, but his Four Star Productions produced Zane Grey Theatre in the Fifties on television and Powell himself appeared in many of the half hour stories.