Union Pacific (1939)

How sad is this?

Admirable film.

A Masterpiece!

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It has plenty of action, a love story, an exciting race between two railroads, skulduggery, good production values, marauding Indians, thoroughly stereotyped characters, and an absence of anything that might suggest unpredictability or ambiguity -- what's not to like? It's the post Civil War West and the Union Pacific Railroad is being built chiefly by Irish labor across the plains to Utah, where it will meet the Central Pacific being built from San Francisco. The race is on. A banker bets on the Central Pacific covering more ground and hires a gang of thugs including boss Brian Donlevy and Robert Preston to sabotage the Union Pacific's efforts. In turn, the Central Pacific's bankers hire a troubleshooter, McCrea. This pits McCrea and the Central Pacific against Donlevy, Preston, and a scrubby cabal of miscreants. In historical fact -- which is completely irrelevant to this movie -- the whole affair was mired in corruption. It led to the age of the Robber Barons. One of them held a monopoly on railroad ties and accumulated a sufficient fortune to establish the university which I was privileged to attend.McCrea is his usual all-American self. He wears his sixguns with their carved keratic handles in a cross draw. Preston, a mustachioed companero from the Union Army, is light-hearted and playfully criminal. Preston is deeply in love with Barbara Stanwyck, a railroad brat with an Irish accent. The true-blue McCrea falls in love with her too. Both men survive the savage Indian attack on a wrecked train, and only one of them lives through the final confrontation. Guess who survives and who dies with a few last words of remorse on his lips.Here's an example of the movie's values. McCrea has just been hired to straighten things out. He's aboard a train chugging West. He's wearing a neatly pressed cowboy shirt with a string tie. Also, though McCrea doesn't know it, some of his fellow passengers are members of Donlevy's gang. They wear SUITS. A Sioux Indian is happily racing his pony alongside the train, whooping and waving in a friendly way. One of the suits bets that the Indian can be picked off with one rifle shot. The suit wins. The Indian tumbles from his horse, dead. McCrea, seeing this, is inflamed. He dashes over and deals out punishment. The punishment consists of a fist fight that the suit loses. The suit falls from the train and is left behind, brushing off the dust and scowling. That's the punishment for murdering an Indian. And what's the logic behind the punishment? "That man didn't just kill an Indian -- he killed half a dozen white men working on the railroad." A similar story was told in John Ford's 1924 production, "The Iron Horse," but this is equally enjoyable. Ford's movie was a silent, and George Bancroft was full of muscles but not as likable as Joel McCrea. Stanwyck should stay away from roles calling for an Irish accent. But I liked this quite a lot. I don't want my thoughts provoked too often anyway. Sometimes, the simpler the better, even to the point of simple mindedness.

It's not a bad film but it's too long. Man, at 136 minutes this is tough to sit through although if you can make it to the halfway point, you are way ahead of the game because the slowest part is the first half.Barbara Stanwyck was still young, fresh-looking and spunky and I enjoyed her. Robert Preston seemed to be the most natural of the male leads. Joel McCrea seemed a little stiff in his delivery. Brian Donlevy was good as always.What detracted me from enjoying this movie was the dated special-effects. Every time somebody was on something that was moving - a horse, wagon carts, trains, etc - it really looked hokey. Obviously, they were in a studio with a screen behind them. It was so phony it made the film lose credibility. The classic movies that hold up better, generally speaking, are the ones that don't rely too much on realism, action-wise.

DeMille's railroading epic owed a debt or two to Ford… He was obviously influenced by "The Iron Horse"(1924) and there are some sequences which seem more than derivative—in fact, they are remarkably similar… But it was a film that nevertheless deserved the warm reception that it got…Here was Joel McCrea in fine form with something more worthy of his talents… McCrea played a trouble-shooter whose task was to keep the transcontinental project moving… Barbara Stanwyck played opposite as a railroad fiery Irish post-mistress of the mobile railway town…Robert Preston, gambler, a one time pal of McCrea's, is now in the employ of another gambler, Brian Donlevy, and they have been hired as saboteurs by a railroad politician secretly trying to impede the progress of the building of the Union Pacific…Stanwyck didn't really come amiss in an all-out action mixture that took in disorderly and noisy railroad workers, turbulent frontier types of both sexes, con men, outlaws and a generous helping of Indians…"Union Pacific" was undoubtedly great fun although perhaps embarrassingly patriotic… But, in perspective, it is dwarfed by another film which appeared the same year and which had a profound and far-reaching influence on the course of Westerns…John Ford had returned to the form after 13 years abstinence… John Wayne, who had been languishing in 'B' Westerns since making "The Big Trail," was back once more in a main feature starring role…The film was the immortal "Stagecoach" which was to set all sorts of standards for Westerns to be

Amidst the glamour of "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz", this b&w Cecil B. DeMille Historical Fiction Classic received its share of eager 1939 movie theatre audiences. Starring a wholesome Irish immigrant Barbara Stanwyck, a noble law man Joel McCrae and a dashing dare devil Robert Preston, "Union Pacific" delivers a love-triangle centered around the historic 1869 joining of rail road tracks to connect the Western and Eastern borders of the United States. The love story is "formula", but delivers several "moments" where many viewers will fumble for their Kleenex. The climactic final scene showing the pay-off for all of the material and human sacrifices is priceless!The very last of DeMille's b&w ventures, Union Pacific is one of those gems that endured the test of time, endearing the "glorious black and white" to generations of viewers. I first saw this classic as a child; I loved it then, as I still do today. Of all of the Hollywood movies ever produced, no single year of film-making has ever stood out from the rest like 1939. "Union Pacific" helped solidify this status. A true Hollywood Classic!