Rawhide (1951)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Powerful

Best movie of this year hands down!

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A 1951 Western from Henry Hathaway starring Tyrone Power & Susan Hayward whereby a group of men hold hostage an employee & passengers at a stagecoach depot awaiting to rob an impending gold shipment. Shot in black & white & scripted by the always reliable Dudley Nichols (he wrote a few pictures for John Ford) this ultimately original take on a Western is by turns gripping & gasp inducing w/a satisfying ending on the horizon.

More suggestive of such dark western films of the late 1940s as Pursued, than romantic brawlers by Hathaway like North To Alaska etc, this film is taut and suspenseful, well-acted and shot - just as one might expect from one of the great Hollywood studio professionals. In hindsight, it is obvious that the origins of Rawhide can be found in the director's earlier career, when he was involved with the noir cycle. After helming such classics as Kiss Of Death, and Call Northside 777, only a few short years before, it was natural for Hathaway to bring something of the same sensibility to an oater.Rawhide is scripted by Dudley Nichols who worked for John Ford among others, over a prestigious writing career. The story is a relatively simple one: a junior way station employee Tom Owens (Tyrone Power), and a woman Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward), with her sister's child, are held captive by a small band of prison-escapees who are waiting to rob a gold shipment. Playing husband and wife to maximise their survival chances, Owens and Holt have to find a way to escape the vigilant and murderous ringleader Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) as well as warn the approaching stage. Further down the cast list there is also a splendidly evil part for Jack Elam as the deadly and lascivious Tevis, with eyes on Holt.Interestingly, the main action of the film is book-ended by a jaunty narrator, putting events into an historical context. This is a tale taken from the annals of the 'Jackass Mail', we are assured, a famous postal service which defied sceptics of the time to triumphantly link San Francisco and Saint Louis. But then the story shifts abruptly, to just a few people in the middle of nowhere, one of whom (Owens) has even yet to learn the business properly.After this step change, as trumpeted, 'Jackass Mail' appears just so much romantic hyperbole. It's the events at the way station which come to dramatise actual truths about convincing characters, even if they are often at a loss to control events. The irony is that, due to Nichols' skills as a dramatist and fine performances, we end up likely viewing the alleged history behind events as so much Hollywood window dressing, while the predations of the Zimmerman gang seem by far the more vivid and realistic. The 'real history' of sorts is displaced.As already mentioned, Hathaway's movie recalls the director's assignments earlier in his career. But Rawhide was also a modern, and for its time, relatively adult western attempting rounded characterisation. In a dramatic scheme familiar to the genre, character concerns regularly develop indoors while critical physical action is reserved for the open air. It's a film in which room-space in general, and doors in particular, play an important part. Players are confined within rooms, are repeatedly framed through, or walk back and forth, even die, in doorways; they spark off among themselves in a side room or the communal living area, while outside they rarely stray far.Once the Zimmerman gang arrive claustrophobia increases - a feeling helped by a sense that each room is really three-dimensional, closed in with a ceiling (reinforced by one noteworthy Citizen Kane-ish shot near the beginning). Doors and walls are uniformly sturdy, due to a fine location choice, in part of a real building. This way station offers an increasingly prison-like atmosphere - coming to a head as Owens and Holt ultimately attempt to tunnel out through the wall. In some senses, of course, the station is a penitentiary for everyone: whether for the Zimmerman gang, who have merely transferred their former penal relationships into a different setting or Vinnie Holt, wrongly condemned as an unmarried mother travelling with child to escape society's sanction, or Owens - whose restrictions means he cannot easily warn the approaching gold stage.The most interesting character in Rawhide is that of Vinnie Holt - stranded, with child, through company regulation. In a genre where women-kind are too often divided into contrasting or opposing stereotypes, of nice girl/ whore, bar girl/ respectable wife, and so on, Holt is more rounded, less dependent on the approval of others in general, and men in particular. A woman who is at first wrongly assumed to be of dubious virtue, lusted after by Tevis, and distrusted by Zimmerman, she is jealously protective of her sister's child, to the extent of being less bothered by other issues. Even before her true history is known, she gains the audience's respect through this single-minded independence, respect eventually matched by that of her temporary 'husband' Owens. Eventually she and he end up as a team for the mutual benefit of both, not coming together through easy romantic attachment. One feels it is a stronger bond and, given the nature of frontier life, a more likely one. Hayward's rare appearance in a western can be judged a success.The bond which grows between Owens and Holt, based on mutual respect, is in contrast to that connecting the Zimmerman gang. United by a dubious common background, the need to escape, greed, and respect enforced by fear, it is a union which is doomed to sunder. Zimmerman himself is allegedly unable to trust women (and in fact has been sentenced for killing one) after a tortured personal history. As Tevis says to him: "I ain't been cured of women... ain't had your medicine yet, Jim" - recognising that Zimmerman is unlikely to ever form a proper relationship with the wider world and implying that female-kind is some sort of sickness. Tevis himself has a brutal, leering fixation on the fairer sex, another direct contrast to Owens' basic decency and moral strength. Out of Zimmerman's confederates, only Yancy (Dean Jagger) has any strong humanity. It is a trait which, appositely enough; means he will survive.

Rawhide is a moderately suspenseful hostage drama with polished direction, great location filming, and a fine cast.Tyrone Power is a likable if somewhat bland hero.On the other hand, Susan Hayward's character was kind of annoying in the beginning but softens a bit as the film progresses. I wish the writers would have made her a strong independent woman without making the character look like a brat.Hugh Marlowe is an excellent actor but I didn't find him a very convincing villain, even an an outlaw banker! Then again, it's probably my own fault in that I can't look at him without thinking of him as the hero in Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers. One scene where he delivered was when he was pretending to be a lawman, talking to the newspaper reporter and he had to fight back his anger at the men who were gossiping about his treacherous personal life.A young and lanky Jack Elam steals the show as a dangerous (and lecherous) member of Marlowe's gang. He's great in this!Overall, this is a decent studio western with an entertaining twist filled climax.Also, I'd advise viewers who haven't watched this to please skip the trailer as it gives away the ending of the picture!

Watched this again on the new DVD released & all I can say is WOW, I was impressed. This film has vaulted into my top 20 Westerns.First of all from beginning to end its hitting on all cylinders. This is a Stage Station film in the tradition of "The Tall T" & "Comanche Station" of the later Bud Boetticher/Randolf Scott Ranown series, all of the action takes place in the stage station and its immediate surroundings.The opening sequences of a stagecoach crossing the rugged barren wilderness including shots of it passing through snowbound passes are just spectacular. The Black & White cinematography is gorgeous, and add to that the historically accurate use of a team of mules pulling it makes this film one of the best portrayals of stage travel I've seen. Even the stagecoach itself is adorned with a "headlight" type lantern for night travel.This is one of those films where you learn some bits of Western lore, its a good example of what was prevalent in that "golden age" of the Western 1950 -1971 when the audience through both films like this and the abondanza of Westerns on TV were inundated with things western where you were in the aggregate going to a sort of "Western University". Its a knowledge that is getting lost now and a good example is the illogical stupidity and implausible scenarios in the recent remake of 3:10 to Yuma.But I've been digressing. Lets get back to Rawhide.Care is also taken to show how the arriving team of mules is changed out for a fresh team. For those who are not familiar with western staglines most stage stops "stations" were located between 15 to 20 miles apart so that fresh teams could replace the arriving team. Each tandem of driver & shotgun made a run of about 100 miles a day, so they would go through between 5-7 stage stops in a shift. At some stage stations they had lunch or dinner for the passengers, All the aspect of working a stage station was depicted spot on. The set is perfect.Dir Henry Hathaway does an impressive job in this film, his shots and compositions are beautiful & all the actors are convincing. This film boasts Edgar Buchanan's finest performance as Stationmaster Sam Todd, and Jack Elam is his creepiest as Treviss, Tyrone Power is Tom Owens, Susan Hayward as Vinne Holt a tough ex-saloon singer turned protector/surrogate mother of her dead sisters daughter, Hugh Marlow as the gang leader, George Tobias as Gratz, and a great performance by Dean Jagger as the slow on the uptake "one horse horse thief" Yancy. Its got a very well integrated low key un-intrusive to the story "love interest" between Power & Hataway a good example of they way it should be handled in all Westerns.This film should be in anybodies Western Collection, 8/10 or better.