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Jesse James

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Jesse James (1939)

January. 14,1939
|
7
|
NR
| Western
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After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.

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BootDigest
1939/01/14

Such a frustrating disappointment

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InformationRap
1939/01/15

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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Ariella Broughton
1939/01/16

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

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Juana
1939/01/17

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.

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ma-cortes
1939/01/18

Spectacular as well as exciting Western talks the lives of Jesse and Frank James ; featuring notorious interpretations by a popular group of known stars . This is a slight and intelligent biopic about Jesse James who ranks with Billy the Kid as the most famous of Western outlaws . Legend and folklore have cast him as a Robin Hood , a good boy forced by circumstances to follow a criminal life . The picture provides a good portrait of Jesse and his band , as they move from Civil War to there territory becoming into semi-legends . As showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill's raiders and his career of banditry . As Jesse (Tyrone Power) and Frank (Henry Fonda) along with cousins Cole , Bob and Jim Younger return from War to find their mommy (Jane Darwell) and family threatened by railway people . As Barshee (Brian Donlevy) was hired by the railroad company run by Mc Coy (Donald Meek) to hunt down Jesse and Frank . So James Brothers commence to robbin' banks and trains to help out the poor folks who been done wrong . In the course of their revenge , they will become the object of the biggest manhunt in the history of the Old West . Along the way , Jesse courts attractive young , Zerelda (Nancy Kelly) . As their fame grows, so will the legend of their leader, a young outlaw by the name of Jesse James . At the end , he is betrayed by the Ford brothers , Charlie and Bob (John Carradine) . This is a sprawling and glamorous Western with excellent performances from Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda . The film gets spectacular shoot em'up , thrills , exciting horse pursuits . A glimmer Western with a wild bunch look-alike that ends up into a fateful final . Packs colorful scenarios, moving pace and slick edition . This is a decent look about the known story of the West's greatest bandit , Jesse James , along with Frank , Cole Younger and brothers with acceptable performances and compelling direction creating some good action scenes . The picture shows nice as well as spectacular frames , as when both Jesse and Frank going off the cliff on horseback , in reality the stunt was performed once and shot with two cameras. After the two horses that were blindfolded and forced to go over a cliff were killed, a new rule was enforced and later endorsed by The Humane Society of America in which strict standards were created to protect Animal Actors in which at the end of the movie and added to the credits listed as "No Animals Were Harmed or Injured in the Production of this Film" ; now all films involving any Animal Actors must have present a member representing The Humane Society of America to insure that all animals are treated humanly and given a safe environment in which to work. As originally conceived by screen writer Nunnally Johnson along with contributing writers as Curtis Kenyon , Long and Gene Fowler . Taut excitement throughout , beautifully photographed by George Barnes and W. Howard Greene . The motion picture was well realized by Henry King . It was followed by a sequel : ¨The return of Frank James¨ (1950) by Fritz Lang with Henry Fonda . Other films about this legendary outlaw are : ¨I shot Jesse James¨ by Samuel Fuller with John Ireland as Bob Ford ; ¨Jesse James vs the Dalton (1954)¨ by William Castle with John Ireland . ¨The true story of Jesse James¨ (1957) by Nicholas Ray with Robert Wagner , Jeffrey Hunter , Hope Lange , Agnes Moorehead ; in which footage from the original 1939 production was used when Frank and Jesse go over a cliff on horseback into a river and when they crashed , on horseback, through a store window during the "Northfield Minnesota Raid" . And contemporary-style Western such as ¨Frank and Jesse¨ by Robert Boris with Rob Lowe as Jesse James , Bill Paxton as Frank James and Randy Travis as Younger ; ¨American outlaws¨ by Les Mayfield with Colin Farrell , Gabriel Macht , Terry O'Quinn , Harris Yulin and Ali Larter ; and ¨The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford¨ (2007) by Andrew Dominik with Brad Pitt , Sam Shepard , Mary Louise Parker , Casey Affleck and Sam Rockwell. The picture lavishly produced by Darryl F Zanuck was based on actual events , these are the followings : At the war's end in 1865 , Jesse rode in to surrender and was shot and seriously wounded by a Union soldier . Jesse and his brother joined the Confederate guerrillas of Quantrill and learned to kill in ruthless company . It is believed that Jesse took part in his first robbery in 1866 when a dozen men held up the bank in Liberty , Missouri . A bank cashier was killed in the raid and a reward was offered for each of the James brothers . In 1873 Jesse and his band derailed and robbed a train on the Rock Island line . Jesse married his cousin Zerelda , who bore him two children . Pinkerton detectives were contracted to chase Jesse and Frank , the agents surrounded the home , believing they to be there , tossed a bomb and the explosion killed Jesse's young half-brother . This outrage brought much sympathy for the brothers . On 1876 Jesse and Frank in company the three Younger Brothers , attempted a bank robbery at Northfield , Minnnesota , and walked in disaster . The alerted citizens opened fire on the raiders , of the eight bandits involved , three were killed and three Younger brothers were captured .

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James Hitchcock
1939/01/19

There are certain similarities between "Jesse James" and "They Died with Their Boots On", another Western from two years later. Both films are loosely based on the life of a legendary hero of the Old West, James here and General Custer in the supporting film. (At least, the films treat their subjects as heroes; whether either man really deserves that title is another matter). Both feature a famously handsome and dashing star in the leading role. Both are notorious for their historical inaccuracy and gloss over many aspects of their subjects' lives, especially their character flaws. And in both films the main villains are the representatives of a corrupt railroad company; during the era of the "New Deal" Hollywood seems to have been more critical of Big Business than it was to become after the war. The film's departures from historical fact are many and varied; some are major, others minor. Among the minor discrepancies; James's killer Robert Ford was much younger than the character played here by John Carradine. The maiden name of James's wife Zerelda (known as Zee) was Mimms, not Cobb. James and Zee were first cousins, but this fact is omitted from the script, possibly because cousin marriage, quite common in the America of James's day, had been banned in many states by 1939. More seriously, James's mother (also named Zerelda- her niece was named after her) was not killed by agents of the railroad as shown here. In fact, she outlived her son by many years, dying in 1911 at the age of 86. In the film it is this incident which forces Jesse and his brother Frank, previously honest, law-abiding young men, into a life of crime as they can see no other way of getting justice for their mother's death. In reality, the brothers began their life of crime as "bushwhackers", pro-Confederate irregulars during the Civil War, but the political aspects of their career are totally ignored by the film. The standard of acting tends to vary. Nancy Kelly makes a rather weak, simpering Zee, but the most annoying actor in the film must be Henry Hull as Zee's uncle Rufus, an elderly and comically eccentric newspaper editor. (The Annoying Old Man became a stock comic figure in Westerns; "They Died with Their Boots On" has another example in the figure of California). There is a running joke about how Rufus is always running the same editorial in his paper insisting that the only solution to the problems of the West is to take some group of people and "shoot them down like dogs", the only difference being the identity of the group which Rufus wants shot. (Politicians, lawyers, dentists, railroad executives). This sort of comic relief does not sit well with the generally serious, at times tragic, tone of the film, and seems particularly inappropriate in a film made in 1939, a year in which the leaders of Germany and Russia were, in all seriousness, advocating collective murder as the solution to all the world's problems. The two male leads, however, are splendid, their different styles of acting complementing each other well. Tyrone Power plays Jesse as the more dashing, hot-headed and impetuous of the two brothers, while Henry Fonda's Frank is the calmer and more level-headed. There is also a good contribution from Randolph Scott as Marshal Will Wright, the lawman investigating the crimes of the James gang. Marshal Wright is something of a morally ambiguous character; on the one hand he is a liberal who sees the James brothers as being as much sinned against as sinning and who is concerned that they receive a fair trial, unlike the railroad company who would prefer to see them lynched. On the other hand, there is an implication that he may be motivated as much by a romantic interest in Zee as by any abstract concern for justice. "Jesse James" was made in Technicolor at a time when black-and-white was very much the rule rather than the exception. This suggests that the studio intended it to be a grand, spectacular movie, and to some extent they succeeded in this. It's not quite "Gone with the Wind", but it contains a lot more in the way of action sequences than do most films from the thirties, and some of them stand out, particularly the train robbery and the raid on the bank at Northfield. Nobody would go to a film like this for a history lesson, at least not if you wanted a lesson about the life of Jesse James himself, although today films like this do, if only inadvertently, perhaps offer us a lesson about the period during which they were made. "Jesse James" today can be seen as a highly entertaining example of the way in which Hollywood sought to mythologise America's past and to provide folk- heroes for what was still a relatively young nation. This film might not show Jesse James as he was in real life, but it certainly shows him as people preferred to remember him. 7/10

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wes-connors
1939/01/20

Following the US Civil War, attention is turned to the building of the country's trans-continental railroads. Unfortunately, the technological advances mean America must throw many nice families off their land. Wicked government officials hit innocent children (like George Breakston) and cause sweet mamas (like Jane Darwell) to burn alive in their homes. This understandably turns peaceful, law-abiding citizens into notorious, vengeful criminals. Missouri farm-boy Tyrone Power (as Jesse James) and his tobacco-spitting brother Henry Fonda (as Frank James) form "The James Gang" and target the trains that killed their Ma...Basically a kind-hearted man, "Jesse James" would like to settle down with the Mayor's nice niece Nancy Kelly (Zerelda "Zee" Cobb) and loyal family retainer Ernest Whitman (as "Pinkie"), but his past criminal lifestyle threatens everyone's future happiness. This story and follow-ups beginning with "The Return of Frank James" (1940) glamorize the criminals, which should come as no surprise. Strikingly handsome co-stars, beautiful Technicolor and great action made "Jesse James" a big hit. One of the stunts (the escape sequence ending over a cliff) proved harmful to horses and resulted in more care given to such matters.******* Jesse James (1/13/39) Henry King ~ Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly, Henry Hull

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gazzo-2
1939/01/21

*Great technicolor print. Enjoyable thruout.*James is treated as a Robin Hood, he was anything but-he was Civil War guerilla fighter in some of the nastier borderlands action around. But Hollywood couldn't Say that back when. The lead Cannot be 'bad'. So...*Powers and Fonda are very good as the James Brothers. Didn't show enough of Fonda to be honest.*The Northfield Raid was handled well.*Henry Hull as the cranky editor was a riot.*Interesting to see both Brian Donlevy and Brian Donlevy given such small roles.*Didn't see Cheney Jr. in there.*The horse off the cliff stunt was eye-catching.*You'll enjoy it though you know you are watching Hollywood hokum.*** outta ****

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