Virginia City (1940)

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I never fail to be moved by this Civil War western from 1940, ever since the first time I watched it on late night television with my father when I was in the seventh grade. Errol Flynn (representing the Union) around this time was on top form, and Randolph Scott, a native Virginian, is ideally suited for the role of Southern gentleman soldier.Miriam Hopkins, while a bit older than the usual leading lady in films of this period, is still very beautiful and is perfect as a Southern aristocrat fallen on hard times because of a war which is obviously being lost. Humphrey Bogart may at first seem a bit ridiculous as a Mexican bandit, but he could play the bad guy when he had to and you have to remember that this film was before Casablanca and his other great classics.The film does have some very corny lines, which it is hard to believe were not laughable even at the time it was made. However the score by Max Steiner is absolutely wonderful and helps to convey the sadness and desperation of both sides in early 1865. The courtroom scene towards the end with Errol Flynn, while probably not rooted in reality, is to me one of the actor's finer moments. And the portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, shown in shadow towards the end of the film, has always been my vision of Lincoln.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and written by Robert Buckner, this Warner Bros. drama features the unusual casting of Humphrey Bogart as a bandito named John Murrell, who unintentionally heals the conflict between Errol Flynn's Union Captain Kerry Bradford and Randolph Scott's Confederate Captain Vance Irby, after their Civil War moves west to Nevada's wild (and movie titled) outpost.Miriam Hopkins plays the conflicted Julia Hayne. As a saloon singer in the Northern leaning town, Julia conceals the fact that she's the daughter of a deceased Confederate colonel. Indeed, she's just proposed a plan to have Irby transport $5 million in gold from Confederate sympathizers, aka "Copperheads", in Nevada City to Jefferson Davis (Charles Middleton) and the nearly bankrupt Confederacy in the east.But after 21 days of riding back west in a stagecoach with Bradford, a Union spy who suspects that such a plan is in the works, and innocently falling in love with him, she has second thoughts. Still, she helps Irby capture Bradford, who's forced to ride on the very wagon train of gold he and his (comic relief) sidekicks (Alan Hale, of course, and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) were trying to stop.Murrell and his murdering gang of bandits intercept the convoy forcing North and South to join forces before the (cliché) cavalry shows up to save the day.Frank McHugh appears as another passenger on the westbound coach; John Litel, Douglas Dumbrille, Moroni Olsen, Dickie Jones, Russell Simpson, and Victor Kilian (as the unmistakable voice of Abraham Lincoln, no less) also appear among the credited cast while Ward Bond and Charles Halton are among the dozens of uncredited actors in the cast.

When I was a child back in the 1950s, Westerns were the big thing. But, like the rest of America, as I grew older I gave up watching Westerns...except for once in a while when a Western came along with big stars, high production values, and a story that was a little different. This film has all those qualities.Let's begin with the cast. Errol Flynn was in his prime years when he made this film, and it's obvious why he was such a tremendous star. Miriam Hopkins, who is either really good or really lousy in each of her films, is very good here as a Southern belle working to save the Confederacy (type casting? She was a native of Savannah, Georgia). Randolph Scott is excellent as the Confederate who is attempting to ship gold back to Richmond to save the Confederacy. Humphrey Bogart, unfortunately, is terribly miscast as a stagecoach robber who gets mixed up in the Confederates versus Yankees, but this was just one year before he hit it big with films such as "The Maltese Falcon". Frank McHugh is here, although one wonders why...but at least he is not as annoying as he sometimes was. Alan Hale is great as Flynn's sidekick...perhaps only second (next to Gabby Hayes) as sidekicks go. Even the minor players do well here.Then there's the history of what is really a mix of a Civil War story and a Western. The early part of the film at the prison in Richmond is fairly accurate, although Richmond doesn't have moss hanging from the trees, and the river that flows through the city doesn't look like that at all. But much of the info about he prison is pretty close to real history.Production values here are very high. The scenes in red rock country -- what a shame they weren't filmed in color! And then there's the plot, which is on the unique side! Randolph Scott and his cohorts trying to bring western gold to the Confederacy in Richmond, versus Errol Flynn and his cohorts trying to stop them. And in the middle, a woman (naturally)...Miriam Hopkins. Hopkins proves she couldn't sing, but she had pretty nice legs...way up there! And, interestingly, the rebels are portrayed fairly -- as people who are simply on the other side of the tragedy of the Civil War.This is a rip-snortin' Western well worth watching and having on your DVD shelf...particularly because of Errol Flynn in his prime.

It has been said, "a city on hill cannot hide itself" and Virginia City, Nevada, perched on the side of Mt. Davidson at 6200 ft. west of Tahoe, is a prime example, or in the context of the movie, should be. Virginia City exploded in the American dream as a shower of gold and silver, suspiciously the same year the Civil War began. It was the birthplace of the dean of American letters; it was where a young reporter named Samuel Clemens began using the name "Mark Twain" and went on to become America's most famous writer. It was also the birthplace of the great Hearst fortune, and the launching pad of John Mackay, who became the wealthiest man in America, the third wealthiest man in the world. Hey, they should have made the movie about him! In the 1860's Virginia CIty was THE boomtown of all boomtowns, the home of the big bonanza, at one time the largest "metropolitan" area west of St. Louis and East of San Francisco. But Virginia City (the movie) misses all that and is more about a hogwash North/South duello between the characters played by Errol Flynn and Randolph Scott. Flynn is Capt. Kerry Bradford, a Union officer who is a POW in a concentration camp run by a mean Confederate commander named Capt. Vance Irby, played by Scott. These two are always getting in each other's way. Bradford escapes and then tries to stop a shipment of gold bullion being "snuck" out of VC by who else other than . . . Irby! "Hey, what's he doing here!?" Horrible. Bogart plays a laughable Mexican bandit who can't decide who's side he's on. Miriam Hopkins plays a murky character named "Julia Hayne", obviously a historical lunge at the town's first lady, Julia Bulette, who in real life a celebrated prostitute. She goes to Washington and talks Honest Abe about saving BRADFORD (not Irby) from hanging and blah blah blah. Go figure. They shoulda hung the writer. In "real life" Twain reports that on the last day of the War, the setting sun caused the American flag atop Mt. Davidson to appear to the puzzled residents to be weirdly on fire, kind of like the movie. Three days later they discovered that on that day the South capitulated. One interesting quirk in the film is how sidekicks Alan Hale and Guin Williams flick their pistols forward when they shoot, like they're fishing, or trying to make the bullets go faster. Not a bad idea for the movie. The same kind of goofiness is lathered over sap and corn throughout the movie. Gosh, how could they miss the gold madness, profligate wealth, gun battles in the silver mines, Mark Twain getting run out of town and beat up after a showdown, the crooked railroad, the Opera House fire, Artemis Ward, Bulette's huge funeral, the Chinese tongs, the black saloons, the Auction . . ? All this high on a mountain surrounded by desert? The truth was unreal. Did its fabulous wealth actually spark the great American holocaust? Well, if you count this movie, it wouldn't be the first debacle to come out of Virginia City. It's a disappointment for Virginia City fans because it misses what made the town a "city of illusions," where it is said evil seeps out of the ground . . . Okay, other than that it's a fun movie. Flynn and the gang are always great no matter what history they're destroying. If Flynn would just play his rotten self I'd double my rating.