Passage West (1951)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I've seen many movies starring John Payne and Dennis O'Keefe and I have to say I found their performances in PASSAGE WEST among the strongest of their careers. Payne plays a hardened escaped convict serving time for murder, who leads a pack of five other runaway cons in taking over a wagon train of settlers heading to California. The leader of the train is a minister played by O'Keefe, who is first seen conducting a funeral service for a boy who died during the journey. Payne runs roughshod over the wagon train and jeopardizes the settlers' lives with some rash commands, earning O'Keefe's undisguised contempt. Gradually, however, the men's relationship shifts, eventually reaching a point of trust and grudging respect. The turning point is a grueling fistfight between the two (the film's only action scene), a battle that is quite rough and messy, like a real fight and not a cleanly choreographed western brawl like we'd normally find in such films. O'Keefe even executes a few unusual moves that might seem out of place in the west of 1863, but are explained, in a clever bit of dialogue after the fight, as something he learned in a lumberjack camp and as a waterfront saloon bouncer in an earlier life before he found God.The settlers are played by dependable character actors who come across as plausible migrants from the east seeking a better life. Only Arleen Whelan's character, a preacher's daughter who falls hard for Payne after he forces a kiss on her, smacks of Hollywood contrivance, but she plays the role with conviction and redheaded fury, with a layer of seething discontent just below the surface, and I found myself believing her, despite the cliché. In the final film of his career, Dooley Wilson, best known for playing singer-pianist Sam in CASABLANCA, plays a runaway slave among the convicts. The script briefly touches on his status when the group learns of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, but otherwise steers clear of racial issues. Other than a handful of interior scenes, the bulk of the film was shot on location and has the actors enduring a sandstorm, desert heat, rain and deep pockets of mud, among other hardships. This has some thematic similarities with another excellent underrated western of 1951, THE SECRET OF CONVICT LAKE, in which Glenn Ford leads a group of escaped cons into a snowbound mountain settlement populated almost entirely by women, whose men have left town to work a silver mine, leading to a series of uneasy encounters as the women take great pains to keep the convicts from getting the upper hand.

"Passage West" is one of those odd little films that's more than the sum of its parts. The acting is nothing to write home about, and the directing is little more than perfunctory. But it has an odd sincerity and integrity that gives it inexplicable appeal.The script is no prize-winner, but the director could have done a lot more with it. On the other hand, his rather dead-pan direction avoids punching up all the clichés. And this story is mostly clichés.But not totally. There's a scene where a mother whose infant has died goes crazy and sings to a doll in the cradle that held the child. There are other "small moments" like that.My favorite moment comes when the wagon master (a minister) finally gets sufficiently fed up with the leader of the criminals who've taken over, and punches him out. What follows is one of the longest (and well-choreographed) fist fights I've seen. (I'm working on a script with a major fist fight, and have added this scene as a reference, should the film ever get made. Hah, hah, hah.)"Passage West" is one of those films to watch during a period of insomnia. (It's just aired twice on Grit.) You won't be ecstatic, but neither will you feel your time has been wasted,

A very entertaining western with great supporting cast to the stars. Ned Young and Lewis Foster (who also directed) wrote an interesting script and the outcome was quite enjoyable. Frank Faylen was great as a badman in a supporting role. John Payne, Dennis O'Keefe and Arlene Whelan performed well in the star roles. Payne leads a group of escaped convicts that take a religious group bound west as hostage, with the usual conflicts between the two factions as well as within each group rising out of the situation. Richard Rober, Dooley Wilson, Paul Fierro, Faylen, Payne and one other unidentified actors play the convicts very well; O'Keefe, Whelan, Peter Hansen, Mary Anderson, Richard Travis, Griff Barnett do well as the people taken hostage. A good fight scene between Payne and O'Keefe, and a touching scene with one of the women singing to a doll in a cradle after her baby dies add to the stories impact. Recommended.

Although this Western starts with some good ideas, based on a not particularly important book by Alvah Bessie & Nedrick Young (who were both at the Hollywood's black list, having been accused for Communist sympathies), the script fails to develop them further. The production is cheap, the directory typical for the genre and without signs of imagination, while the actors and actresses are incapable to blow life in the characters. I have given it 3 out of 10.