Parrish was a child actor in City Lights, then All Quiet on the Western Front, became a film editor, winning the Oscar for Body and Soul. He got to know author Tom Lea while editing an adaptation, The Brave Bulls (1951 Robert Rossen) and they agreed to make this together. Lea wrote the first screenplay but it was rewritten to make more of Julie London's part, by Robert Ardrey. As executive producer Mitchum was active in the casting, including the unusual choice of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, a baseball player, as the leader of the black cavalry regiment. (Lea also played the town barber.)
Mitchum's accent is somewhat variable as he's an American having lived some time in Mexico as an assassino. When he breaks his leg in a Texas town he starts to wonder if he shouldn't return there, meeting married Julie London probably having some part in that. But then quite a lot of things happen, involving army Major Gary Merrill, ranger Albert Dekker, doctor Charles McGraw, Mexican bandit Victor Manuel Mendoza, German immigrant Max Slaten and Mexican governor Pedro Armendariz, as well as Apache Indians.
I'll tell you one thing: Oscar winning cameraman Floyd Crosby once again shows he knows nothing about lighting scenes with candles. He did the same thing in Fall of the House of Usher, where someone lights some candles in a scene and it makes not one jot of difference. Here there's a scene between Mitchum and Armendariz with candles and they just have no effect.
It's quite an interesting film, shot in Mexico. But it doesn't quite gel. According to Mitchum biographer Lee Server, it was reportedly ruined in the edit (Michael Luciano). Alex North's music is a shade too bombastic.
We know Parrish from In the French Style, that Jean Seberg film from 1963.
By the way, managing to shoot the Apaches on the coach from a handgun on a horse is totally far fetched.
No comments:
Post a Comment