Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXI

My best cinematic discovery during 2015's third quarter was the greatness of The Hanging Tree, a 1959 western starring Gary Cooper. Cooper plays Joseph Frail, M.D., a mysterious doctor who shows up at a rough and tumble Montana mining town during the Gold Rush craze.  We wonder if "Frail" is his real name, a curiosity that is piqued in an early scene when he nearly kills a man who accuses him of cheating during a poker game.  As the prone accuser wipes the blood from his lip resulting from a left hook by Frail, he repeats a rumor about Frail having set fire to an occupied house long ago.  We don't hear any more about this alleged arson for quite awhile, but it's clear this man Frail is no ordinary doctor.

Frail's dark side is apparent, and not just because of that rumor which has spread across the plains to Big Sky Country.  For example, after he removes a bullet from a young man, Rune (Ben Piazza), who was shot while escaping from a failed petty crime, the doctor tells Rune that if he doesn't agree to become the doctor's unpaid servant, he will go to the sheriff with the bloody slug as evidence and turn Rune in.  But Frail is not without a heart.  When he treats a little girl whose parents can't afford to pay him, he asks her to give him a kiss on the cheek in full settlement.

Not long after Frail sets up shop on a bluff overlooking the town, a stagecoach in the nearby desert is held up.  The driver and all the occupants are killed, save for a woman passenger, Elizabeth (Maria Schell), who turns up missing; the "Lost Lady," as she's come to be known.  The townsfolk form two posses, one to track down the killers and one to find the Lost Lady.  Frenchie (Karl Malden), an antagonist who somehow manages to be likable at times even though at the core he is a villain, eventually finds the Lost Lady, sunburned, dazed, dehydrated and temporarily blind.  Her husband was one of the murdered victims, and she is delirious.  It is up to Frail to nurse Elizabeth back to health.  When he puts her up at a cabin he owns next door to his abode, the gossip starts to fly.

Elizabeth looks upon Frail as more than a physician, but he seems to have a heart of stone.  Additional intrigue is created once the Lost Lady, bound and determined not to let her husband's murder ruin her dream of making a new life for herself in the Wild West, enters into a prospecting venture with Frenchie and Rune.  Unbeknownst to her, Frail secretly funds the grubstake.  Malden, who was a pinch hit director for this film when original director Delmer Daves temporarily fell ill, portrays Frenchie as a deliciously conniving rascal with dishonorable intentions. 

 

The Hanging Tree has a little bit of everything: secrets, schemes, romance, lynch mobs (as you might have guessed), extraordinary cinematography, strong acting -- Gary Cooper was only seven years removed from his Oscar-winning performance in High Noon -- and a dramatic finish.  It is also the film debut of George C. Scott, who plays a kooky street preacher, Grubb, threatened by the legitimate medical practice of Doctor Frail.  But that is not all.  Every great western seems to have a memorable song associated with it.  Examples: the title track from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) sung by the one and only Gene Pitney, and Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head from Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), with B.J. Thomas doing the vocals.  The title track from The Hanging Tree, sung by Marty Robbins (who had a # 1 hit with another cowboy tune, El Paso), might be the best of them all.  There are two things which are of particular interest here.  First, similar to Liberty Valance, the lyrics of Hanging Tree directly tell the unfolding of the movie plot.  Secondly, the fourth verse of the song, which describes the climax, is ingeniously swapped with the fifth verse of the song, so that you don't hear the fourth verse until the closing credits.  Thus, no need for a spoiler alert!

 

Ben Mankiewicz, a program host on Turner Classic Movies, called The Hanging Tree "one of the last of the great westerns from the genre's renaissance in the 1950's."  What he neglected to mention is that The Quentin Chronicle rates the movie the fourth best western of all time, behind Liberty Valance, Butch Cassidy and 2010's True Grit.

 

Here are the movies I watched in the third quarter from the love seat in the QE family room.

1. Anatomy Of A Murder (1959 courtroom drama; Jimmy Stewart defends Ben Gazarra, who is charged with the murder of a man who allegedly raped Lee Remick, Gazarra's wife.) A -

2. Elevator Girl (2010 rom-com; Ryan Merriman, a newly made partner in a silk stocking law firm, meets Lacey Chabert, a free spirit who doesn't fit the purported mold of a partner's significant other.) C

3. First Love (1977 drama; William Klatt is a private college student who falls for classmate Susan Dey, even though he knows she's the mistress of an older married man.) C

4. Frankenstein (1931 horror; Boris Karloff is a monster created from dead body parts, including a criminal brain, by mad scientist Colin Clive.) B

5. The Hanging Tree (1959 western; see the above mini-review.) A

6.  Hannah And Her Sisters (1986 dramedy; Mia Farrow , who is married to Michael Caine, has two sisters, Dianne Weiss who used to date Woody Allen, and Barbara Hershey who is lusted after by Caine.) A

7. My Fair Lady (1964 musical; Rex Harrison, a haughty bachelor linguistics professor, is challenged to turn guttersnipe flower peddler Audrey Hepburn into an aristocratic master of the English language.)  A-

8. One Sunday Afternoon (1933 drama; Gary Cooper is a dentist who has an opportunity for revenge when he's called upon to extract a tooth from Neil Hamilton, who years ago won the heart of the girl Cooper desired, Fay Wray.) C-