This delirious, over the top western tale of l'amour fou features the always affable John Carroll as the jaded hero and Vera Ralston as a greedy, sociopathic woman of unsavory character who will stop at nothing, including murder, to achieve her desires. Ms. Ralston is not quite up to carrying the film, in a role which was perhaps more suited to the likes of Hedy Lamar or Marlene Deitrich. It's a sort of "Madame Bovary-Scarlett O'Hara goes to Texas" tale, with elements of noir. Besides Carroll (who actually gets to sing the title song) and a good performance by Walter Brennan as a self-righteous sheriff prone to prejudgments, there is little to entertain here other than the gay sub-context of Carroll's unshakable and undying affection for Ching.
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ccmiller14922 February 2008
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mark.waltz18 July 2019Maybe it will be remembered as Vera Ralston attempt to be a Scarlet O'Hara. Or will it not be remembered at all?
I think honestly, it will fall into the last category because it is a mediocre melodrama, Western, bad girl epic and all-around disappointment. It even lacks in camp. It is the story of two sisters, bad girl Vera Ralston (dressed all in black when first seen) and good girl Maria Palmer, dressed all in white in the same scene. When they are first seen, Ralston is ignoring the plite of a young lover who apparently stole jewelry which he gave to her. Palmer admonishes her sister for not coming to the young man's age, and it is soon revealed that Ralston could care less if he rots in prison. we then find out that the two women are both in competition for the same man, with Palmer in love with the fragile William Ching and Ralston marrying him just because. He comes from old money with Jane Darwell as his widowed mother and Esther Dale as his hard of hearing, wheel bound chair aunt who doesn't have a censorship capacity in her brain, basically saying whatever she feels.
Unfortunately, Darwell and Dale's screen time is fleeting as this focuses on the fact that after she marries Ching, Ralston is revealed to be a bigamist, murdering first husband Francis Lederer and setting up lover John Carroll for the fall. But she ends up on the run with Carol anyway, chased by the Javert like Walter Brennan. We know he's Javert like because Carroll mentions "Les Miserables". There's not enough footage of good sister Palmer, but it's a shield what will be happening with her when the film ends.
What we get a lot of is Vera Hruba Ralston, the former skater from Czechoslovakia who married Republic studio head Herbert Yates and was their leading lady for 17 years, even though she never had a box office hit. I've gotten to see a good majority of Ralston's films, and it's a pleasure to witness how convincing she is at being bland. Whether a Sonja Henie like innocent foreigner or vixen or romantic heroine or mystical female, she's at least consistent at being bland. It's also amazing that close-ups of her are sadly never flattering, and that does paint a poignant picture of Yates' genuine feelings for her. this could have had some potential outside her blandness, but the script and the story really never take off.