THE WESTERNER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 74, 22 November 1940, Page 51

THE WESTERNER

(Goldwyn-United Artists)

INCE the impact of "The Grapes of Wrath," it is difficult to resist a tendency to see every film as some

sort of social document. One or two periodicals, like the English "New Statesman and Nation" have quite frankly reviewed "The Westerner" in those terms. As a matter of fact, to William Wyler, the film’s director, must go at least one small bouquet for showing glimmerings of a social conscience; but if these hints at morality are likely to dissuade entertainmenthunters from going to see Gary Cooper ‘and Walter Brennan it is as well that they should immediately be forgotten. For this is first-class entertainment. It’s neither wild nor woolly. There are a few hangings and some shooting, a fire in corn crops, and an excellent bareknuckle fight, but. these basic constituents fall into the background behind the spice of good acting and good direction. The scene is Texas, where the cattlemen are facing the competition of the smallholders. The cattlemen want the open range, the smallholders defend their fences, There is no law in the district, except the law of Judge Roy Bean (Brennan) who administers it with strict partiality. But he has a weakness. It is Lily Langtry, whose posters and pictures adorn all the walls of his bar-room, where men who don’t drink to her as the toast of the morning, noon, and night, are surreptitiously surveyed by

the local undertaker so that the box can be ready in time. Cooper comes into the bar-cum-courthouse accused of horse stealing. He pretends to have met Lily, and tells the judge, while the jury is considering its verdict over a game of poker, that he possesses a lock of her hair. The judge is more than interested. Sentence on the accused is suspended for two weeks pending the arrival of the lock of hair from the nearest town. All these opening scenes are priceless good fun. It must have been with some regret that the director got on with the story. This is orthodox enough. Cooper effects a reconciliation between the rival factions, after a great deal of exciting trouble, and then marries the girl (Doris Davenport). But all through the tale runs a spirit of real fun that has been made possible by two good actors working well with a good director in front of good cameramen. The photography will delight the most inexperienced eye. "The Westerner" is everything: that a western should be, And it is more than that. The men who made it used their brains and forgot the card-index. The result is not to be missed.