BLOOD ON THE MOON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 523, 1 July 1949, Page 14

BLOOD ON THE MOON

(RKO-Radio) ERE is another Western picture in which the director, in this case Robert Wise, has tried hard to turn out something resembling a work of art. Wise’s attempt doesn’t achieve the artistic stature of Stagecoach, nor even the spectacular effects of Red River, mainly because he doesn’t aim as high as that. Blood on the Moon is, indeed, quite conventional in many ways, and it makes numerous concessions to the box-office requirements of romance, heroism, adventure, and so on. But there is sufficient realism about it (to use a much-maligned word) to make it a picture worth seeing. In the first place there is some attempt at character-drawing. Robert Mitchum, the hero, is a failure, a cow puncher who tried to run a small ranch down in Texas, made a mess of it, lost all his cattle, and decided to work for a friend whom he knew was engaged in some shady business up country. He discovers that his friend (Robert Preston) is actually trying to swindle a prosperous cattleman who grazes his herds on Reservation land and sells them for beef to the: Indians. When the beef contract is cancelled (with the connivance of a crooked Government agent) Preston tries to force the rancher off the Reservation and then make him sell Aim the cattle at heavy loss. Preston is portrayed as a likeable but weak character, who is led astray by his greed.’ The Government agent (Frank Faylen) is also less villaindus than weak, cowardly, and over-fond of the bottle, while the two gunmen whom Preston engages turn out to be not tough guys, but vicious little bullies who prefer to kill in cold blood rather than to fight it out in open combat.. The second point about Blood on the Moon is the way the West is stripped of much of its usual romance. The opening scene is an unusually good one, showing a lone horseman stumbling through the night in teeming rain, with nowhere to shelter except in a little scrub-filled gully. Later on in the picture it snows hard (the-whole action takes place in winter) and there are some good shots of the cowboys camping out in the fir trees in a blizzard. Nevertheless, this deglamourising of the background is made up for by some excellent shots of high-country scenery, and there is also a well-filmed cattle stampede (apparently a must sequence for all Westerns these days). Careful attention is paid to the small but significant details of everyday ex-istence-the making of a cup of coffee, the drying of a man’s boots by his camp-fire-and even the hero goes unshaven for most of the film’s length. Finally, the gunplay is kept to a minimum, so that when it does come, as when Mitchum stalks three opponents (including his erstwhile pal, Preston) amongst the firs by the light of a wintry moon, it gains considerably ,in effectiveness. Barbara Bel Geddes, the rancher’s daughter who falls in love with Robert Mitchum, gives a good performance as a rather intense but convincing cow-girl, while Walter Brennan is equally good as a grizzled, bitter, but

essentially kind-hearted old homesteader who helps young love and justice to their pre-ordained ends. ©