George Stevens transforms the ragged Jack Schaefer novel into a coffee-table deluxe edition, illustrated in rich dark postcard color, specially designed for the moviegoer who prefers to encounter only one Western per decade. The pure mythic grandeur (uprooting a tree stump or brawling in the saloon becomes a psalm to the frontier spirit, with up-tilted camerawork and a musical cutting rhythm) is a distillation of a thousand pulp Westerns. Under the fierce, curious gaze of Brandon De Wilde's towheaded farm boy, Alan Ladd's wandering gunman puts aside his weapon and his buckskin uniform, and picks up a plow for a while, but at last he is forced, by the laws of nature, to resume his calling ("This is my kind of game") in a shootout with the only man in the territory who speaks more softly than he does -- the rodentlike Jack Palance, spiffily equipped with two guns, silver spangles, sleeve garters, and black hat. Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Ben Johnson, Elisha Cook Jr. (1953) — Duncan Shepherd
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