3:10 to Yuma (1957)

A classic masculinity-in-crisis tale. What I like to call post-noir (ming you different from the post-noir P.I. and the contemporary noir.) Two examples: no femme-fatales, the men are more interested in themselves and each other. Elmore Leonard's story, via Halsted Welles screenplay, catalogues male anxieties in a gripping competition of which one of us will last longer than the others.

I appreciate the attempt to allow the characters and their ideas and anxieties some depth. Films that tackle multiple perspectives within a single theme often flatten characters and oversimplify complex problems. 3:30 to Yuma, however, is rich because efficient, natural, and clear dialogue add to the wonderful direction, editing, and photography. I admire the fact that a rich filmic text was molded from sparse sets. The tension is developed as much from the dialogue as from, say, the depth of focus in shots that put characters, their roles, in perspective.

A cursory look at the film may make it appear quite a simple, little film. Upon further screenings the film becomes much more complex.

Other notes:
The drought and its end. The ending of the film is often criticized as being too simple. Consider it in the context of a hero's regained potency and the ending permits a fertility to the narrative that somehow justifies (explains) the presence of the hero's wife. And not only because it qualifies a feminine presence in the desert but because it illustrates the importance of HER character to the story--in this case, or in my opinion, the Husband/Father and Wife/Mother require the love that draws one to the other. It might be easy to pan this as romantic, sentimental strictly, and paternalistic. Fortunately, I think the relationship between Dan and Alice Evans is a nice foil to the relationship Dan develops with his nemesis Ben Wade.

The Men. Glenn Ford as Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans. Amazing chemistry. See above.

Van Heflin. Recently watched, Act of Violence. (See last post.) Van Heflin's characters are powerfully engaging and complexly charismatic yet strongly conflicted and hopelessly fragile.