Western Hall of Fame II

This is a good example of a movie I needed to rewatch! Yes, I'd seen it before and liked it, but I didn't remember a damn thing about it. It's interesting that this movie comes at the end of director John Ford's brilliant career and it marks the end of an era in westerns. With the coming of Clint Eastwood and the much more action packed, violent spaghetti westerns that would dominate the 1960s, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance hearkens back to the heyday of westerns. And yet it's modern in that it revolves around the changing events of a fictional western town through time, much like America had changed during the 20th century. We see the western frontier town go from the wild west days when a bad man like Liberty Valance could rule the roast...to the later days when rule of law and societal norms had caught up to the little town of Shinbone.

Director John Ford diminishes the characters impact and makes the changing times of an American icon (IE the western town) the principal theme. Initially I was surprised that John Wayne had such little impact in the film, I mean this is not The Searchers or Rooster Cogburn. Here the Duke is just another gear in the machinery that highlights Americana, family and the old west. I guess that surprised me some as I expected with the big name actors that this would be their film...but John Ford wisely puts them into the background so that the overall themes of change can come more into focus.

Good film! and I'm glad it was nominated.

The title says it all...The Ox-Box Incident...It isn't an action driven film, nor is it a character driven film. It's a study of a moment in time, a chain of events that lead to an incident. The director puts us in the shoes of the hanging posse. He did that by not giving a backstory on the characters. We don't know anymore about the accused men, than the posse knows. We don't even know much about the outsiders played by Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan, as far as we know they might end up with a rope around their necks.

The events take place in linear time. Those events mostly happen in real time as they occur...there's no flashbacks or intercut stories. The film's one focus is on an incident that happened at the Ox-Bow. I think that worked brilliantly and makes this film much different than other westerns of the 1940s.

I found the events to be very believable because the actors play it very realistically. That's import, as if suspension of disbelief doesn't come into being then a film isn't believable and then the emotional impact of what you're watching has little effect. The Ox-Bow Incident had great effect on me! And that's thanks to the streamlined script, the director and the actors. Henry Fonda is the star and does a great job but it's Dana Andrews who pulls off the near impossible of being a scared, innocent man who's about to be hung. I can't see many actors of that time being able to do what Dana Andrews did.

It's a haunting film that has stayed with me.