"Forty Guns" effectively recycles what, even in 1957, was already a well-worn Western plot, the one about the tough but honest lawman who arrives in a small western town dominated by a powerful landowner and succeeds in restoring law and order to the community. Many such films were either straightforward retellings of the story of Wyatt Earp or fictionalised versions of the Earp legend ("Dodge City"), and this film falls into the latter category. The central character, Griff Bonnell, is clearly based on Wyatt Earp, and travels everywhere with his two brothers Wes and Chico, just as Earp was assisted by his brothers Morgan and Virgil.
The one thing that sets this film apart from many treatments of a similar theme is the sex of the powerful rancher. In this film she is a woman, Jessica Drummond, and it is perhaps inevitable that she and Griff will end up by falling in love. At first, however, Jessica does not seem like a typical romantic heroine. She is a tough, ruthless lady who dominates the town and the surrounding area, ruling her territory with an iron fist and with the help of a gang of hired gunmen, the "forty guns" of the title. Griff originally arrives in the area, in fact, on a mission to arrest one of her men for mail robbery, and he soon clashes not only with Jessica but also with her spoilt, arrogant and sadistic brother Brockie. (The characterisation of Brockie Drummond is similar to that of Dave Waggoman in "The Man from Laramie", another Western of this period).
The film was written and directed by Samuel Fuller. He was a director who worked in a number of genres, but I know him best for that excellent film noir, "Pickup on South Street". In some ways the plot of "Forty Guns", if updated to an American city in the mid twentieth century, with Griff as the tough-but-decent cop played by Glenn Ford, and Jessica as the glamorous but shady businesswoman played by someone like Gloria Grahame or Lizabeth Scott, could easily be that of a noir itself. The film has a complex noir-style plot and was shot in an expressionist black-and-white, even though it was made at a time when colour was increasingly becoming the norm for Westerns. (It was, however, far from being the only black-and-white Western from the late fifties; Arthur Penn's "Left Handed Gun" from the following year is another example). It also
Barry Sullivan as Griff makes a rather stolid hero, but there is a good performance from Barbara Stanwyck, still strikingly glamorous and seductive in her late forties, as Jessica. (Stanwyck was five years older than Sullivan, but looks considerably younger). There is one striking scene where Jessica is dragged along the ground by a horse. I wondered how this was filmed as it seemed too dangerous for any stuntwoman to have performed, and thought that Fuller had perhaps used a dummy. The answer, in fact, is that Stanwyck performed the scene herself after her stunt double chickened out!
The film was shot in CinemaScope, and Fuller uses the widescreen format to great effect. As John Ford has done earlier in films like "Rio Grande", he uses black-and-white photography as an effective medium for showing off the beauty of the Western landscapes, and as in his other films makes extensive use of close-ups. "Forty Guns" is not one of the great Westerns in the way that "Pickup on South Street" is one of the great noirs; the plot is too over-familiar and the acting is not always of the highest calibre. It is, however, a film which still retains some points of interest even today. 6/10
The one thing that sets this film apart from many treatments of a similar theme is the sex of the powerful rancher. In this film she is a woman, Jessica Drummond, and it is perhaps inevitable that she and Griff will end up by falling in love. At first, however, Jessica does not seem like a typical romantic heroine. She is a tough, ruthless lady who dominates the town and the surrounding area, ruling her territory with an iron fist and with the help of a gang of hired gunmen, the "forty guns" of the title. Griff originally arrives in the area, in fact, on a mission to arrest one of her men for mail robbery, and he soon clashes not only with Jessica but also with her spoilt, arrogant and sadistic brother Brockie. (The characterisation of Brockie Drummond is similar to that of Dave Waggoman in "The Man from Laramie", another Western of this period).
The film was written and directed by Samuel Fuller. He was a director who worked in a number of genres, but I know him best for that excellent film noir, "Pickup on South Street". In some ways the plot of "Forty Guns", if updated to an American city in the mid twentieth century, with Griff as the tough-but-decent cop played by Glenn Ford, and Jessica as the glamorous but shady businesswoman played by someone like Gloria Grahame or Lizabeth Scott, could easily be that of a noir itself. The film has a complex noir-style plot and was shot in an expressionist black-and-white, even though it was made at a time when colour was increasingly becoming the norm for Westerns. (It was, however, far from being the only black-and-white Western from the late fifties; Arthur Penn's "Left Handed Gun" from the following year is another example). It also
Barry Sullivan as Griff makes a rather stolid hero, but there is a good performance from Barbara Stanwyck, still strikingly glamorous and seductive in her late forties, as Jessica. (Stanwyck was five years older than Sullivan, but looks considerably younger). There is one striking scene where Jessica is dragged along the ground by a horse. I wondered how this was filmed as it seemed too dangerous for any stuntwoman to have performed, and thought that Fuller had perhaps used a dummy. The answer, in fact, is that Stanwyck performed the scene herself after her stunt double chickened out!
The film was shot in CinemaScope, and Fuller uses the widescreen format to great effect. As John Ford has done earlier in films like "Rio Grande", he uses black-and-white photography as an effective medium for showing off the beauty of the Western landscapes, and as in his other films makes extensive use of close-ups. "Forty Guns" is not one of the great Westerns in the way that "Pickup on South Street" is one of the great noirs; the plot is too over-familiar and the acting is not always of the highest calibre. It is, however, a film which still retains some points of interest even today. 6/10