Glenn Ford is the formidable gun slinger who serves as a sensible, reasonable, mild-mannered Marshall in the dusty town of Contention, or Purgatorio, or San Placebo, or whatever it is. Oh, the town has its rowdies but it's peaceful enough overall. Ford, knowing he's the best in town, doesn't shoot anyone he doesn't have to.
While fishing in a tiny pool (in the middle of the Sonoran desert) Ford is joined by a stranger. The handsome Chad Everett is headed toward Ford's town of Moribunda, having heard that the town has a Marshall said to be the fastest in the West. Everett has never met the Marshall but he aims to kill him and prove that HE, Everett, is the fastest gun in the West.
When the pair have finished their fish feast of about three or four tiny perch, Ford reveals his identity. Everett is polite, thanks him for sharing the fish, tells him he's going to challenge him to a duel, and rides off towards town.
I didn't stick around until the end. Everett's good side has been so firmly established that I figured either Ford kills him reluctantly, only wounds him, or that Everett decides not to throw down the gauntlet, rides off into the sunset, and joins a Buddhist monastery.
Everything in the movie is conventional and flat. It looks like one of the TV "adult Westerns" that were popular at the time. The men wear the usual cowboy hats. They also wear those pointless open vests that were de rigueur. John Wayne at the time was never without one. Ford wears his signature tan cowboy hat. The gunslinger's gun is a scintillating black with a carved bone handle and is carried cross-wise in a matching black holster.
The business about the upstart wanting to outshoot the established King of the Colts has been worn down to a nubbin and better done elsewhere -- "The Gunfighter", for instance. And I doubt that it ever happened. The narrative has its feet planted solidly on thin air, although it is so much a part of our mythology that one wonders what part of our subcortical structures finds it resonant. SOMEBODY sitting in those theater seats must have wanted to kill everyone until he himself became King of the Colts. That's a pretty base instinct. It got MacBeth nowhere.
While fishing in a tiny pool (in the middle of the Sonoran desert) Ford is joined by a stranger. The handsome Chad Everett is headed toward Ford's town of Moribunda, having heard that the town has a Marshall said to be the fastest in the West. Everett has never met the Marshall but he aims to kill him and prove that HE, Everett, is the fastest gun in the West.
When the pair have finished their fish feast of about three or four tiny perch, Ford reveals his identity. Everett is polite, thanks him for sharing the fish, tells him he's going to challenge him to a duel, and rides off towards town.
I didn't stick around until the end. Everett's good side has been so firmly established that I figured either Ford kills him reluctantly, only wounds him, or that Everett decides not to throw down the gauntlet, rides off into the sunset, and joins a Buddhist monastery.
Everything in the movie is conventional and flat. It looks like one of the TV "adult Westerns" that were popular at the time. The men wear the usual cowboy hats. They also wear those pointless open vests that were de rigueur. John Wayne at the time was never without one. Ford wears his signature tan cowboy hat. The gunslinger's gun is a scintillating black with a carved bone handle and is carried cross-wise in a matching black holster.
The business about the upstart wanting to outshoot the established King of the Colts has been worn down to a nubbin and better done elsewhere -- "The Gunfighter", for instance. And I doubt that it ever happened. The narrative has its feet planted solidly on thin air, although it is so much a part of our mythology that one wonders what part of our subcortical structures finds it resonant. SOMEBODY sitting in those theater seats must have wanted to kill everyone until he himself became King of the Colts. That's a pretty base instinct. It got MacBeth nowhere.