"The Hanging Tree" is set in Montana during a gold rush in the 1870s, although filming actually took place in Washington State. (One of many Westerns which were not filmed in the area in which they are ostensibly set). The main character is Joseph Frail, a doctor who arrives in the boom town of Skull Creek with a view to combining a medical practice with prospecting for gold. Frail is a strange and contradictory character. He can treat his patients with great kindness, but in his dealings with others he can be cold and abrupt. He rescues and saves the life of Rune, a young man who was shot while trying to steal gold, but then forces Rune to act as his unpaid servant because he has no money to pay for his treatment, threatening to expose him as the thief if he refuses.
I won't set out the whole of the plot, but much of it revolves around the relationship between Frail and another of his patients, Elizabeth Mahler, a Swiss immigrant whose life he saves after she has been seriously injured in a stagecoach robbery. She moves into a house next to his so that he can oversee her recovery, but the situation is misinterpreted by narrow-minded locals who wrongly believe that they are having a sexual relationship. Another important Character is Frenchy, a disreputable prospector. He was responsible for shooting Rune, but does not recognise him as the man he shot, and the two later go into partnership with Elizabeth to stake their own claim. The "hanging tree" of the title is an old oak just outside the town used for public hangings; one character is threatened with this fate towards the end of the movie.
Although it was directed by Delmer Daves and stars Gary Cooper, "The Hanging Tree" reminded me of the "Mann/Stewart Westerns", directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, which had been made a few years earlier. The characters played by Stewart in these films are not outright villains, but neither are they traditional clean-cut Western heroes. They are flawed, morally ambiguous and psychologically complex individuals; Howard Kemp in "The Naked Spur" and Will Lockhart in "The Man from Laramie" are good examples. Cooper's Frail- his name has obvious symbolic significance- is a man of a similar type. Throughout the film there are hints of some dark secret in his past, and towards the end we learn the nature of the event which has left him psychologically scarred.
Roles like this can be difficult to play, and Cooper copes well with the challenge of making Frail neither a heroic, self-sacrificing medical man, like his character in "The Story of Dr Wassell", nor so hardened that we are unable to sympathise with him. The real villains of the story are not Frail, but Frenchy, so blinded by greed for gold that he will do anything to get it, and Dr Grubb, a quack faith healer who tries to turn the townsfolk against Frail. This was one of Cooper's last films- he had only another two years to live- and his last Western apart from "They Came to Cordura".
As with many Westerns from the fifties, this one is marked by striking photography of the landscapes of the American West, landscapes which Hollywood was using in its battle with the newcomer, television. I wouldn't rate "The Hanging Tree" as highly as "The Naked Spur" or "The Man from Laramie"- the plot is not always easy to follow- but it is nevertheless a good example of the sub-genre that has been called the "psychological Western". 7/10.
I won't set out the whole of the plot, but much of it revolves around the relationship between Frail and another of his patients, Elizabeth Mahler, a Swiss immigrant whose life he saves after she has been seriously injured in a stagecoach robbery. She moves into a house next to his so that he can oversee her recovery, but the situation is misinterpreted by narrow-minded locals who wrongly believe that they are having a sexual relationship. Another important Character is Frenchy, a disreputable prospector. He was responsible for shooting Rune, but does not recognise him as the man he shot, and the two later go into partnership with Elizabeth to stake their own claim. The "hanging tree" of the title is an old oak just outside the town used for public hangings; one character is threatened with this fate towards the end of the movie.
Although it was directed by Delmer Daves and stars Gary Cooper, "The Hanging Tree" reminded me of the "Mann/Stewart Westerns", directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, which had been made a few years earlier. The characters played by Stewart in these films are not outright villains, but neither are they traditional clean-cut Western heroes. They are flawed, morally ambiguous and psychologically complex individuals; Howard Kemp in "The Naked Spur" and Will Lockhart in "The Man from Laramie" are good examples. Cooper's Frail- his name has obvious symbolic significance- is a man of a similar type. Throughout the film there are hints of some dark secret in his past, and towards the end we learn the nature of the event which has left him psychologically scarred.
Roles like this can be difficult to play, and Cooper copes well with the challenge of making Frail neither a heroic, self-sacrificing medical man, like his character in "The Story of Dr Wassell", nor so hardened that we are unable to sympathise with him. The real villains of the story are not Frail, but Frenchy, so blinded by greed for gold that he will do anything to get it, and Dr Grubb, a quack faith healer who tries to turn the townsfolk against Frail. This was one of Cooper's last films- he had only another two years to live- and his last Western apart from "They Came to Cordura".
As with many Westerns from the fifties, this one is marked by striking photography of the landscapes of the American West, landscapes which Hollywood was using in its battle with the newcomer, television. I wouldn't rate "The Hanging Tree" as highly as "The Naked Spur" or "The Man from Laramie"- the plot is not always easy to follow- but it is nevertheless a good example of the sub-genre that has been called the "psychological Western". 7/10.