Blowing Wild (restored by Paramount Pictures)

Hugo Fregonese: Blowing Wild (US 1953) avec Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper et Anthony Quinn.

Hugo Fregonese: Blowing Wild (US 1953) avec Anthony Quinn et Gary Cooper.

Le Souffle sauvage / Mustaa kultaa / När marken bränner.
Hugo Fregonese / États-Unis / 1953 / 90 min / DCP / VOSTF
Avec Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn.
Restored by Paramount Pictures in collaboration with Olive Films at Fotokem laboratory, from a 35 mm composite fine grain (2nd generation) and a 35 mm optical track negative.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Hugo Fregonese
E-sous-titres français n.c.
Salle Henri Langlois, samedi 1 avril 2023 18h00 19h30

The expression "blowing wild" refers to the oil well blowing out of control.

Séance précédée d'un film publicitaire surprise.

La Cinémathèque française : "Au Mexique, Jeff, prospecteur pétrolier fauché, demande la protection d'une compagnie contre les pillards. Mais le patron refuse car Jeff a eu une liaison avec sa femme."

"Un thriller explosif, dont certaines scènes – le transport de dynamite par Gary Cooper et Ward Bond – ne sont pas sans évoquer Le Salaire de la peur, tourné par Clouzot au même moment à l'autre bout du monde. Fregonese distille dans son script le poison du film noir (ici incarné par Barbara Stanwyck, formidable en femme fatale), ainsi que quelques touches de western sud-américain."
...
BOLOGNA PROGRAM DATA 2022:
Ballata selvaggia
US 1953. Director: Hugo Fregonese
Scen.: Philip Yordan. F.: Sid Hickox. M.: Alan Crosland Jr. Scgf.: Alfred Ybarra, Edward Fitzgerald. Mus.: Dimitri Tiomkin. Int.: Gary Cooper (Jeff Dawson), Barbara Stanwyck (Marina Conway), Ruth Roman (Sal Donnelly), Anthony Quinn (Paco Conway), Ward Bond (Dutch Peterson), Ian MacDonald (Jackson), Richard Karlan (Henderson), Juan García (El Gavilan). Prod.: Milton Sperling per United States Pictures, Inc. DCP. D.: 90’. Bn.
From Paramount, courtesy of Park Circus. Restored in 2012 by Paramount Pictures in collaboration with Olive Films at Fotokem laboratory, from a 35 mm composite fine grain (2nd generation) and a 35 mm optical track negative
E-subtitles in Italian
Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna) 2022: The Drifter's Escape: Hugo Fregonese.
Cinema Jolly, Sunday 26/06/2022 - 21:30, Thursday 30/06/2022 - 11:30

(Ehsan Khoshbakht, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2022): "Thrilling and grand, this was Hugo Fregonese’s all-star moment – when the ultimate Hollywood wanderer met another drifter, Gary Cooper, who had chosen to leave the US behind and partially settle and work in Mexico for tax reasons. Also featuring Anthony Quinn and Barbara Stanwyck, this story of a male friendship threatened by an old flame – now married to one of the men but secretly desiring the other – sees Fregonese giving familiar clichés a vigorous treatment."

"A patchwork of certain Howard Hawks themes and situations, Philip Yordan’s predictable script – set against the backdrop of oil extraction in an unnamed Latin American country – is elevated by cut-glass dialogue, helping the film stand on its own. More accurate comparisons might be drawn with the work of John Huston, to whom the film owes its sense of empathy for the drifter, in his despair. It also has an uncanny and purely coincidental resemblance to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Wages of Fear (made at the same time but released earlier) in the subplot, which involves a truckload of nitroglycerin being driven across mountainous terrain."

"Fregonese contrasts nature with manmade structures such as oil rigs, barrels and pipes. Sidney Hickox’s fine cinematography (the film was originally announced as a Technicolor production but later shot in black and white to reduce costs) fully supports this calculated invasion of natural space, through the menacing framing of oil-rig components. At the same time Fregonese makes the rigs synonymous with manhood. The sexual metaphor even extends to the rig’s name, which it shares with the leading female character, Marina."

"Blowing Wild is a hybrid film; beginning as a semi-western and becoming a semi-noir towards the end. It features some eclectic elements, such as the rather intrusive theme song sung by Frankie Laine – transposed right out of High Noon, for which Cooper won an Oscar as he was shooting with Fregonese down in Mexico. Surprisingly, Quinn also won Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Viva Zapata! during the same ceremony, leading to a certain amount of hype around Blowing. But the film’s ultimate lack of success (it was not by any means a failure, however) pushed Fregonese back into his usual business of making small, unglamorous films with a punch." (Ehsan Khoshbakht, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2022)

AA: I missed Blowing Wild in Bologna's Hugo Fregonese tribute last year and was happy to catch up in Paris. The A budget adventure thriller was produced in Mexico on location and at the Churubusco Studios, but after an intervention of the Mexican government, a disclaimer was added after the credits that the story takes place in South America. The adventure is set in the early 1930s.

The action scenes are well handled, covering the oilmen's desperate fight with bandits who pressure them for protection money. Or else the bandits will destroy the oil wells and blow up the derricks with dynamite. Fregonese's breathtaking nitroglycerine transport sequence was shot simultaneously with and independently of The Wages of Fear. Clouzot's film is incomparably better. Barbara Stanwyck is in her element on horseback as Marina, racing against her husband Paco (Anthony Quinn) driving his car. In the most thrilling action scene Jeff Dawson (Gary Cooper) catches the nitroglycerine cylinder hurling out of the oil well "blowing wild".

The 1950s were a decade in which the oil motif was prominent in Hollywood films like Giant and Written on the Wind. The sexual element was more than a symbol. Black sperm was energizing the society. The connection was also openly cultivated in commercials like Marilyn Monroe's Royal Triton and Esso's Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Fregonese navigates skillfully in this volatile and explosive terrain.

Fregonese has an all star cast, but he does not quite know what to do with it. Barbara Stanwyck creates a pitch black femme fatale. Gary Cooper fends off voracious women in every direction. Anthony Quinn is a tough oil magnate with a heart of gold. Ruth Roman is Sal Donnelly, a stranded blackjack dealer, who becomes Jeff's shield from Marina. All are impressive, but they seem to perform on autopilot, as if Fregonese had been overwhelmed by them.

The heart of the narrative belongs to Ward Bond (as Dutch Peterson, Jeff's partner and friend) who is at his best here. He is the voice of sanity and reason amidst the oil madness.

Frankie Laine is the ballad narrator of the movie with his theme song "Blowing Wild (The Ballad of Black Gold)" in the same way as in the previous year's Gary Cooper hit film High Noon, also composed by Dimitri Tiomkin *. Besides, there is an appealing soundtrack of Mexican favourites, including corridos, Mexican narrative songs, such as "La adelita" (the ballad of Mexican revolutionary women), the timeless "La golondrina", and "Las chiapanecas" perhaps revealing the state (Chiapas) where the action takes place, although large scale oil drilling there is a much later phenomenon.

The fine restoration does justice to Sidney Hickox's cinematography both in rich and vivid passages shot on location and stark nocturnal scenes in the film noir tradition.

The announced surprise bonus extra in the beginning was a Holsten Pils beer commercial, recycled from Blowing Wild imagery.

* "The Ballad of High Noon" is sometimes held as the Western's first narrative theme song, but it had been preceded at least by "Legend of Chuck-A-Luck" in Rancho Notorious and "Wagons West" in Wagon Master.