Antti Alanen: Film Diary: Colorado Territory

Raoul Walsh: Colorado Territory (US 1949) avec Henry Hull (the settler Fred Winslow), Virginia Mayo (Colorado Carson) and Joel McCrea (as a wounded Wes McQueen). La Cinémathèque française.

Raoul Walsh: Colorado Territory (US 1949). Colorado removes the bullet from Wes's shoulder. My screenshot.

Raoul Walsh: Colorado Territory (US 1949). Colorado cauterizes Wes's wound. My screenshot.

Raoul Walsh: Colorado Territory (US 1949). Colorado and Wes die in a hail of bullets. As they fall towards us, Sidney Hickox tracks forward to a medium close-up. My screenshot.

Raoul Walsh: Colorado Territory (US 1949). Wes holds Colorado's hand tighter until both lose their grip. In superimposition, Sidney Hickox tracks forward to the tower of the abandoned mission of Todos Santos. The bell is ringing. My screenshot.

La Fille du désert / Coloradon sankari / Norr om Rio Grande.

Raoul Walsh / États-Unis / 1949 / 94 min / 35 mm / VOSTF

D'après le roman High Sierra et le scénario du film éponyme de W. R. Burnett.

Avec Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone.

Loc: – Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Colorado – Gallup, New Mexico – Sedona, Arizona – Juarez Square, Warner Ranch, Calabasas, California.

Une copie avec sous-titres français: Michael Henry.

Vu jeudi, le 10 avril 2025, La Cinémathèque française, Rétrospective Le Western, en 25 films indispensables, Salle Henri Langlois, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6

La Cinémathèque française: " Avec La Fille du désert, Walsh réalise un remake de son propre film, La Grande Évasion, sorti huit ans plus tôt. Il en fait un western cosmique aux accents « noir », qui vaut autant pour ses superbes chevauchées, attaques de train et de diligence, que pour son versant psychologique tourné vers la trahison et la fatalité. Dans le rôle de Wes McQueen, pilleur de chemin de fer, évadé de prison, Joel McCrea porte la classe de son héros. Cavalier hors pair, solitaire et sentimental, il rêve de raccrocher le pistolet en s'offrant les bénéfices d'un dernier exploit. S'ensuit une traque, à laquelle ni lui ni sa compagne de planque, l'ardente Virginia Mayo, ne pourront échapper. Sec, tranchant et désespéré, le récit d'une impossible quête de rédemption, aussi tragique que palpitante. "

AA: As a birthday present to myself I visit Colorado Territory*, one of Raoul Walsh's greatest movies. It is a piece of Western Gothic and a film of tragic grandeur from the second golden age of the genre. The male star is Joel McCrea, not a typical choice for Walsh, who preferred actors bigger than life like Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn or Clark Gable – or Humphrey Bogart, the star of High Sierra, of which Colorado Territory is an excellent and inspired remake, reinterpreting the gangster masterpiece as a Western.

Joel McCrea is my favourite American male star (but not the biggest star nor the greatest actor), and while he is not an obvious choice to play the part that Humphrey Bogart did so well, he is an unusual and exciting one. His interpretation as the antihero, the outlaw Wes McQueen who tries to break free from a life of crime harks back to the tradition of the "good bad man" of the Western, launched by stars ranging from Harry Carey to Douglas Fairbanks, the greatest of all being William S. Hart – McCrea's close friend and mentor from the first golden age of the genre.

William S. Hart and Joel McCrea were true Westerners and superb horsemen who lived in their own ranches. Almost all Hart's films were Westerns, and after 1946, McCrea almost exclusively made them. The authenticity of his Western spirit graces Colorado Territory.

As an action film, Colorado Territory is lean and efficient, even elliptic (the prison break, the visit to Martha's grave). The central setpiece, the "final big caper", is a train robbery**, one of the finest such sequences in the history of the cinema. Walsh is not interested in action in itself but as a means to reveal character. The human touch is essential, the vulnerability, the nuances in performances, a sense of humour, an understated tragic irony.

The presence of death is telegraphed in the names of the ghost town retreats on the Rocky Mountains: Todos Santos***, Canyon of Death, City of the Moon. The imagery is ominous: full moon, vultures, skeletons, smoke signals (Wes interprets them to Colorado: "It means we’re a couple of fools in a dead village dreaming about something that’ll probably never happen."), Indian death songs. The presence of religion is meaningful. Vaya con Dios. We are on the edge of eternity.

The gloomy ambience of the authentic locations is impressively caught by Sidney Hickox, Walsh's regular cinematographer since Gentleman Jim. Hickox became also a master of film noir (To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, White Heat).

As often in the cinema of Walsh, there is female agency. In the beginning, after his prison escape, Wes rescues a settler father and his daughter, Fred (Henry Hull) and Julie Ann Winslow (Dorothy Malone) from a gang of robbers who attack the stagecoach they are riding. Wes is serious in his intentions about Julie Ann (as was Roy Earle / Humphrey Bogart about Velma/Joan Leslie). But after the train robbery, when the Winslows learn Wes's identity, Julie Ann is about to betray him, only stopped by her father. This is the point of no return.

Among the gang of robbers in the Todos Santos hideaway Wes meets Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo) whom Reno Blake (John Archer) has taken along from a dancehall in El Paso. Wes instantly wants to send her back, because a woman in a male gang spells trouble. Later Wes is happy to be her protector but nothing more, because she belongs to a life he wants to leave behind. (In High Sierra, her counterpart was the former taxi dancer Marie Garson/Ida Lupino).

Colorado, who identifies herself as "part Pueblo", has superior survival skills. She is a genuine Wild West woman. After the train robbery, in the film's most intimately physical moment, Colorado saves Wes by removing the bullet from his shoulder and cauterizing the wound with gunpowder.

In the final siege at an abandoned Pueblo cliff dwelling at the Canyon of the Dead, Colorado tries to save Wes by bringing horses, but the posse outwits them and they die in a hail of gunfire.

The last we see of Wes and Colorado is their hands joining in a close-up that might have inspired Bresson. At the abandoned mission of Todos Santos, where they left the loot, they were symbolically married by the wandering Brother Tomas. The loot now helps bring new life to the ghost town.

WES MCQUEEN (JOEL MCCREA)

Joel McCrea as Wes McQueen is completely different from Humphrey Bogart as Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a performance that made a big star out of him. Bogart until then had been seen as a character actor, also by Walsh and the Warner Bros. McCrea belongs to Hollywood's "strong silent men", straight in many ways, sometimes even perceived as boring. His kalokagathia makes him special in both tragedy and comedy. When he plays the part of a doomed criminal, we feel in his character a potential for greatness that should have been within his reach. When he stars in a Preston Sturges farce, his innate dignity is in hilarious contrast with the ridiculous situations in which he lands. In comedy, he belongs to the Max Linder lineage.

COLORADO CARSON (VIRGINIA MAYO)

Signed by Samuel Goldwyn, Virginia Mayo became a dancing star in musicals and comedies. She was four times Danny Kaye's leading lady (Wonder Man, The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, A Song Is Born) but excelled also in a serious role in The Best Years of Our Lives. At Warner Bros. she became the biggest box-office draw, and Raoul Walsh directed her to a career best performance as Colorado Carson, her own personal favourite role, perhaps inspired by Jennifer Jones as Pearl Chavez in Duel in the Sun, equally passionate and defiant as an eternal outsider because of her Indian blood, but original and heartfelt. The collaboration was so fortunate that Walsh and Mayo made four films together (Colorado Territory, White Heat, Captain Horatio Hornblower, Along the Great Divide).

The first impressions of Mayo in Colorado Territory are her overdone makeup and cheesecake poses. Suspicion arises of an attempt to serve us a glamorous facade instead of character, but Mayo soon transcends such impressions. Her dancing skills, essential in musical comedy, now power an amazing action choreography.

Wes is an excellent judge of character when it comes to men. The only one he trusts in the robber gang is its leader Dave Rickard (Basil Ruysdael), his mentor and father figure. He would not join this final robbery if it were not for him. All but Dave are traitors. There is a brilliant plan, but nothing goes according to plan. The most overwhelming part is coming to terms with betrayal every step of the way, but Wes is prepared for everything, and finally he returns to Dave, only to find him murdered by Pluthner (Houseley Stevenson). Besides Wes, the gang's only survivor is now Colorado - the one whom Wes wanted to dismiss.

Wes is a terrible judge of character when it comes to women. Together, Wes and Colorado seek refuge with the Winslows who only now learn Wes's true identity. Wes had dreamed of getting together with Julie Ann, but she turns him down and wants to turn him in. While Wes was in prison, his girlfriend Martha died, and in Julie Ann he saw a candidate for a new partner. Colorado immediately senses the transference taking place here. How can she know? "Because I'm a woman". Wes would like to become a settler and farmer, but Julie Ann has no interest in farm life.

In this turning-point of double anagnorisis and peripeteia, Wes at last starts to see in Colorado his veritable Wild West female partner. Besides female intuition, she has courage, character, survival instincts and skills. She can ride, scale mountains and shoot straight. She would be the ideal partner for life. But it is too late. They become partners in death in a scene that may have inspired Gun Crazy and Bonnie and Clyde.

HIGH SIERRA AND COLORADO TERRITORY

I have not seen The Criterion Collection's 2021 blu-ray double issue of High Sierra / Colorado Territory, but they are an ideal pair.

Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra grew from a 1930s style hard-boiled character to an embodiment of a world of pain. His bigger-than-life persona fit perfectly into the expressionistic imagination of film noir. He became the face of noir.

Joel McCrea in Colorado Territory is still in the lineage of the gallant knight of the age of chivalry. Wes has erred so far into the dark side that is is by now impossible to return. Colorado Territory is full of film noir hallmarks, but its main identity is classicism as distinct from expressionism. It is a pure classical Western genre picture with touches of noir.

The lovers' blood bond and the Liebestod are the biggest differences.

There is a surgery in High Sierra: organized by Roy Earle, "Doc" Banton (Henry Hull) heals the clubfooted Velma. In Colorado Territory, the act takes place among lovers: Colorado performs surgery on Wes.

In High Sierra, Roy dies alone while Marie watches in horror from below. In Colorado Territory, the lovers die together.

DANSE MACABRE

Colorado Territory is a danse macabre, but although it is full of death imagery, Raoul Walsh is not a horror film director. I would even argue that although Walsh's contributions to film noir were fundamental, he had no film noir sensibility. There is no existential dread, no cosmic agony.

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There is a duped look in the print viewed. Full black is missing. It is impossible to appreciate the "Western noir" look.

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* Colorado Territory was a territory of the United States in 1861–1876 before the State of Colorado was admitted to the Union. Previously the land was home to the Ute, the Anasazi, the Comanche, the Jicarilla Apache, the Arapaho and the Cheyenne. – A history lesson is given in the movie by an old cowboy: "The Spaniards moved in first; Indians came along and massacred them. Then the pox came along and took care of the Indians. Left nothing but scorpions; then an earthquake came along and took care of them." – The action takes place after the American Civil War (1861–1865), in 1870, in the most classical period (1870–1900) of Western fiction.

** Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad started its operation in 1870.

*** A reference to Vispera de Todos los Santos = Halloween, also Día de Muertos and the danse macabre legacy.