This is a pretty entertaining film, with a good story, entertaining characters, and an interesting historical slant.
The premise is great: drop a couple of well-brought up English ladies and their well-cared for hornless Herefordshire bull into the harsh wilds of Texas, with its brutal survivalist ethos and its famously hardy longhorn cattle. Will the bull prove unfit for such a harsh environment and fail to breed? Will the English ladies be too delicate and have to escape back to England?
The women's need for funds forces them to sell the bull, and their concern for the longterm welfare of the bull provides sufficient motivation to take them to Texas. Along the way, the women experience pretty much the whole gamut of western tropes, from lusty barroom brawls to life-threatening cattle stampedes, ruthless armed robbery and the stench and squalor of an isolated cattle baron's accommodation.
The standout performances are those of the two female leads, Juliet Mills (daughter Hilary), and even more so, Maureen O'Hara (Martha). The latter is magnificent, dominating every scene.
The film introduces James Stewart's character, Sam Burnett, as an archetypal American male: tough and unafraid, quick to defend his friends with his fists, and literally taking bulls by their horns. From the outset, the plot endeavours to make Stewart's employer, rancher Taylor, unsympathetic, so as to bring us more on side when Stewart's character later contracts to cheat the man - a key plot point. However, I was distracted by the idea of Stewart wrestling a powerful longhorn bull to the ground, wondering if the filmmakers were seriously going to expect us to believe that a middle-aged man would be up for such athletics. As is often the case, James Stewart (here 58) is really too old for the role (you can clearly see the use of thicker-bodied stunt doubles in the action sequences) and too intelligent to play such a simple-minded cowboy (John Wayne, anyone?). I've seen a documentary that included modern "bull-grabbers", and they were all fit young men. Stewart's role is rather subdued for most of the story, only once or twice rising to the thrilling intensity of one of his conflicted characters in the Anthony Mann westerns. Arguably, Stewart does not play the lead but rather a supporting character, and it's really an O'Hara movie.
One strange character choice was to portray cattle rancher Bowen (Brian Keith), Stewart's rival for O'Hara's affections, for all the world like a traditional Scottish laird in a ranch-house styled like a dark high-ceilinged Scottish Highland castle, and first seen in squalor, filthy furs piled all around, tearing meat from the bone with his teeth, with the dogs allowed on the table, snatching meat from the master's platter. According to Wikipedia, the story is loosely based on the life of rancher William Burgess, so maybe this was true to life. In any case, the inclusion of the ex-Scot, Bowen, allows the film-makers to pit a Briton against Stewart's archetypal American in a struggle for O'Hara's affections.
The outdoor snow scenes feature some stunning photography, notably when Stewart's horse is trying to force its way through very deep snow drifts. But on the whole, this is not a very naturalistic film. There are some poorly realised overlay shots where the colour palettes of the foreground characters and background scenes jar. The women maintain a high degree of enhanced photogeneity throughout, and apart from Bowen, the men remain fairly presentable. The fight scenes are generally of the comic bar-room brawl style, where fists connect with jaws with impressive sound effects, nobody gets seriously hurt, and nobody is even asked to pay for the extensive damage!
So, all in all, worth catching, but without the intensity of interest of an Anthony Mann western.
- Rating: Matinee
- When seen: 19 Feb 2011
- Where seen: Home
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.
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