Canyon Passage details
| Format: | PG DVD |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Ward Bond, Dana Andrews, Patricia Roc, Andy Devine, Fay Holden, Susan Hayward, Stanley Ridges, Lloyd Bridges, Hoagy Carmichael, Brian Donlevy |
| Director: | Jacques Tourneur |
| Genre: | Action/Adventure - Westerns |
| Studio: | ELEVATION |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
Canyon Passage |
PG Feature |
DVD Information
| Run time: | 1 hour 32 minutes |
|---|---|
| Rental release: | 03 Sep 2007 |
| Main languages: | English |
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Most helpful review
Fine convincing western
By a customer from London , 20 Jun 2010[Highly rated reviewer]
Jacques Tourneur's striking Canyon Passage is less of a thematic western than a film of ideas. The story is from the same pen as Stagecoach, Ernest Haycox, and shares many of the same qualities, especially the love of character and community. Dana Andrews, as a successful small-town businessman and a safe pair of hands, is expected to marry a sweet domesticated widow, Pat Roc (in her Hollywood venture) who is living with relatives on a homestead on traditional Indian land. His best friend, Brian Donlevy is now an addicted gambler who runs the town safe deposit and is stealing from his clients to pay off his heavy losses. He is in engaged to marry the spirited Susan Hayward, but she seems to have eyes for Andrews. Andrews has one serious enemy, Ward Bond, a mindless thug who Andrew has good reason to want to see hanged, except that he believes in due process and not lynching. Bond lives rough, plunders for easy money, and makes forays into town simply to cause trouble. Andrews and Donlevy are zealously loyal to each other, almost each others alter ego and come close to sharing Hayward in a scene where Andrews demonstrates how to kiss her. Yet, in antisocial impulses, Donlevy shares something the Bond too. The film is full of shots of glorious shots of Oregon countryside through doors and windows and the core of the film is an extended sequence when the whole community comes together to help a family build their farm and become part of the ‘new’ pioneer America. Yet, it suddenly shifts from scenes of domestic romanticism to violence and when Ward Bond and Donleavy finally lose all control the consequences are bad for everyone. This is a settled America, but underneath the surface, the old tensions still survive. Observing it all is Hoagy Carmichael, a minstrel figure, who manages to always know what is going on. He peeps through windows or quietly observes the scene while balladeering with not entirely relevant numbers. The film is sandwiched between two of Jacques Tourneur’s best films, the seriously underrated and brilliant, Experiment Perilous and the justifiably admired noir, Build My Gallows High. Here, to show how close Andrews and Donlevy are, as characters, he has them act in much the same way. Only Pat Roc comes fails to shine with an angelic but sexless performance, as in so many of her British films. The film’s weakest element in its cliché ridden score. Recommended to anyone looking for a thinking person’s western.- Was this review helpful to you?
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(2)Unusual Western
By a customer from Sussex , 05 Jul 2010Walter Wanger was a producer with somewhat eclectic tastes (Stagecoach, Algiers, The Arabian Nights, among others), so one might expect something a bit out of the ordinary, which is what one gets here. Not only is the location different - Oregon in the 1850's, with beautifully photographed scenery in Technicolor - but the casting is unusual, with Dana Andrews more usually met in an urban environment, and Patricia Roc imported from the Rank Organisation (to little effect, one must add) in the second female lead. However, there are several staple Western ingredients present, in the shape of an Indian attack, a good fist fight between Andrews and Ward Bond (one of John Ford's regulars) and other familiar faces such as Brian Donlevy, Andy Devine and Lloyd Bridges.
The real problem is the lack of a strong story line with the lead character doing little other than demonstrating loyalty to a worthless friend, and dithering between two women, and there is nothing much director Jacques Tourneur (himself, one feels, more at home in noir thrillers like 'Build my Gallows High' or horror movies) can do about that.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Fine convincing western
By a customer from London , 20 Jun 2010Jacques Tourneur's striking Canyon Passage is less of a thematic western than a film of ideas. The story is from the same pen as Stagecoach, Ernest Haycox, and shares many of the same qualities, especially the love of character and community. Dana Andrews, as a successful small-town businessman and a safe pair of hands, is expected to marry a sweet domesticated widow, Pat Roc (in her Hollywood venture) who is living with relatives on a homestead on traditional Indian land. His best friend, Brian Donlevy is now an addicted gambler who runs the town safe deposit and is stealing from his clients to pay off his heavy losses. He is in engaged to marry the spirited Susan Hayward, but she seems to have eyes for Andrews. Andrews has one serious enemy, Ward Bond, a mindless thug who Andrew has good reason to want to see hanged, except that he believes in due process and not lynching. Bond lives rough, plunders for easy money, and makes forays into town simply to cause trouble. Andrews and Donlevy are zealously loyal to each other, almost each others alter ego and come close to sharing Hayward in a scene where Andrews demonstrates how to kiss her. Yet, in antisocial impulses, Donlevy shares something the Bond too. The film is full of shots of glorious shots of Oregon countryside through doors and windows and the core of the film is an extended sequence when the whole community comes together to help a family build their farm and become part of the ‘new’ pioneer America. Yet, it suddenly shifts from scenes of domestic romanticism to violence and when Ward Bond and Donleavy finally lose all control the consequences are bad for everyone. This is a settled America, but underneath the surface, the old tensions still survive. Observing it all is Hoagy Carmichael, a minstrel figure, who manages to always know what is going on. He peeps through windows or quietly observes the scene while balladeering with not entirely relevant numbers. The film is sandwiched between two of Jacques Tourneur’s best films, the seriously underrated and brilliant, Experiment Perilous and the justifiably admired noir, Build My Gallows High. Here, to show how close Andrews and Donlevy are, as characters, he has them act in much the same way. Only Pat Roc comes fails to shine with an angelic but sexless performance, as in so many of her British films. The film’s weakest element in its cliché ridden score. Recommended to anyone looking for a thinking person’s western.- Was this review helpful to you?
- (2) Yes |
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