Following its successful screenings of such classic westerns as “The Searchers,” “Gunman’s Walk,” and “Rio Bravo,” the Sag Harbor Cinema will present “Go West,” a weeklong program of seven westerns from the 1950s, from Saturday through Wednesday.
“Jean-Luc Godard called the western ‘the most cinematic genre of all,’ ” said Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the cinema’s artistic director. “With this program we wanted to pay homage to the great masters of the genre, as well as focus on the moral and psychological complexities of the postwar and Cold War eras, when westerns often came tinted with a shade of noir.”
One director especially known for his westerns was Delmore Daves, who will be represented by his 1957 classic “3:10 to Yuma.” Van Heflin plays Dan Evans, a mild-mannered cattle rancher tasked with taking Ben Wade, a captured outlaw (Glenn Ford, playing against type), to the train that will deliver him to prison. Wade’s gang has other ideas. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, “This is a first-rate action picture — a respectable second section to ‘High Noon.’ ”
The film was adapted by Halsted Welles, a prolific television writer in the ‘50s and ‘60s, from a short story by Elmore Leonard. Welles’s son, of the same name, a well-known garden designer and Sag Harbor resident, will introduce the film at the screening on Saturday at 5:30 and take questions afterward.
“Day of the Outlaw” (1959) was the last western by the Hungarian-American director Andre de Toth. Set in a quiet frontier town, the film is fueled by a dispute between Blaise Starrett, a cattleman (Robert Ryan) and Hal Crane, a farmer (Alan Marshal), which is about to turn violent. Things take a turn when a rogue cavalry captain (Burl Ives) rides into town with his gang of thugs.
“The neglected, low-budget ‘Day of the Outlaw’ . . . has the stark all-encompassing quality of a late, fully developed style,” said Fred Camper in the Chicago Reader. Bob Rubin, a writer, collector, and western aficionado, will introduce the film through a video specially recorded for the screenings.
Another special program will be a 3-D screening of Raoul Walsh’s “Gun Fury” (1953), the director’s only 3-D film. Rock Hudson plays Ben Warren, a rancher shot and left for dead when an ex-Confederate soldier kidnaps his bride-to-be (Donna Reed). Warren forms a small posse to chase the kidnapper toward the Mexican border.
Robert Daniels of rogerebert.com said, “It’s enrapturing to watch Walsh’s unparalleled sense of how to frame these vast landscapes and the way he captures the film’s immersive chases.” “Gun Fury” will have one screening, on Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
Anthony Mann turned from film noir to westerns in the 1950s, directing 10 films in that genre during that decade, including five with James Stewart. In “Bend of the River” (1952), Stewart plays a rugged cowboy struggling to hide his dark past while guiding a wagon train through the Oregon wilderness.
“The scenery is good in Technicolor and the fightin’ is frequent and bold,” wrote Crowther for The Times. “Thanks to Universal-International, here’s a present for the Western outdoor fans.” Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams, and Rock Hudson co-star.
Of “Forty Guns” (1957), The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wrote in a 2012 review, “The writer-director Samuel Fuller’s hardboiled 1957 Western serves up doomed love and sudden death with dramatic richness.” The film stars Barbara Stanwyck as a rancher who commands a 40-strong posse of cowboys. When a lawman (Barry Sullivan) comes to town with a warrant for one of them, Stanwyck begins to fall for him even as he chips away at her authority.
Like Fuller, Nicholas Ray was an iconoclastic director who often clashed with the Hollywood studio system. His 1954 film “Johnny Guitar” stars Joan Crawford as a hard-nosed owner of a saloon frequented by the region’s undesirables. Sterling Hayden plays Johnny Guitar, a former gunslinger and Crawford’s ex-lover, who comes to her aid when the town turns against her.
John Petrakis of The Chicago Tribune called the film “one of those classic westerns that has maintained its status by reinventing itself every decade since its release in 1954.”
The director Budd Boetticher made five westerns in the 1950s starring Randolph Scott and produced by Harry Joe Brown. The Ranown Westerns, as they are known, are represented at the cinema by “Ride Lonesome” (1959), in which Scott plays Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter trying to capture a wanted murderer. His quest is complicated by a pair of outlaws who have their own reasons for riding along.
Written by Burt Kennedy, whom Boetticher called “the best western writer ever,” the film features the genre icons James Coburn, in his film debut, and Lee Van Cleef. Geoff Andrew called it “a small masterpiece” in Time Out.
Each film will be shown twice, except for “Gun Fury” in 3-D. Tickets are available individually or as a “Canyon Pass,” which is $55, $30 for members, and permits holders to attend each film one time.
