In the year it was released, the Western was a form normally used to affirm justice, masculinity and frontier morality; pedagogically, the film turned this on its head by depicting an example of collective violence, which I'm not going to state explicitly for spoiler reasons.
Additionally, the director William A. Wellman is praised for showing how restraint works on screen — that is, for filmmakers who fetishise this sort of thing, for reasons of their own. For anyone actually watching the film as, you know, a "film" for the purpose of immersion, it fails on almost every level. The scenes look like sets; the lighting looks like stage lighting; the actors don't look dutifully strained due to the subject material, they look like posed figure-dolls, which is unbelievably grating if one is familiar with the sort of work expected from Henry Fonda, Harry Davenport, Henry Morgan or Jane Darwell. These are all actors who by 1943 had made enough films to look utterly natural on camera. Here, they look like wax figures, like students performing theatre on a stage. The lines are spoken in a sort of staccato fashion, concentrating on making the extremely obvious point, which becomes so obvious by three quarters of the way through the film that one is ready to quit and just jump to the end... which, by the time it happens, is utterly unsurprising.
Point in fact, the movie was not an especially popular film in 1943. It didn't inspire controversy or debate. It did not redirect the Western, it did not create a film school, it did not make William Wellman into an A-line director and it did not spawn imitators. From an anecdotal point of view, as someone who watched every movie I could as I was growing up, I did not see this one until I was in my 40s. Despite being a Fonda property, it didn't appear on my television in the 70s or 80s, when a great many other westerns did. It was not a fixture of Saturday afternoons, like Big Country or High Noon. It only became a "great film" when a group of film studies professors deemed it so, because it was "deliberately simple," which is something that such people tend to consider the highest form of art.
Additionally, the director William A. Wellman is praised for showing how restraint works on screen — that is, for filmmakers who fetishise this sort of thing, for reasons of their own. For anyone actually watching the film as, you know, a "film" for the purpose of immersion, it fails on almost every level. The scenes look like sets; the lighting looks like stage lighting; the actors don't look dutifully strained due to the subject material, they look like posed figure-dolls, which is unbelievably grating if one is familiar with the sort of work expected from Henry Fonda, Harry Davenport, Henry Morgan or Jane Darwell. These are all actors who by 1943 had made enough films to look utterly natural on camera. Here, they look like wax figures, like students performing theatre on a stage. The lines are spoken in a sort of staccato fashion, concentrating on making the extremely obvious point, which becomes so obvious by three quarters of the way through the film that one is ready to quit and just jump to the end... which, by the time it happens, is utterly unsurprising.
Point in fact, the movie was not an especially popular film in 1943. It didn't inspire controversy or debate. It did not redirect the Western, it did not create a film school, it did not make William Wellman into an A-line director and it did not spawn imitators. From an anecdotal point of view, as someone who watched every movie I could as I was growing up, I did not see this one until I was in my 40s. Despite being a Fonda property, it didn't appear on my television in the 70s or 80s, when a great many other westerns did. It was not a fixture of Saturday afternoons, like Big Country or High Noon. It only became a "great film" when a group of film studies professors deemed it so, because it was "deliberately simple," which is something that such people tend to consider the highest form of art.
Film studies courses need films which are resistant to misreading. The Ox Bow Incident is useful for teaching analytical method before students are turned loose upon messier works where interpretation can collapse into projection. Even at that, most people do project their motives onto the film: it is regularly discussed as a revelation of "truth," which is never established; what is established is the lack of procedure, which matters, but as its conveyed here, we don't learn anything. The "message" is obvious, even juvenile. It reveals nothing about the time period it depicts, only the willingness to present something on screen that hadn't been to that time. This doesn't make the film "good." It makes the film "new."
But here it is, presented nonetheless. Because, in my opinion, every film made, especially those made before 1964, ought to be attempted if not fully seen.
But here it is, presented nonetheless. Because, in my opinion, every film made, especially those made before 1964, ought to be attempted if not fully seen.
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