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Sadly Over-hyped

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Cowpoke good guy , known as the Virginian, Joel McCrea , and his best colleague called Steve , Sonny Tuffs , both fall for Molly, Barbara Britton , the Eastern Schoolmarm who is come to their Wyoming town . Steve wants to make some quick money and joins up Trampas , Brian Donlevy , and his cattle rustling band .After that , the Virginian leads a posse against the cattle rustlers . Things go wrong when The Virginian must take a hard decission .Good Western based on the 1902 classic novel by Owen Lister about a ranch-hand defeating the local bad guys . The main issue of the movie is an interesting premise , as The Virginian is forced to choose between frienship and the code of the west and Molly wonders if she can accept the country's harsh ways . It has fine interpretation from a top-drawer cast , such as Joel McCrea , Brian Donlevy , Barbara Britton . Joel McCrea gives a decent acting as the tough cowboy who is betrayed by his best friend , deciding between bring him to justice and alienating the pretty schoolteacher he is in love with . Donlevy is perfectly cast as the outlaw leader Trampas . And a very good support cast such as : Sonny Tuffs , Fay Bainter, Tom Tully , Bill Edwards , Paul Guilfoyle , Mark Lawrence , among others . The motion picture was well directed by Stuart Gilmore who was one of the best Hollywood editors . Although he also made a few fulms such as Captive man, Half-breed , Target and Hot lead.There are several adaptation about this novel : First silent retelling The Virginian 1914 by Cecil B DeMille with Dustin Farnum , Jack Johnston . Classic early talkie 1929 by Victor Fleming with Gary Cooper , Walter Huston , Mary Brian , Richard Arlen . 1962 popular TV series mostly directed by Earl Bellamy with James Drury , Doug McClure , Lee J Cobb , John McIntire , Stewart Granger . TV rendition with Bill Pullman , John Savage , Harris Yulin , Colm Feore , Diane Lane . 2014 by Thomas McKowsky with Trace Adkins , Steve Bacic, Victoria Pratt

This is the second film I have viewed where Joel McCrea played the hero and Brian Donlevy played the chief villain. The first was Cecil de Mille's epic "Union Pacific", 7 years earlier. The present film was the second talkie version of the classic 1902 novel by Owen Wister, generally regarded as the first modern western novel, and a hugely popular book with both sexes for years to come. Unfortunately, I haven't read the novel nor seen the '29 pioneer talkie version, starring Gary Cooper. Unlike this former film, the present film was shot in Technicolor. I understand that, unlike this film, the book continued after the marriage with a visit to Molly's home in VT, where the culture shock that she experienced in relocating to frontier WY is reversed somewhat for The Virginian.The book appealed to women as well as men, because it pictured a middle-class townie young woman being able to eventually adapt to surviving on the western frontier, marrying a western hero, originally from the east, worthy of her love. Of course, women readers at the turn of the century were likely to be mostly from comfortable middle class families, rather than being poor immigrant women, often used to farm work, who presumably comprised the great majority of actual women who migrated westward in the late 19th century.Owen Wister was a life long resident of Philadelphia and a Harvard-trained lawyer. However, his real passion was fictional writing and occasional summer trips to the West. He was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and Fredrick Remington: high profile easterners who also had a passion for the western life at that time. His heroine is clearly modeled on women of his class, and his hero is modeled on men like TR and himself, whom he considered natural aristocrats, whatever their actual station in life. Thus, they were quite atypical westerners, but people that most of his readers could identify with.Although not obvious from the screenplay, his story was actually based largely on events of the Johnson County War, which was a conflict between the large and small WY cattle ranchers, precipitated by the major cattle die off from the drought and severe winter of '85-6. The Virginian is associated with one of the big ranchers: Judge Henry, and Trampa(Donlevy) is probably modeled on Nate Champion; leader of the small ranchers, who were rightly or wrongly labeled as rustlers by the big ranchers. In the book, the Virginian eventually becomes a big rancher and important political voice in WY politics, as Wister's imagined ideal destiny if he were to remain in the West. Both Molly and The Virginian say they moved west to escape the boredom of their natal environments. However, as Remington discovered when he tried western ranching, the life of the western cowboy was no varied picnic. My own ancestors moved out to Kansas about this time, but decided the East was more to their liking.In spite of the assets of this film, I will say that I found de Mille's "Union Pacific" more interesting. Actually, the main plot has some similarities. In both films, there is a character who is a friend of the hero and a rival for the affections of the leading lady, but who joins the chief villain's group for a spell. In "Union Pacific", this character eventually sees the error of his ways and saves the hero's life from Donlevy's villain. In the present film, this man(Steve) is not given a chance to redeem himself, being hung as a cattle thief, with the Virginian's reluctant approval. Steve puts up no resistance against this vigilante action, with a nonchalant fatalistic attitude toward death.As usual, Brian Donlevy makes a charismatic and believable oily leader of the bad guys. Joel McCrea wasn't the most charismatic leading man. I would have much preferred Randy Scott, who had a natural aristocratic bearing and was a bred southerner, befitting The Virginian. Gary Cooper would have been fine too in revisiting his prior role. Fay Banter was excellent as Molly's new mother, in effect. She gets to articulate the necessity of "The Code of the West" clearly to Molly after Steve's hanging. At first, Molly doesn't accept this , as it relates to Steve, and nearly leaves for VT, but for the stage driver who convinces her she doesn't really want to leave, in her heart. Barbara Britton, as Molly, is characterized as perhaps having more difficulty adjusting to western culture than Wister intended. His Molly was no frail flower.Where did Wister come up with the unusual name Trampa for his villain, dressed all in black and riding a black horse? Trampa means trap, in French. Trampa set traps. Perhaps Wister hoped it would also connote a tramp: a low class shiftless man. Near the end, Trampa, having failed to fatally wound the Virginian as a sniper, tells him he must leave this area by sundown or else, even though the Virginian is planning to marry Molly soon. There follows a "High Noon"-like scene, where the Virginian is saved from a Trampa ambush by a quirk and wins the shootout. Destiny was on his side.

The best thing about THE VIRGINIAN is the pretty school teacher played by Barbara Britton, and very convincingly too. Shortly upon her arrival in town she's met by two cowboy friends, Sonny Tufts and Joel McCrea. As is standard for many a western, at first she and The Virginian (Joel McCrea) don't get on--sort of like an earlier screen western starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland ("Dodge City") where they meet and fall out immediately before winding up in love before the final reel.But, as is usual in these westerns, although she eventually falls for McCrea, she struggles against losing him in a fight with villainous Trampas (Brian Donlevy), always attired in black so we get the picture. But before the finish, she and the hero ride horseback into the setting sunset. The story has the flavor of a Zane Grey western novel, although penned by Owen Wister.The simple tale has some nice performances from the star trio (McCrea, Britton and Tufts), but it's Fay Bainter and Henry O'Neill who give it a warm touch as a couple of homesteaders who take the schoolmarm in.Nothing about the tale suggests why it is such a classic by Owen Wister, especially in this rather humdrum version where the most striking asset is the beautiful Technicolor scenery. The plot is slight, to say the least, and there's little punch to the predictable ending.The only real surprise is the fact that McCrea's code of honor permits him to let his old friend hang for a rustling crime. It's the only original and surprising touch in the story.

The Virginian is a western is a western that hovers to produce huffs and puffs in its onset, exuding no ideas but gradually developing one as the movie goes on. Joel Mccrea a top leading man from the thirties in dramas, comedies, romances and of course to many, he is Sullivan of "Sullivan's travels" is good in the lead. He has that Matthew Mcconaughey thing, not great movie star glimmer but mid-range star wattage. The story of rustling is pervaded by a story of judging and punishing an old friend giving it some depth. The writing team of Goodrich and Hackett, one of the best screenplay writers ever, deliver great dialogue that director Stuart Gilmore fails to improve on visually and the last eight minutes of this movie is the whole plot and movie of High Noon. Seriously!