Angel and the Badman (1946)

[titoli]

First Wayne production, it has little to warrant a vision, but 2 or 3 elements rescue it from anonimity. Gail Russell looks like a woman (yeah, Jenkins) and the actor playing the sheriff delivers a performance reminding me of Meurisse in Deuxiéme Souffle.  Some stunts, particularly the one of the plunge into the river by Canutt are impressive. But the pace is unbearably slow, the action is sparse (even the final duel, which could have been much better handled, is wasted by lack of courage. But there's a great moment, coming unexpectedly and well-handled, when Wayne is suddenly terrified by the idea of settling down and goes back to his badder ways, the moment when he is presented a Bible which, unexpectedly again for a movie made in the '40's, is then used by his pard as a quotation book for grisly deaths. Watch it, if you have the patience of going through 85' of molasses. 

[dave jenkins]

Gail Russell looks like a woman (yeah, Jenkins)

It's all in her eyes. That gal's got gaze, man.

[Groggy]

It's all in her eyes. That gal's got gaze, man.

Again with the gaze, Jenkins.

[titoli]

It's all in her eyes. That gal's got gaze, man.

You're on a wrong track on this as you were yesterday on Barbara Lawrence's book. What makes the difference is she is less puffy on this

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3897399296/nm0751149

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3897399296/nm0751149

than she was in Seven Men From Now (and 10 years younger) and that publicity still I posted at the time. She is also probably less intoxicated (don't know from what, though: alcohol, sedatives?) or whatever it was that reduced to what she looks in the later movie. Her eyes do little for me in this, though they are more alive than later. it is more her oval, her delicate features of her face, her general air of youthfulness.   

[dave jenkins]

Yeah, she was a boozer. It took her looks, her health, her life.

[dave jenkins]

Hulu's got it: http://www.hulu.com/watch/63052/angel-and-the-badman