Book123

    Free register and download UseNet downloader, then you can FREE Download from UseNet.

    Download without Limit " Audiobooks & Video Training The Texans (1938) " from UseNet for FREE!

More

The Texans (1938) Directed by James Hogan

Genre: Western / Drama

The Texans is probably the best movie made by James Hogan who usually worked on projects of relatively modest scope, and was best known for B-features but here had a very good script and cast and a surprisingly large budget for what was essentially a second remake of the story. And it is an intrinsically fascinating story on a number of levels, fully justifying the various filmed versions, though Hogan's is the best of the three, owing to his cast as well as the timing of his remake. The tale itself trades in some of the same passions, settings, and story elements that went into both Gone With the Wind (then in pre-production) and Howard Hawks' Red River, made nine years later; and this version takes the trouble to show some of the hardships of life in Reconstruction era Texas that Hawks' movie mostly alludes to in dialogue, just to stir the audience's passions. In one sense, allowing for audience sensibilities at the time, the 1938 movie could almost be considered inflammatory, depicting black United States soldiers stationed as part of the occupying force in Indianola, although the fact that it depicts significant numbers of black soldiers at all is also fairly remarkable (even if it's the white actors in uniform that get most of the dialogue). So, The Texans has a somewhat unusual and expansive vision of its setting and period, and also a certain boldness for mentioning the Ku Klux Klan by name in its final minutes -- Hollywood usually avoided even brushing up against potential controversy, even if the group is only referred to by its initials, and in a historical context. In terms of verisimilitude, The Texans also makes extensive use of the very same real-life cattle-drive footage -- of one of the very last such major drives ever undertaken -- from the 1925 production (which was also re-used in the 1931 version).

In purely cinematic terms, the movie offers us the chance to see Randolph Scott at age 35 in a bold, slightly ironic adventurer role -- somewhere midway between his portrayal of Hawkeye in the 1936 Last of the Mohicans and his postwar work for Budd Boetticher and André De Toth, when he was ten to twenty years older. We also get the decided treat of seeing two top screen sidekicks, Walter Brennan and Raymond Hatton, working in parallel roles; Hatton's part is particularly intriguing, as a frontiersman who is depicted as a near "savage," wearing animal skins and a top hand with gun, but also content to use a tomahawk and prepared to scalp anyone who gets too far on his wrong side without batting an eye. Brennan's presence is notable, as he was also in Hawks' Red River, in a similar role, if not portrayal -- his grizzled ranch foreman is like a comic Greek chorus, commenting on the action throughout in his asides. He also has one scene that challenges the Production Code in its own way -- following the outfit's arrival in Abilene, he's seen by his dowager employer (May Robson) looking very pleased with himself and says, to her outraged reaction, "I bet you can't guess where I've been." We know there are saloons there, but we've also seen a wagon-load of "business girls" setting up shop, and one wonders if he was just getting drinks where he was. One gets the feeling that Hogan and producer Lucien Hubbard were consciously trying to match the work of Cecil B. DeMille, and they came close, only missing out with a cast that wasn't quite as good-looking or as big as what DeMille would have worked with. The precise time-frame of the action is a little bit vague in various parts of the movie, but overall this is an unexpectedly satisfying near-epic from a filmmaker who wasn't known for his work in that genre or on that scale, and one of the better overlooked Westerns of its period.

Buy Book at Lowest Price on Amazon

Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123