Arsenevich: André De Toth - Day of the Outlaw (1959)

El día de los forajidos

Blaise Starret es un ranchero que vive en las afueras de un pueblo de Wyoming y cuando empieza la película, se dirige al pueblo a declararle la guerra a los granjeros que han levantado una alambrada para limitar el acceso de su ganado; la alambrada es solo un motivo porque Starret en realidad parece obsesionado con matar a Hal Crane, y así dejar viuda a su esposa Helen con quien ha tenido una aventura pasada, experiencia que le ha dejado marcado, amargado y lleno de un rencor incontrolable. En una escena tensa y de enorme carga emocional y cuando está a punto de producirse el duelo entre Starret y Crane, hace irrupción en el pueblo Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) y su banda de forajidos, que los convierten a todos en prisioneros en su propio pueblo. El ranchero y los granjeros tienen que unirse para combatir a los forajidos y la situación que en un principio parecía de una violencia controlada, con la llegada de Bruhn va liberando los demonios internos de muchos personajes.

Lo que hace a esta película de Andre de Toth tan atractiva es la riqueza y los matices de la mayoría de sus personajes, sobre todo los personajes encarnados por Robert Ryan y Burl Ives, dos hombres que aunque diferentes se reconocen como iguales desde el momento en que se encuentran: ambos viven en el limite, saben que el mundo en el que viven y las reglas de ese mundo están cambiando a marchas forzadas y saben que el futuro para ellos es bastante desesperanzador.

Visualmente Andre de Toth consigue que la atmósfera claustrofóbica de interior de muchas escenas revierta en una película de enorme carga emocional, las escenas de exterior con las tormentas de nieve, la niebla y las enormes dificultades con que tenían que enfrentarse estos hombres son tan intensas y palpables para el espectador que parece que pudiéramos respirar ese frío. Una película que recomiendo encarecidamente sobre todo porque las palabras se quedan cortas ante toda la riqueza que Andre de Toth consigue plasmar frente a nosotros. ~~ Todo el texto en castellano tomado del blog desaparecido sssire

Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and his ranch foreman Dan (Nehemiah Persoff) are shown in the opening under the credits piloting their horses through deep snow to a small town in Wyoming territory. It’s unusual for them to come off the range during the winter, and Vic (Don Elson), the owner of the general store, wonders how they could have used up their supplies so quickly. Starrett, a mass of indignant belligerence, says he came in to settle a dispute as old as the West—a farmer, Hal Crane (Alan Marshal), intends to erect a barbed-wire fence to keep Starrett’s cattle out of his fields. Starrett sends Dan to buy some kerosene so he can set the wagon containing the barbed wire ablaze; he condemns Vic for ordering the fencing for Crane and for being seduced by the business the farmers bring him to support their interests over the ranchers.

Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), a retired Union officer, and his gang of outlaws are on the run from the U.S. Cavalry. They are wanted for stealing $40,000 in gold, and Bruhn disarms all the townsmen to prevent an attack. They intend to stay the night and ride out in the morning. Bruhn demands absolute discipline from his men, forbidding them from touching either a drop of whiskey or the four women in town, and has Starrett take him to Doc Langer (Dabbs Greer), the veterinarian, for some patching up. He took a bullet, and Langer, unskilled at performing surgery on humans, is sweating bullets as he works on the unanesthetized Bruhn. Although he extracts the bullet, he tells Starrett it went in deep, and it’s more than likely that Bruhn will die from internal bleeding. If that happens, the gang will be off their tether, free to rape and pillage to their hearts’ content. Starrett cooks up a scheme to lead the gang into the mountains where they will all die from exposure, a sacrifice of his own life he’s willing to make after realizing he was eager to shoot Crane down for no real reason.

Ives’ Bruhn uses his commanding presence and the testimony of Shorty (Jack Woody), who served under him, as to his ruthlessness with those who disobey his orders to keep his gang in line. Tied to his honor as a former soldier and haunted by a massacre he led in Utah, Bruhn is an odd choice of leader for a bunch of thugs. Ives put a spin on his Big Daddy performance from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) that makes his fear-inspiring position believable, but it is his waning energy as his life drains away that creates the most effective tension in the picture. Ives even has a Brick in this film, a young man named Gene (David Nelson) who seems extremely out of place among the crazy, garden-variety, Western outlaws Bruhn leads. His basic decency and desire to protect Vic daughter’s Ernine (Venetia Stevenson), to whom he is attracted, has him continually bolstering Bruhn’s authority, and Bruhn protects him like a son.

In the scene that may have influenced the wedding reception in Ride the High Country, Bruhn grants his restless men’s request to bring the townswomen over to dance. The ensuing caricature of an evening social is truly grotesque. The camera spins as the women are dragged around the floor. Helen is spun so hard her hair comes undone and whips around her visage of abject disgust and fear; she eventually must be rescued from the gropes of her dance partner. The trek into the mountains not only lends a stark authenticity to the struggle for survival, but also seems to present some real dangers. The snow was very deep, and the horses had to be whipped through to break trail. The penultimate scene, in which one of the thugs has frozen to death overnight and the other has lost the use of his hands, is both gruesome and pathetic. The final shootout we always come to expect at the end of Westerns is given a genuinely tense and unique twist. . ~~ Marilyn Ferdinand