1957 Directed by Samuel Fuller
An authoritarian rancher rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall arrives to set things straight, the cattle queen finds herself falling for the avowedly non-violent lawman. Both have itchy-fingered brothers, a female gunman enters the picture, and things go desperately wrong.
Barbara Stanwyck Barry Sullivan Dean Jagger John Ericson Gene Barry Robert Dix Jidge Carroll Paul Dubov Gerald Milton Ziva Rodann Hank Worden Neyle Morrow Chuck Roberson Chuck Hayward Sandra Wirth Eve Brent Tex Driscoll Carol Henry George Huggins Eddie Parks Jack Perrin Tom Smith George Sowards Jack Stoney
40 pistolas, 四十支枪, 40 Tueurs, Четиридесет пушки, Čtyřicet pušek, Vierzig Gewehre, Cuarenta pistolas, Dragones de la violencia, Quarante Tueurs, Quaranta pistole, 四十挺の拳銃, 40정의 총, Czterdzieści rewolwerów, Dragões da Violência, Сорок ружей
“Forty Guns” blows apart the masculine iconography of the Western with the force of a point blank hit from a six-shooter.
Director Samuel Fuller - a practiced pro at audacious filmmaking, gives Barbara Stanwyck a send-off from cinema worthy of her immense power in “Forty.”
Similar to Stanwyck’s earlier turn in “The Furies,” the actress plays a guileful expert in frontier fierceness. Here, she is a land baroness commanding forty hired guns in her own realm of Arizona.
Fuller alternates between shots of scope and claustrophobia in the film - making for a sensation of amusing and captivating imbalance.
The opening ride of the forty guns feels like a wave of rough and rowdy power blowing across the desert. It’s…
"Now you've killed a man."
Watching this as part of a "Stanwyck Noir" series had me on alert for why (programmer/jazz fan) Lars Nilsen selected it (besides the obvious fact that it's great). Sure enough, there's a thread of corrupt men in power, but the noir motif that bled through the most was that of the doomed lovers. There are two great shots that betray this bleakness: when Wes Bonnel (Gene Barry) and his soon to be bride are necking in the gun store (how's that for an image), the shadows of rifles are ominously cast over them. Later when Griff (Barry Sullivan) and Jessica (Stanwyck) are passionately kissing, his hand is around her throat in what looks more like…
Samuel Fuller doing a black-and-white western with widescreen, deep-focus photography = almost too much for the human eye to take in.
CRITERION CHALLENGE 2021: 33. Western
Progress: 18/52
"You gotta be big to forgive."
I've been choosing the order of these Criterion Challenge films essentially at random thus far, but when my cherished New York Knicks clinched home-court advantage in the first round of the Playoffs by fending off a hapless Boston Celtics G-League roster this afternoon, I knew we were heading straight down memory lane to the first film I saw in the Big Apple, Forty Guns (courtesy of Anthology Film Archives). Written and directed by master of the overheated Samuel Fuller for his fledgling production company Globe Enterprises, the laconic backlot Western was bankrolled and distributed by 20th Century Fox. Anonymously received upon its initial release, it has since…
Action! - Three Auteurs: The Narrative Tabloids Of Samuel Fuller
It was only a matter of time before Samuel Fuller placed his vision into one of the oldest and most prolific genres (although by then it was on the decline): the Western. While the story is somewhat familiar to us today, by then, only a small number of films within this genre had as their protagonist a sheriff on the threshold of his career, who was conflicted about his job and wishing that he wasn't the law. Many of these factors are the result of a variety of circumstances, among which love is one of them.
Jagger and Stanwyck's chemistry is the primary anchor that drives the story, keeping you…
"Ya gotta be big to forgive."
U.S. marshal Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix) come to Tombstone, a town "unofficially" run by rancher Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck). Griff and Jessica clash over the means with which she exercises her power, and her dipshit criminal brother Brockie's (John Ericson) inability to stop bullying people and stay out of trouble. But it isn't long before the lawman and the ranch boss find their hearts entwined and themselves searching for a way to bridge the chasm between their worlds.
Forty Guns is another great example of Fuller's ability to keep things lean amd concise. It's like the man is allergic to excess material and there's…
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"I'm not interested in *you*, Mr. Bonnell. It's your trademark."
[gestures at his gun, purring]
"May I feel it?"
"Uh-uh."
"Just curious."
"It might go off in your face."
"I'll take a chance."
For most of Forty Guns, it functions as a Sam Fuller sex Western where every man is comparing their gun and Barbara Stanwyck is being Barbara, but then it gets weirdly dramatic, with a sudden realignment of narrative stakes. Still doesn't make it conventional in the slightest, but towards the end, it feels like the film audiences at the time were expecting, not what it is for most of its all-too-brief run-time.
“Did you ever see a dead boy's eyes in the sky?”
Woman with a whip, Barbara Stanwyck, has got songs written about her, naturally. Milk teeth kids and wet nose boys have been making a mess of things in the last days of the Wild West. Elderly gunfighters are seen as celebrities and freaks, looking for a new way of life (“the frontier is finished”). Also, a film that asks the important question—is there anything better than a good barrel bath with the boys?*
Final 20 minutes is a rollercoaster: suicide, wedding murder, musical interlude, jailbreak, hostage situation and misty-eyed coda. Fuller shot three films back-to-back in 1957, this being the last, and I'm willing to bet, the greatest. Real…
Watching Forty Guns, you can almost feel Sam Fuller's regard for Barabara Stanwyck. The way he shoots her, the authority she has, the way she's deferred to on screen. All of it reveals a woman of immense power, one whose authority is as terrifying as it is alluring. It's one thing, though, for Fuller to visually reveal who Stanwyck is; it's quite another for Stanwyck to take all of what Fuller is giving her and make Jessica Drummond as worthy of regard as Stanwyck herself is. And she does so with awe-inspiring ease.
Stanwyck is phenomenal here, all taunting confidence and easy authority, comfortably facing down two dozen men by herself, never even considering the possibility that they won't blink…
Fuller and Stanwyck. What a match made in heaven. The West suits Fuller, allowing him to set up his nonpretentious, often moving but always steady and brutally direct shot patterns while capturing a great and raw beauty. The same, obviously, holds true for Stanwyck, who has been mixing raw sex with tough-as-nails defensiveness since the Pre-Codes. As with all Fullers, FORTY GUNS is blunt but complex in its contradictions: Stanwyck's dominatrix tyrant is puzzlingly disarmed by the man who disrupts her racket, but Fuller will not totally clean up her image for the sake of a moral. Immaculate cinematography and unfussy but inventive camera placements (especially under the carriage at the cold open) add yet more textures to an utterly wild, kinky Western.
