Man in the Saddle
by Andr? De Toth
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alexander Knox, Ellen Drew, Joan Leslie, Randolph Scott, Richard RoberDirector: Andr? De Toth
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-09-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures
Movie Reviews of Man in the Saddle
Movie Review: Rattled by the rush.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a spectacular Western. I can easily see a day coming when Andre DeToth's star will be in the ascendant, and Boetticher's will have fallen into oblivion.
I recently saw almost all of Boetticher's westerns with Randolph Scott in a local theater, and you could tell people wanted to chuckle at all the "A man could do this" and "A man can do that" dialogue, but somehow had convinced themselves they were watching high art. But isn't Boetticher's macho code a form of paganism, of a self-serving survival of the fittest philosophy? Nowhere is this more apparent than in Seven Men From Now, where Gail Russell's husband is considered some sort of eunuch just because he's a nice guy, and he has to get shot in the back to prove his manhood. Then Randolph gets his girl, of course.
Andre DeToth's westerns are no different, meaning they also take place in a pagan world, except that through savvy highlighting and exaggeration, DeToth pushes the sex and violence of the genre into the forefront, forcing them on your attention and making them seem unheroic and ignoble. DeToth has a very distinctive style that is almost like a Bresson film on fast-forward -- the delivery of lines is near-robotic, the angles seem canted and off-kilter even when they're not, character is always in flux, and so is nature. What this does is create a world where events fly by almost too fast for the characters to process, yet this doesn't stop them from being sure of their goals, which upon reflection, would seem insane.
"If you're still thinking of Laurie, you're gonna get yourself killed!" one of Randolph's friends says before the final showdown. "My mind's clear," Randolph replies. The irony of this is that his mind is never clear. His battles make no sense. Ostensibly he's trying to start trouble with Alexander Knox, the biggest rancher in the territory, because Joan Leslie has left him for Knox and money. But -- SPOILERS AHEAD -- even after his nemesis is dead and Joan Leslie has forever severed ties with him, he still keeps fighting, like a clockwork toy that has been wound-up to go on forever.
Leslie herself is driven entirely by her own mercurial loins, fluctuating between Scott and Knox constantly. She's not worth killing a beetle over, let alone another human. In one scene she proudly escapes Knox's ranch by intimidating one of his henchmen with her expert marksmanship, but DeToth cleverly mutes the proto-feminist aspect of this. Considering that this woman is about as stable as the San Andreas faultline, the idea of her with a gun is about as appealing as Hilary Clinton with her finger on the button. Usually films with strong female heroines are seen as ahead of their time, but this one seems much closer to the truth, to me, of their fickle and mutable character, and how almost of all of human progress and aspiration is built on men beating each other senseless over their whims.
DeToth's direction throughout creates such an impression of unstoppable momentum and speed that you almost want to rush in there and start shooting yourself. And that is exactly the point. "Sitting on my porch night after night was getting boring anyway," Scott says, shortly before blowing a million holes in a cabin full of outlaws. Boredom is the enemy of all these people, their real fear, the shadow that stalks them and which they'll sell their souls to avoid. The paradoxical moral of this exhilarating movie, then, is just this -- in boredom lies salvation.
Summary of Man in the Saddle
In MAN IN THE SADDLE we see Randolph Scott in an archetypal role as Owen Merritt a man of few words unerring aim and unbreakable principles who swallows his pride when the woman he loves marries for wealth. But when her wildly jealous husband vows to ruin Merritt's ranch Merritt strikes back. A satisfying combination of action romance and breathtaking high-desert scenery MAN IN THE SADDLE also features Tennessee Ernie Ford in a rare movie appearance.System Requirements:Running Time: 86 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?WESTERN/MISC. Rating:?NR UPC:?043396091252 Manufacturer No:?09125Though well short of the classics he would go on to make with Budd Boetticher (Seven Men from Now, The Tall T, et al.), Man in the Saddle is measurably superior to most of Randolph Scott's other '50s Westerns. The script has enough characters, criss-crossed revenge subplots, and tortuous romances for a miniseries; yet somehow, within a B-movie running time, director Andr? De Toth manages to give all of them enough attention so that the movie makes sense, even threatens to get really interesting. He also finds distinctive ways to stage standard set pieces like, say, a saloon shootout. And there's a cumulatively amazing fistfight that starts in a mountain cabin, totally uses up that set, then spills downhill through snowfield and waterfall. Randy's character is a more complicated fellow than usual, and the Scots-Canadian actor Alexander Knox, best known for his Oscar?-nominated turn as Woodrow Wilson, makes a creepily compelling range baron. --Richard T. Jameson
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