The Fighting Kentuckian
by George Waggner
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: John Wayne, Marie Windsor, Oliver Hardy, Philip Dorn, Vera RalstonDirector: George Waggner
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Republic Pictures
Movie Reviews of The Fighting Kentuckian
Movie Review: A Romantic "Eastern", not Western
Summary: 4 Stars
John Wayne is well known for his westerns. The setting of this 1949 flick is Alabama, involving men who came from Kentucky. So this is technically an "eastern". The scenes are apt for the early 1900's: Soldiers are still using flintlocks, Alabama is about to be admitted to the Union as a state, and there is a large group of French citizens exiled after Napoleon's ignominious defeats.
John Breen (John Wayne) falls in love with a French woman. Trouble is, she is already earmarked for an arranged marriage to another man. A love triangle develops. Breen is determined to marry her. But he adds to the problems by pretending that he is a surveyor. He also finds out that there is a scheme afoot to defraud the French of some of their property by moving the posts that define the boundaries of the property.
This flick is more than a love story. It pushes the American way over the then-European way. The American way is progressive and the European way is traditional. In the American way, women marry whomever they love and whomever they choose to marry. In the then-European way, women married according to arranged marriages. These were usually based on social class, the wealth of the suitor, and the professional connections of the suitor with the father of the bride. The bride's wishes counted for little.
Summary of The Fighting Kentuckian
Here's something you don't see every day. Then again, would you want to? Several years before the 1950s' Davy Crockett craze, John Wayne donned a coonskin cap to play a militiaman in early-19th-century Alabama. He and his fellow Kentuckians are just passing through--"marching 600 miles," as they merrily sing (and sing, and sing), because riverboat magnate John Howard has refused to haul them. Howard and all-purpose scoundrel Grant Withers are scheming to dispossess a community of French ?migr?s--veterans of Napoleon's Grand Army who've come seeking life, liberty, etc. in the New World. Howard's also out to marry Vera Ralston, the French general's daughter. Naturally, Wayne's just the lad to gum up both plans.Wayne himself produced The Fighting Kentuckian, but far from repeating the success of his maiden effort, Angel and the Badman, this is one of the feeblest films in his long career. Writer-director George Waggner never gets a handle on what a pre-Western should look and move like. Consequently, the cast does a lot of standing around looking silly in period costume, waiting--mostly in vain--for the script to establish their connection to one another and something resembling a plot. There is a glossier look to the proceedings than most Republic pictures achieved, thanks to Lee Garmes's pearly cinematography, but this is scant consolation. So is the almost creepy presence of Oliver Hardy, sans Laurel, doing Ollie-shtick as Wayne's jolly sidekick. No, he doesn't say, "This is another fine mess you've got me into!" But he should. --Richard T. Jameson
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