The True Story of Jesse James
by Nicholas Ray
List Price:
Our Price: $13.49
You Save: $1.49 (10%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $5.35 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Agnes Moorehead, Alan Hale Jr., Hope Lange, Jeffrey Hunter, Robert WagnerDirector: Nicholas Ray
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Cinematographer: Joseph MacDonald
Editor: Robert L. Simpson
Producer: Herbert B. Swope Jr.
Writer: Nunnally Johnson
Writer: Walter Newman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The True Story of Jesse James
Movie Review: 'As the rewards go higher, your friends grow fewer.'
Summary: 3 Stars
As an actor, Robert Wagner has shown remarkable staying power, especially when one considers that his success in the cinema was effected almost entirely through his dark, boyish good looks...
In "The True Story of Jesse James", Robert Wagner (Jesse) is proud of his name... His name means something, especially when those Yankee bankers hear it, they start shaking... Jesse James was the shooting spokesman for everyone whose life was quietly desperate... To ones, he was a thief... To others he was already becoming a legend, one that kindles a fire in their hearts...
Jesse has planned the very last robbery perfectly to make enough money to retire on... But in spite that he never struck a bank in Northfield, the Minnesota banks were anxiously waiting for him... So something went wrong...
Mrs. Samuel (Agnes Moorehead) recalls the past... The Yankees came riding down on her farm, and her neighbors dragged her out of the kitchen... Her elder son Frank (Jeffrey Hunter) was fighting for the South... The State of Missouri has taken sides with the North... Any man from this state who joins the South was considered a traitor...
For Zee (Hope Lange), Jesse had a dream for the future... But that night, his neighbors, who were Northern sympathizers, broke his reverie...
All begins when the war has sapped the two brothers and their friends bone-dry... Every bank in the state of Missouri was owned by a Yankee man who hates their hide and wants them to get out... Those banks have got a lot of Northern money rolling in... Jesse wanted one or two robberies to get enough money to leave for his mother, for his sweetheart, for protecting the farm... But then he becomes addicted to the exciting life of robbing banks and trains...
The film--well paced by director Nicholas Ray--was beautifully acted by all its stars...
Summary of The True Story of Jesse James
Legendary fifties director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause) retells the Jesse James saga, starring Robert Wagner as the legendary bank robber. As Jesse James attempts to evade the law, those who know him best -- his brother Frank (Jeffrey Hunter), wife (Hope Lange) and mother (Agnes Moorehead) -- ponder the question, "What turned this simple farmboy to a life of lawlessness?" And as Jesse continues his ride into notoriety, the key events in his life are scrutinized in a desperate attempt to close in on him for good.The best thing about this take on the celebrated Missouri outlaw is Nicholas Ray's dynamic use of CinemaScope, a format that left most mid-'50s directors flatfooted. Ray composes his action in slashing diagonals, over multi-leveled ground, with sectors of the wide screen defined by frames-within-the-frame and different qualities of light and color. Which is to say, he continues the radical experimentation of his 1955 James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause while attempting to develop a fresh, contemporary perspective on another violent young protagonist who's an outsider in his own society.
Nunnally Johnson's script for 20th Century-Fox's 1939 Jesse James is credited as source material, but Ray opted for a tortuous, balladlike flashback structure--beginning with the James-Younger gang's ruinous raid on Northfield, Minnesota, 400 miles from their Missouri stomping ground--that aims to deconstruct the outlaw's populist legend. "Jesse James" is an elusive subject; the Minnesota posse never sets eyes on him in the jagged first reel of the movie. How much of an Old West "Robin Hood" was he? And how murderously vengeful was his criminal career as he struck back against the railroads and their cold-blooded police force, the Pinkerton (here, "Remington") agency, and Union-sympathizer neighbors who hated this former member of the wartime guerrilla band, Quantrill's Raiders?
However radical the director's intentions, his movie runs afoul of studio recutting and an underwhelming cast of Fox contract players. Jeffrey Hunter (recently loaned out to play Ethan Edwards' companion in The Searchers) comes off best as Jesse's thoughtful brother Frank (a pattern that holds true for Henry Fonda in Jesse James and Stacy Keach in The Long Riders). But Ray was stymied by Robert Wagner as Jesse--in the phrase of Ray biographer Bernard Eisenschitz, a player "expressive of nothing but Californian physical culture." (James Dean being dead, Ray's first choice for Jesse was ... Elvis Presley!) --Richard T. Jameson
Westerns DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in If you want to discover Nicholas Ray ( 1911-1979 )
![55 Days at Peking [Region 2] Image](/images/55-Days-at-Peking-Region-2-B00004VYHD-X.jpg)
55 Days at Peking [Region 2]DVD
Best price: $17.00
King of KingsWarner Brothers; Release date: 2003-02-25; DVD
Best price: $5.41
Price in other shops:
The Savage InnocentsDVD
Best price: $25.99
![Party Girl (1958) [VHS] Image](/images/Party-Girl-1958-VHS-6302283728-X.jpg){kind=small}
Party Girl (1958) [VHS]MGM (Warner); Release date: 1998-09-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $49.00
Bitter VictorySony; Release date: 2005-02-22; DVD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
The True Story of Jesse JamesTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-03-06; DVD
Best price: $3.18
Price in other shops:
![Bigger Than Life [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.0 Import - Spain ] Image](/images/Bigger-Than-Life-NON-USA-FORMAT-PAL-Reg-0-Import-Spain-B000EX9U0E-X.jpg)
Bigger Than Life [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.0 Import - Spain ]DVD
Best price: $27.99
Rebel Without a Cause (Single Disc Edition)Release date: 1999-09-21; DVD
Best price: $7.64
Price in other shops:
![Johnny Guitar [Region 2] Image](/images/Johnny-Guitar-Region-2-B00004VY47-X.jpg)
Johnny Guitar [Region 2]DVD
Best price: $28.58
On Dangerous GroundDVD
Best price: $10.65
Similar DVD Movies
The Proud OnesTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2006-05-23; DVD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Budd Boetticher Box Set (Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station)Sony; Release date: 2008-11-04; DVD
Best price: $27.89
Price in other shops:
The Day of the OutlawTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2008-05-13; DVD
Best price: $7.54
Price in other shops:
The Last WagonTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2006-05-23; DVD
Best price: $7.55
Price in other shops:
Broken ArrowTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-05-22; DVD
Best price: $7.55
Price in other shops:
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert FordWarner Brothers; Release date: 2008-02-05; DVD
Best price: $4.90
Price in other shops:
Fox Western Classics (Rawhide / The Gunfighter / Garden of Evil)Fox; Release date: 2008-05-13; DVD
Best price: $11.23
Price in other shops:
White FeatherTwentieth Century Fox; Release date: 2007-05-22; DVD
Best price: $7.17
Price in other shops:
Jesse JamesTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-03-06; DVD
Best price: $6.74
Price in other shops:
The Return of Frank JamesTwentieth Century Fox; Release date: 2007-03-06; DVD
Best price: $7.55
Price in other shops: