THE GUNFIGHTER

This 1950 Western starring Gregory Peck really deserves more love;  it's at least as good as the much more acclaimed 'High Noon' with which it bears some similarities.

It's about Jimmy Ringo, a gunslinger who would like to put his past behind him, but finds that to be impossible given his celebrity status as maybe the fastest gun in the West.  

In the opening scene, a young kid is keen to get into an argument with Ringo just to prove how tough he is.  When he's foolish enough to draw on Ringo that's the end of him.

The young punk has three older brothers so now Ringo has to skedaddle.  The next day he ambushes the three brothers and removes their horses, before moving on to Cayenne.  It will take the brothers some three hours to get there, so Ringo reckons, which creates a ticking clock for the rest of the film.

The Marshal in Cayenne is a former partner-in-crime of Ringo's, but even so he wants Ringo to leave town because he's the sort of guy that trouble follows.  

To demonstrate this Cayenne has its own young punk, Hunt, who is keen to show he's more than a match for Ringo.  And there's also another guy in the town who's out for revenge because (erroneously) he thinks that Ringo once killed his son.

As if this wasn't enough jeopardy, unbeknownst to Ringo the three brothers have acquired horses so they will be turning up sooner than expected.  

So there's plenty of tension, especially as Ringo won't leave straightaway because he's desperate to see his wife, Peggy, and son, Jimmy, who live in Cayenne.  She has started a new life as the local schoolteacher and only the Marshal (and Molly, a friend of Ringo's) know her secret.

Despite her initial reluctance Peggy is persuaded to see Ringo, but she won't agree to try to start a new life with him on the run, because it wouldn't be fair to their eight-year-old son.

There's then a nice scene between father and son, before the dramatic conclusion.  Maybe some viewers will be disappointed we don't get a shootout with the brothers, but I found the ending to be most satisfactory.

The writers of the story William Bowers and Andre de Toth rightly received an Oscar nomination.  The story is a model of its kind, with not a scene wasted, and it maintains its grip throughout despite the lack of action.  The dialogue is also first-rate so that the film, especially when we reach Cayenne, becomes a succession of excellent scenes which wouldn't be out of place in a play.  The producer Nunnally Johnson made an uncredited contribution to the screenplay and it would be fascinating to know what he added.

To leaven the growing tension there are several great moments of humour.  When Hunt rushes out of the barber's so as to confront Ringo in the saloon, one of the customers remarks "Well, he was never much fun anyway" -  a laugh-out-loud moment for me.

There's also a funny scene where a bunch of do-gooder local ladies tell Ringo what they think should be done to the murderer amongst their midst, not knowing whom they are talking to.

I must stop heaping lukewarm praise on Peck because he carries this film effortlessly.  Thankfully John Wayne turned the part down because I can't see him being right for it, even though apparently his last film 'The Shootist' has a lot of similarities plot-wise to this film. 

There is a strong supporting cast, notably Millard Mitchell as the Marshal. Two years later he was equally impressive as the studio head in 'Singin' In The Rain' before dying a year later at the age of 50.

The director Henry King might not have been quite in the same class as a John Ford or a Howard Hawks but he was certainly more than capable of not messing things up when given a great screenplay and a fine cast.  He and Peck went on to make six films together in total.