THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES

 As the title suggests, this 1940 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Henry Fonda, is about the older brother of Jesse James.  Frank is returning in the sense that Henry Fonda played him the previous year in 'Jesse James', which was a sufficiently big hit to cause the studio to reunite many members of the cast for this sequel. 

It starts where the earlier film finished, with the murder of Jesse James in 1882 by Robert Ford (played in both films by John Carradine).  In truth Frank's life after the death of his brother  doesn't sound very dramatic: after a few months he gave himself up to the authorities, was tried for robbery and murder, was acquitted, and went on thereafter to live a surprisingly long and uneventful life.

So hats off to the screenwriters for creating a moderately entertaining story, built around his trial and acquittal, which takes up the second half of the film.

Before we get to Frank handing himself in the film has him going after Ford to avenge his brother's killing, and committing a robbery so as to have the funds to both pursue Ford and to create a new identity for himself so as to avoid capture.  

He is soon in Denver in his new identity (some 800 miles from his home in Missouri) accompanied by a new character, young Clem, who works on Frank's farm and who is super loyal to him.  Between the two of them they convince a young woman reporter, Eleanor Stone, that Frank James was killed in a fight in Mexico, which she duly writes up.

She is played by Gene Tierney, making her screen debut at he age of nineteen.  According to Wikipedia she was a great beauty but at the risk of appearing ungallant I can't say I saw much sign of that here, although to be fair Eleanor's not meant to be overly glamorous, even if she is the daughter of the paper's owner.

She and Frank are attracted to each other, and when they learn that Pinky, a servant of Frank, is going to be hanged for a crime he didn't commit (the robbery by Frank) she persuades Frank to return home to save Pinky rather than continue to pursue Ford.

Pinky is an African American and unfortunately he is portrayed (for comic effect) as being a bit slow on the uptake.  It also isn't great that words like 'negro' and 'darky' get thrown about but that was par for the course in 1940.

Anyway, the trial itself is entertaining knockabout stuff.  Ford makes the mistake of turning up in the expectation of seeing Frank sentenced to death so that when instead Frank is acquitted he ends up getting killed by Clem, who himself also dies as a result of their shootout.

The story ends with Frank and Eleanor saying their goodbyes.

Despite the best efforts of the screenwriters it's a thin tale but there are some lively characters and some nice humour along the way, and Lang does a good job of keeping it moving at a decent lick so that I was never bored.  Fonda of course is as watchable as ever even if his character here is quite dull.