Max and Jake

This week's "not-a-real-film-night" Friday began with two more episodes of the BBC series Smiley's People and Alec Guinness giving us his other signature role, completely making us forget the iconic but apparently shameful (to him) Obi-Wan Kenobi (well almost).


Smiley's is a classic, the like of which could not be made any more and goes down easy with our Friday beer (Spitfire). One episode was not going to be enough and at this pace we will be watching the finale at the next "notfilmnight"

The feature film was not so easy. What did we want to watch? More importantly what would my friend want to watch as he is rather more fussy than me about his viewing. In the end we settled on another 1950s Western: The Law and Jake Wade. 

This was a solid John Sturges effort with some regular saddle-tramps, Henry Silva and DeForest ('Bones) Kelley amongst the bad guys. The lead was Robert Taylor, the eponymous Wade. Like many in real life I believe, his career saw him coming at the law from both sides, after learning the looting trade in "The War" and a period of successful crime (in the days when people robbed banks rather than the other way round). A terrible incident had seen him learn the error of his ways and settle with a good woman and a job as town Marshal.

He feels obligated to go to the rescue of his former side-kick Clint Hollister (Widmark) though, and once he has let that evil genie out of the bottle he proves very hard to put back.

On the way to the inevitable showdown we meet some rather lacklustre Commanche braves, possibly the only people in the universe worse than me at throwing the javelin. They serve their purpose in whittling away some of the film's dead wood, however, leaving the way clear for the main characters.

The backdrop is gorgeous, some of the characters suitably hissable (De is very angry and Henry rather creepy but both are rather thrown away) and Richard Widmark is his usual charismatic self but somehow this one never makes the first rank. Partly it's because Robert Taylor is not a terribly likeable lead and one half-wishes that Widdy or another of the robber band would get the girl. Widdy doesn't seem to like girls too much though and feels that he was cheated out of a lifelong loving partnership with Jake. Not that there was anything Brokeback being suggested in 1958 I suppose but his manly love of Jake is heavily underlined.

Someone on imdb has mentioned the music dragging the picture down. Personally I think that given the poor stunt work and acting in the indian scenes it was always going to be a good "b" rather than a classic but I must say we did notice the music when probably we should have just felt its effects. My friend said "...but how did they know that was the last of them" and I replied "Because the music changed".

Another good notfilmnight. Roll on the next.