OVP: The Hanging Tree (1959)

Film: The Hanging Tree (1959)
Stars: Gary Cooper, Karl Malden, Maria Schell, George C. Scott, Ben Piazza
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"The Hanging Tree")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're going to conclude our weeklong look at films nominated in the music categories at the Oscars with The Hanging Tree, a film on the tail-end of Gary Cooper's career (this morning we took a glance at Mr. Cooper's early work in The Cowboy and the Lady).  The Hanging Tree is during arguably my favorite period of the film western, when the industry was willing to start encountering the era's violent & problematic past, while still having the grandeur of the classic American western.  This film certainly comes in with a sense of history.  Gary Cooper was on the Mt. Rushmore of American western stars, rivaling John Wayne & Jimmy Stewart in that regard, and this is his final entry in the genre, and darn near his final film (he'd have three more films in him before his death in 1961 at the age of 60).  Being an on-again-off-again fan of Cooper's (sometimes I'm all there, other times I feel like he relies too much on his intense handsomeness), I was curious what I'd make of this film.  As it turns out, what I should have been more curious about is how I'd react to a truly strange movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Joseph Frail (Cooper), a stiff-lipped doctor in Montana tending to the sick during the middle of a gold rush.  He's surrounded by prospectors, and takes in one who tries to rob from the main hoard of prospectors named Rune (Piazza), who he takes on as his ward (through blackmail-he keeps the bullet that Rune was shot with).  Eventually, Frail also has a beautiful young woman in his care, a Swiss woman who was in a stagecoach robbery, and was blinded as a result.  She regains her sight through Frail's care, but she also starts to see him for what he really is-a controlling man, wanting to "own" people through blackmail and debts they can't possibly repay.  This causes her to go into business with Frenchy (Malden), a local louse who has been trying to make moves on her the entire movie.

The film is, and I cannot stress this enough, strange.  I've seen countless westerns through the years, and there's definitely a lot of the tropes there.  The noble woman keeping her chastity in the hardest of circumstances, the lone frontiersman with the checkered past, and the villainous drunk who wants to tear them apart...these are classic western cliches.  But the movie doesn't really play with that idea.  It's more interested in the strange claustrophobia of these characters, all of them desperate for gold but perhaps more so for recognition, and doing whatever it takes (even if it's self-destructive) to get to that point.

This would normally make for a really good movie-this is, after all, what made films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance masterpieces, that sense that the western needed to be dismantled.  But The Hanging Tree doesn't quite work, perhaps because it doesn't have enough vision in the way its characters are seen.  None of the performances are three-dimensional.  Physically Schell's work is impressive, but you don't leave understanding anything about her Elizabeth in a real way-she's still a cartoon.  The same is true for Cooper & especially Malden (who is actively bad in some scenes).  It's rare for a classic Hollywood film to fall apart not because of the writing but because of the acting, particularly since Cooper & Malden have genuinely been Oscar-worthy in the past, but this doesn't work because of the performances.  It always feels like it's trying for something higher, but none of them are giving the kind of work you'd need to ensure that it hits that plain.  Still, it's a valiant effort & a watchable curiosity (the art direction is also very strong-I loved all of the watermills).

The film's music nomination happened in Best Original Song, where the titular number is sang by Marty Robbins.  The tune is catchy, and quite the diddy (it was covered by Frankie Laine, the quintessential western crooner), and it definitely is connected to the story, but like the film itself, it feels a bit off-balance.  This is the rare situation (I'm running out of these) in the OVP where this is the first nomination I've had from a category-I haven't seen A Hole in the Head, The Five Pennies, The Best of Everything or The Young Land yet (has anyone...these are pretty obscure titles?), but this lands in the middle for me-fun, but forgettable.