Bend of the River (1952)

My youngest son continues to be a source of movies from the past through his film course on sound that focuses on movies with a historical focus.  It is true that I have not loved every movie that we have watched, but it is very fun to have a film professor choose a movie, and then watch it, trying to decipher what it is about the movie that made it so attractive to an academic.

This movie is one of the first to have substantial amounts of filming done on location rather than shot solely on a Hollywood lot.  The director in Anthony Mann, who was famous for well-done Westerns.  The film is set on the Oregon Trail, with Jimmy Stewart playing Glyn McLyntock, a Missouri man wanted for various bad behaviors.  He has joined a group of settlers who would never have made it had he and fellow bad boy, Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy) had not intervened and taken out a group of Native Americans who way lay them en route.  McLyntock has saved Cole from a hanging, which it later turns out he very much deserved, so Cole stays with the group--but maybe more to see what he can gain from them than to lend a hand.  When they get to Portland there is a gold rush on and Cole is in his element, while McLyntock is trying to change his ways.  Rock Hudson plays a gambling dandy who gets caught between the two men, and in the end manages to redeem himself, and the sound track for the movie is spectacular.  You could watch the movie with your eyes closed and know the tenor of the scene based on the music accompanying it.  A fantstic example of what sound can add to a film.