Delmer Daves’ great 3:10 To Yuma (1957) arrives on Blu-ray from Criterion on May 14. A key 50s Western, one of Glenn Ford’s greatest performances (though some don’t like him being a bad guy), yet another masterful turn from Van Heflin, one of the best-looking black and white movies ever (thanks to Charles Lawton Jr.) and just an all-around swell thing.
Ford and Daves had already worked together on Jubal in 1956, which added Technicolor, CinemaScope and Ernest Borgnine to the mix. Criterion’s serving that one up, too.
Thanks to Mr. Richard Vincent for making my day with this news.
Plus, you can’t go wrong with Frankie Laine singing your theme song. I’ll pass this great news along to my sister with the blu-ray player and get myself invited for a movie night.
This’d be a good film to make the switch to Blu-ray for.
Woohoo! I know that the Criterion folk will do right by this picture. Great news. Thanks for the heads-up, Toby.
The fact 3:10 to Yuma & Jubal are coming to BD via Criterion, a company which hasn’t gone in for westerns much in the past, really puts the seal of cinephile approval on these titles. In its own way, it’s a well-deserved tribute to the great work of Delmer Daves, Glenn Ford and Felicia Farr.
Do you like JUBAL? I remember it as kind of a dud. 3:10 is an obvious choice, but JUBAL seems like an odd place to start bulking up their paltry Western catalog. (OEJ, on the other hand, seems like the kind of project they ought to be working on.)
I think Jubal is first rate – classic Shakespearean tragedy successfully transposed to the frontier. Beautifully shot, powerfully directed, and featuring exceptionally strong performances from Ford, Farr and Borgnine.
I’m in agreement with Colin – Jubal has a palpable, earthy story that feels torn and ‘updated’ from roman or Greek times – a bit like a saddle-based Sophocles tale… Maybe that’s a tad of a stretch; however Daves was at his peak in those years, it has a top notch cast, and the story boils. No disagreement on 3:10 to Yuma either,
.but what is OEJ? Open Every Jar?
My take on Jubal is right in the middle of this debate. Daves was on fire in this period, Borgnine’s great, the color and Scope look terrific, but it just doesn’t knock me out the way 3:10 To Yuma does (among others).
But like so many other Westerns we end up discussing on here, now I’m wanting to see it again.
OEJ is One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which I’m writing a small book about (shameless plug here).
Ahh, one of my favorite westerns, Jubal, first of all it’s a ’50′s color western, which places it as a must see for me right away. Then, of course it’s the cast, Glenn Ford is first rate as the good guy just trying to do the right thing, and Ernest Borgnine in a sympathetic role for a change as a trusting poor slob who trusts all the wrong people. I guess being used to Borgnine for all those years as the good guy McHale I just naturally like him better as a good guy. In westerns though he usually plays the tough baddie. So I’d rather see Jubal than 3:10, but 3:10 with Ford & Heflin is first class too. Once again though, I don’t like seeing Ford as the evil one. Speaking of this phenomenon, I also like watching Rod Cameron on screen, I like him best though in his many good guy roles, so when I see him in the occasional bad guy role, I don’t like it. Last night I saw the Laramie episode “Drifter’s Gold” Rod played a mean bad guy in this one, a leader of a bad gang who he had to keep in line. He was a good bad guy though, I just wish he’d stick with the good guy roles. I watched him in Coronado 9 and am now watching State Trooper, he’s such a natural good guy, I hate to see him go bad.
Oh, I did figure out OEJ, unfortunately it’s a movie I find repulsive and senseless. One Eyed Jacks is the name of this mess. It’s another one of those ’60′s westerns where all the cowboys are unshaven, dirty, pigs, mindless killers, prejudiced and total slobs. A perfect example of the kind of western I don’t watch. Westerns were best in the ’40′s and ’50′s, after 1964 the western turned into a revisionist history lesson from the libs where we are all supposed to be ashamed of our glorious & unique past. I could go on, but I’d be getting off the subject of westerns.
“Westerns were best in the ’40′s and ’50′s, after 1964 the western turned into a revisionist history lesson from the libs where we are all supposed to be ashamed of our glorious & unique past.”
An ironic comment coming from someone whose chosen as a posting handle the name of a film very obviously engaged in critiquing, albeit contemporarily, one of those most shameful episodes in our country’s past (HUAC).
And what do you make of John Ford, a director who, maybe moreso than any of the revisionist school of directors, developed an uneasy and critical eye towards the myths at the foundation of the western? A glorious and unique past, and one certainly dripping with blood; a more reflective attitude seemed a natural outgrowth of the genre, and to flippantly write it off with a petty, snide partisan comment is fairly repulsive and senseless itself.
Ministry of Fear in March. 3:10 and Jubal in May, plus Medium Cool? I think someone at Criterion is performing a brain scan on me in my dream-sleep. Seriously, though, 3:10 in a Criterion edition is a day I thought I’d never see. Let’s hope the sales are brisk enough to encourage them to release more westerns and soon!
I’m right there with ya.
I’d like to start seeing more VistaVision films get the Blu-ray treatment — whether it’s from Criterion or whoever. That format seems made for Blu-ray.
Gunfight At The OK Corrall would be a good place to start.
Curtis that first paragraph was brilliant, after that it was more muddled thinking. Yes, as I said westerns were the best in the ’40′s, ’50′s and perhaps some in the early ’60′s (exception John Wayne’s which got better as the years went by, give me a Chisum or a Big Jake over the new liberal darling The Searchers (thanks once again to the revisionist analysis they now apply to it) anytime. And last time I checked Johnny Guitar was filmed in the midst of the ’50s, I just don’t apply your liberal think to it that you expect everyone else to. I take it for what it is, a great western story with interesting characters. Today blacklisting in Hollywood is still alive and well, only it applies now to conservatives. Gee, how come I don’t hear any crying and moaning by the libs over this?? It’s a reality of today, not a pleasant memory from the past Oh, that’s right, it’s not your ox that’s being gored. If the HUAC were alive and well today we wouldn’t be suffering under the Jack boot of El Presidente today.
I’m not sure I’d entirely agree with the entirety of Johnny Guitar’s comments
but certainly he does have a point. Here in the UK we now have a term ‘Liberal Bigots’ to describe the left wing apparatchiks of political correctness who seem to infest almost every level of government and the Arts. Blacklisting definitely
is alive and well and definitely does now apply to conservatives.
The Western Film certainly became more brutal during the Sixties and not necessarily for the better. I’m still recovering from having sat through A TIME FOR KILLING (1967) last night. A great cast who could only have been embarrassed by their involvement in this one. As for THE SEARCHERS, like
all great art, it can be interpreted according to one’s own preconceptions.
For me, it transcends anyone’s politics.