CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

JohnHowardReid At the time this film was made, Alexander Golitzen was Universal's supervising art director. He had worked closely with Walter Wanger on Arabian Nights. Here we find him billed as associate producer and although he is not credited for art direction, it is obvious that this sphere was closely supervised by him. The sets are not only lavish, they also contrive to look frontier realistic, yet are artistic and dazzle the eye at the same time. Outdoors Oregon is beautifully captured in the Technicolor photography of Eddie Cronjager.The story is a little weak and is predictably conventional, but it incorporates enough action to satisfy the fans and it is earnestly enough acted. Ward Bond is particularly good as the villain of the piece, while Hoagy Carmichael gets to sing snatches of three or four songs including "Ole Buttermilk Sky" which was nominated for an Academy Award (unaccountably - it's a catchy song but we only get to hear four bars of it - and those right at the conclusion while people are stampeding towards the popcorn concession).The credit titles read "Introducing Patricia Roc", although surely she needed no introduction at this stage of her career with starring roles in maybe a dozen or more British films behind her. However, this turned out to be her only Hollywood film, which is not surprising - she doesn't really fit in here and it is hard to credit such an obvious glamor-puss as a frontier woman - Susan Hayward maybe, but Patricia Roc definitely no. Miss Hayward is effective and makes the most of her role, even though her fans will be upset that she is often not very flatteringly photographed. Tourneur's direction has style and pace.OTHER VIEWS: RKO, with whom I had a contract, lent me to Universal for Canyon Passage, which had the biggest budget I had worked with to that date. The music and songs by Hoagy Carmichael were especially remarkable. One of them, "Ole Buttermilk Sky", was nominated for Best Song, but lost out to Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe". - Jacques Tourneur.

GManfred You can see the date of my review above. I was always a big western fan but somehow this one escaped me all these years. Maybe I was always looking for a well-known Western star like James Stewart or John Wayne, but Dana Andrews? He made a couple but they were mostly forgettable and besides, he was a 'B' list actor anyway.'Canyon Passage" was excellent in all respects, especially the multi-layered plot which is not typical of the western genre. They are often 2-dimensional affairs; good guys and bad guys, good guy rides in and saves whatever needs saving. Or rescues the wagon train from Indians. Or outwits the corrupt sheriff. And so on.After all the above reviews, it's all been said, so I won't. I just want to say I recommend this picture and I can't think of a valid criticism or a flaw to report. Photography was gorgeous, acting was solid and director Jacques Tourneur always turns in a first class job ("Cat People" (42), "Out Of The Past" (47),etc). Movies like this make sitting in a darkened theater worthwhile and rewarding, or in front of a TV if you missed it the first time.

Robert J. Maxwell Jacques Tourneur directed a couple of real winners in the productions of Val Lewton at RKO a few years before this, and then "Out of the Past", a beacon of noir. His career decline in the 50s and he wound up churning out junk on television.This film, made when he was in his early forties, has been criticized because it doesn't seem as skillfully done as such low-budget masterpieces as "Cat People." But it's still a distinctive Western.First of all, Tourneur didn't simply throw away everything he'd learned at RKO. In those psychological horror stories, most of the menace is implied or off screen. He brought that particular trope with him. The majority of significant murders take place off screen. There is a climactic Indian attack but no shoot outs. Nobody is faster with a gun than anyone else. The result is less action and more of an emphasis on the dynamics of personality.Second, it's true that there is little of the Angst here that there was in the horror films but Tourneur has handled the tension well and he's trying to do something here that he didn't try in any of his other movies. He's captured a community. The stars are only cogs in a much more complicated social machine. Jacksonville isn't John Ford's kind of community. The crowd may build a house with joint action but they can turn vicious and judgmental and punitive at a moment's notice.Jacksonville is a peculiar community in some ways. Everyone knows everyone else's name and habits. And, as benign and affable as they usually are, they're intent on shaming Dana Andrews into a fist fight with Ward Bond -- in what is probably Bond's best performance. Of course the same applies to Ford's Irish community in "The Quiet Man." But this isn't a comic fight between Andrews and Bond. It's brief but extremely brutal for 1946. And it's unconventional in other ways. Usually in Westerns, the slug fest begins with fists and when the villain realizes he's outmatched he picks up a piece of furniture or an ax and tries to subdue the hero. In this instance, Bond gets the first punch in. Then Andrews gets to his feet, picks up a chair at once, and slams it down on Bond's back. The chair doesn't break into a thousand pieces either. The bloody fight isn't the least amusing and it wouldn't be equaled until "Shane" in 1952.The principle is Dana Andrews as the level-headed businessman who experiences role conflict. He's a friend to his weak partner, Brian Donlevy, but he abhors his dishonesty. He's had a long-time girl friend, Patricia Roc, but is increasingly attracted to Donlevy's fiancée, Susan Hayward. Hoagy Carmichael is around to add some unnecessary numbers to the musical score. Nobody's but Bond's performance stands out. The Indians are tolerant of whites -- up to a point -- and then they morph into the Goddess of Rhamnous.This is by no means the best Western ever made. (It could be argued that it's not a Western at all.) But it's tidy and deliberate; the dialog by Ernest Pascal has some surprises tucked away in it. "Censure on your lips; approval in your eyes."

Steffi_P The 1940s were a time of transition in the Hollywood movie. This was the age of the film noir, and often those darker, more pessimistic forces were starting to creep into the most unlikely of genre flicks. This being a relatively new phenomenon, often not everyone in the production was on the same wavelength and you could get some odd mismatches of tone. Canyon Passage opens with a town drenched in rain, a sorry-looking figure on horseback weaving his way amid the houses; very different to the usual triumphant ride in from the plains that would kick off your average Western. And yet, this opening is accompanied by very typical, upbeat Western music. Plot-wise, post-production-wise, this is a run-of-the-mill mid-budget horse opera. The only difference is the way it looks.A lot of this is probably down to director Jacques Tourneur. Canyon Passage was one his first features after leaving Val Lewton's horror-orientated B-unit at RKO, and the clinging darkness of the pictures he made there has stayed with him. Lots of directors have habitually used claustrophobic shot compositions, but the form of Tourneur's are eye-catchingly unique, often putting actors up against the edge of the frame or placing very large objects right before the camera. He often fills the foreground but rarely uses actual close-ups. This can have some unusual effects. When Dana Andrews introduces Susan Hayward and Patricia Roc to each other, Andrews is foreground, centre-screen, his back to the camera, with the two ladies framed either side of him. This very odd-looking set-up sticks out, immediately establishing in the mind of the viewer that there will be some kind of rivalry between the women, doing so with greater impact than a more typical shot would provide. This is perhaps Tourneur's greatest asset – being able to give a very stylised look to the whole picture but still making the key individual moments stand out. This is, I guess, very much a cornerstone of good horror direction as well.And despite the focus on cramped interiors and dismal towns, Canyon Passage does not neglect that outdoors that is quintessential to the Western genre. Whilst we don't see much of the open plains, this is in fact one of the most beautiful depictions of the mountains and pine forests of the West. Normally the baroque stylings of a director such as Tourneur don't really suit the Western, but the screenplay of Canyon Passage is so bland, its cast so unremarkable (the only standouts being the coolly dramatic Hayward, the loveably dismal Hoagy Carmichael and the sheer oddity of seeing Ward Bond play a villain) that this is one way of making it worth watching. This could never really have been a masterpiece, but its fresh and engaging appearance raises it above the average.