Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Wuchak Released in 1955, "The Kentuckian" is one of only a couple films directed by Burt Lancaster.THE STORY takes place during the presidency of James Monroe circa 1820. Lancaster plays Eli Wakefield, a Kentuckian who desires more room to breath in Texas. Still in Kentucky, they blow their "Texas money" on freeing a beautiful indentured servant, Hannah (Dianne Foster). They don't get past the next frontier town where Eli takes up with his brother in the tobacco business and Hannah gets a job as a bar matron. Eli's dreams of Texas are sidetracked when he meets up with a schoolmarm (Diana Lynn) who encourages him to settle down and make a family with her. The problem is that Eli's son prefers Hannah and doesn't want to give up their Texas dream. Meanwhile feuders are hot on Eli's trail, not to mention malevolent local businessman with a whip (Walter Matthau).Some highlights include: Lush Eastern locations. The film was shot in Levi Jackson State Park, Kentucky (near London), as well as Owensboro, Kentucky, which is on the Ohio River, and Rockport, which is just across the river in Indiana. The river depicted in the film is supposed to be the Tennessee River (I think), but it was shot on the Ohio. In any event, although "The Kentuckian" is classified as a Western, it's actually an Eastern.The film offers a good glimpse of what the Eastern USA was like back when it was still a frontier -- the cabin-styled houses, sleeping in the woods, etc. No internet, cable, video games, DVDs or microwaves. People actually sat down with other people and communed.The story is realistic, albeit with some lame dialogue. Regardless,you don't have to worry about any goofiness or unbelievable bits that plague some 50's Westerns, except for the too-wooden-they're-funny feudalists.Back then a huge riverboat coming to town was an exciting attraction. Americans today, by contrast, get all excited over the shenanigans of some celebrity.Dianne Foster (Hannah) is a beautiful redhead. One wonders how a woman like this would stay single very long on the frontier.The whip fight with Matthau is great. Lancaster is almost whipped to shreds (!).Loyalty is a sub-theme here. Eli's son is loyal to Hannah and never warms up to the schoolmarm, although there's it's clear that there's nothing wrong with the latter. And Hannah is loyal to the man who delivered her from bondage (Eli), despite his infatuation with the marm.I liked the bit on Eli being a laughing stock because of a worthless freshwater pearl, but he gets the last laugh with a letter from the President (or is it?) and additional help.Lastly, Lancaster is a likable protagonist with his charismatic joy-of-living persona; he's humble and respectful, the antithesis of Eastwood's amoral and lifeless 'man with no name' a decade later.The film runs an hour and 44 minutes.BOTTOM LINE: "The Kentuckian" is breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it from beginning to end for all the above reasons; it's sort of like "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992) of its era, albeit no where as good. It's innocuous and easy-going, but sometimes surprisingly brutal (the dog fight and whip fight). If you can acclimate to the style of filmmaking of the mid-50s it's worth checking out.GRADE: B

Spikeopath The Kentuckian is directed by, and stars, Burt Lancaster. It's adapted to screenplay by A.B. Guthrie Junior from the novel The Gabriel Horn written by Felix Holt. Also starring with Lancaster are Dianne Foster, Diana Lynn, John McIntire, Donald MacDonald, Walter Matthau and John Carradine. A Technicolor/CinemaScope production filmed on location at Kentucky sites, with cinematography by Ernest Laszlo and music scored by Bernard Herrmann. Lancaster plays a Elias Wakefield, a Kentuckian pioneer and widower bound for 1820's Texas with his young son (MacDonald). But ill education, romance and mean townsfolk stunt his progress. Burt Lancaster had great designs to be a director, even planning to give up acting as early as 1955 to make directing his sole career. Foolishly thinking, and proclaiming, it to be an easy job, his experiences on making The Kentuckian would halt him in his tracks and the film would remain his only sole directing credit for the rest of his life. Unfortunately the film shows that the film world hasn't missed a great director in the making. It's a decent film, more because it is an interesting misfire than any great dramatic thrust. There's very good period flavours here, the photography is often gorgeous, Herrmann's score (used better in Jason and the Argonauts 8 years later) is appealingly tone setting and a few scenes really do hit the mark, but the pace is stop-start and Lancaster isn't sure how to direct himself, with the big man turning in a performance that sits somewhere between camp and aww shucks machismo. He handles his other cast members well, where it's good to see two female characters properly impact on the storyline, but the screenplay sometimes falls flat and scene skipping cheapens the production (one moment Lancaster is in jail, we see a hand lift a key out a coat pocket and the next shot he and his son are relaxing out in the wilderness with Diana Lynn!). Another major problem is the ludicrous nature of the main villain, Walter Matthau's whip-wielding Stan Bodine, the daftness of such Matthau (in his first big screen role) himself would decry later in his career at how ridiculous the role was. Yet the character features in the best scene in the film, as Bodine and Wakefield are pitched in a fight, man with whip against man with only brawn on his side. This oddness (stupid character features in best scene) that says volumes about The Kentuckian's variable quality. Other strong scenes flit in and out, such as a riverboat gambling sequence, while the finale that sees Lancaster run full pelt across a river to take down a foe, is hugely entertaining. But once the end credit flashes up you may find yourself scratching your head and pondering just what you had just sat through?Entertaingly messy! 6/10

SayRayJ A mix of 50's sensibilities and period art the way they could only do it in the 1950s. Lancaster is stiff at times, but shines in the riverboat scene and of course handles the on screen fights pretty well. A.B. Guthrie Jr. knows what to put in a frontier story, and Matthau, McIntire and Carradine act rings around the rest of a fairly lackluster cast. The part of the boy isn't well-directed, and only manages to be a fairly sympathetic character. Both Foster and Lynn seemed miscast... Foster was too elegant for the indentured servant role and the Lynn character weak for a frontier schoolmistress. But the story holds together and is worth the watch for fans of Matthau, Lancaster, or the genre of offbeat 50's westerns. Watch for almost a dozen 'stock' cowboy figures from that era popping in and out of scenes, like James Griffith as a perfectly evil riverboat gambler.

alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) This film is unusual and interesting, it shows the life in a small town before the time of the westerns we are used to see, when you still had to sock powder into the rifle before shooting. When Lancaster and his son which are used to live in the woods come to town, people make fun of them, it is surprising how cruel they are. During the film both are going to change, the son will grow up and Lancaster will become a wiser man. There are two women, Diane Foster and Diana Lynn, both are charming and it is going to be a hard choice for Lancaster. Walther Matthau is an expert with the whip and his fight with Lancaster is the high point of the film. "The Kentuckian" did not age and Lancaster came out very well as a director. To see the people, their habits, their way of talking, their music, combined with a good story makes this film worth seeing.