John Chard

A thriving town sells its soul. The Proud Ones is directed by Robert D. Webb and adapted to screenplay by Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca from the Verne Athanas novel. It stars Robert Ryan, Jeffrey Hunter, Virginia Mayo, Robert Middleton, Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell, Ken Clark and Rodolfo Acosta. A De Luxe Color/Cinemascope production, with music by Lionel Newman and cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Flat Rock, Kansas, and the coming of the railroad and the trail herds has the town eagerly planning for prosperity. Cass Silver (Ryan), the no nonsense marshal of Flat Rock is expecting trouble, and he gets it… Splendidly mounted Oater that features a strong cast and colourful Scope photography by one of the masters of his craft. The story is hardly breaking new ground, the narrative clearly harks to more well known genre pieces of the 50s, though the oedipal theme that runs throughout adds an extra dimension. In trying to steer the pic away from formulaic over drive, the makers insert an affliction on our tough old boy marshal, namely he is suffering bouts of dizziness and blindness, which naturally couldn't have arrived at a more inopportune moment since Cass Silver has pretty much got to tackle the town's bad eggs on his own. Or has he? Enter Hunter's angry young man, gunning for Cass because he killed his outlaw father, allegedly in cold blood. And this is where we get oedipal from, and it adds some meat to the formula skeleton. This is very good Western film making, plenty of machismo fuelled set-pieces, plenty of brooding and yearning, and it all builds to a ripper of a climax. There's few surprises in store, and Mayo and Brennan are sadly wasted, but this deserves to be better known and more importantly, it deserves to be thought of better than merely being a High Noon clone. Besides which, Robert Ryan is ace, no matter his age he always delivers grace and grizzle in equal measure. 7.5/10