Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8311 in VHS
• Released on: 1989-08-23
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
The third of five screen versions of Owen Wister's novel and play The Virginian is the only one that merits classic status. It's not a masterpiece, mind you, and not a great Western. But it is a landmark in the genre for defining some archetypal characters and situations, and for certifying the stardom of a key Western icon, Gary Cooper.

You could say this 1929 movie hasn't aged well: the pace is spavined, the dialogue groans like a rickety ladder, and Cooper's pancake makeup occasionally leaves him looking like an eye-batting odalisque. Yet in other ways the film's datedness feels like validation. From the vantage of the 21st century, this movie was made nearly as long ago as the era it describes, and the roughhewn town buildings, the absence of a music score, and the glimmering light (it always seems to be just after sunrise or just before sunset) all belong to a privileged moment, an unspoiled, vanished world.

That feeling is never stronger than in the great and terrible centerpiece of the film, the hanging of the rustlers--including one of the most sympathetic characters we have come to know. This is a harrowing sequence, the more so for being played matter-of-factly, even tenderly. And the climactic showdown in the streets of Medicine Bow is pretty fine, too. With Walter Huston, newly in from Broadway in his first Hollywood role, as that snake-in-the-grass Trampas; Richard Arlen as Steve; Mary Brian as the new schoolmarm; and frog-voiced Eugene Pallette, not yet too swollen to sit a horse, enhancing the new world of sound as Honey Wiggin. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

The First "Virginian" Movie.
This is one of the first "talkie" movies so one has to bear with the black & white & variable sound quality. Otherwise, it's a great story by Owen Wister (which was remade twice more) and quite well done for so early a feature and true to the book. Gary Cooper rose to stardom as a result of this one. If you like to see a young Gary Cooper, this one's for you. If you like Westerns, this one's for you. If you like a good old-fashioned story, this one's for you.

Actually, the line is: "If you want to call me that, smile!"
This 1929 film directed by Victory Fleming, was the third film version of Owen Wister's classic western novel and the first all-talking picture for star Gary Cooper. "The Virginian" is the foreman of the Box H ranch, near Medicine Bow, Wyoming, where he gives his old friend Steve (Richard Arlen) a job. Then they are both smitten with Molly Wood (Mary Brian), the new schoolteacher, playing practical jokes on each other to win her attention. But the Virginian also crosses paths with Tramapas (Walter Huston) and then catches Steve has been putting Tramapas' brand on Box H cattle. Forced to hang his friend and two other outlaws, the Virginian swears he will get Trampas.

For an early talking film, director Fleming does a marvelous job of using sound. He also has the advantage of great locations near Sonora in the High Sierras and a pretty good script by Howard Estabrook. However, the famous line "Smile when you call me that" is actually "If you want to call me that, smile" in the film. One of the most famous misquoted lines in cinema history, right up there with "Play it again, Sam." Cooper's performance is fine, it is just strange to see him so young. It really does not seem like Gary Cooper to me, but that is my problem. This film was so successful that it was actually re-issued by Paramount in 1935 and it still holds up when compared to the other versions of the story.

When movie cowboys started talking . . .
For fans of Owen Wister's 1902 novel, this early talkie will seem like a Little Golden Book version of the well-loved story, condensed and woven together from a few key scenes in the book. While the book is sometimes talky, the movie seems even more so, and Cooper struggles manfully with pages of aw-shucks dialogue. There are only glimpses of the powerful laconic screen presence he became known for in later films. Physically, the tall and lean and still-young Cooper is perfect for the role, though unlike old-time cowboys, he seems far more comfortable on his feet than riding a horse. The only totally realized characterization in the film is Walter Huston's Trampas, and he is fun to watch, though he has little of the menace of Wister's original villain.

The footage of herding cattle across a river gives a note of authenticity, and the film comes to life visually when the technology of early sound recording doesn't slow things down. In the many scenes with dialogue, the camera doesn't move, giving that stiffly wooden feel of early talkies. I noticed only one interior tracking shot, in the saloon, as Trampas and his boys enter and walk to the bar.

Dramatically the film comes to life in two or three scenes, both of which are improvements on Wister's novel. One is the hanging, as the three cattle thieves approach the nooses waiting for them, and one man recoils in horror. In the book, Wister's narrator chooses not to witness the hangings, so it goes undescribed. The other is the final shootout between the Virginian and Trampas. Wister, writing before the movie conventions of gun-duels, doesn't draw out the suspense, but director Fleming allows us to see hero and villain walking the empty streets of town until they find each other and pull their guns.

Altogether, the film is worth watching for the place it holds in the history of the western. This one and Gary Cooper's "High Noon" would make an interesting pair of movie bookends.