Ill-Fitting Title, Well-Made Movie
Today's review: Night Passage.
I’ve had Night Passage on my “to watch” list for several years now, long enough that when I finally went to watch it, I’d forgotten the reason I had it on the list. While that meant it would be even more of a gamble than usual whether or not I’d enjoy it, I liked going in blind, because that way I could be surprised by the whole story. And this time, I’d say the gamble paid off.
The movie is a Western, and in the first surprise, it’s one of the rare ones where the railroad is seen as a good thing. The plot revolves around a railroad being built in Colorado, which is threatening to stop construction on the grounds that the last three payrolls for the workers have been stolen by a gang led by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea). In desperation, railroad head Ben Kimball (Jay C. Flippen) calls in a man he fired several years ago, Grant McLaine (James Stewart) to carry the payroll on his person and ride the train to the end of the line, where they’ll finally pay the workers. Of course, Whitey’s gang attacks the train again, and what follows is a lot of different conflicts, including Whitey taking Kimball’s wife Verna (Elaine Stewart) as a hostage, a boy named Joey (Brandon De Wilde) who’s part of the gang but wants out, and the knowledge that someone has been leaking information about the payroll to the gang, but no one’s sure who. And in the midst of all this, we also learn more about Grant’s past, including the fact that he’s got some sort of history with another member of Whitey’s gang, who’s only known as the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy). All this, and they manage to tell a coherent story in an hour and a half. They really understood economy of storytelling back then, didn’t they?
One thing I like about the movie is that it reveals details in bits and pieces instead of via exposition dumps. We figure out pretty quickly that Grant was fired from the railroad and has been subsisting by busking with his accordion, that there used to be two women in his life (Verna and a café waitress nicknamed Charlie [Dianne Foster]), that he’s got unfinished business with the Utica Kid, and most importantly that he’s a good man even if the railroad heads distrust him. It makes you want to keep watching to find out his backstory just as much as you want to keep watching to see how it all plays out. It does start to feel like there are too many moving parts when you factor in the other elements I mentioned in the summary, but to the movie’s credit, all of them do fit together, even if a few are a bit extraneous. Besides, there’s a certain appeal to a movie that can keep you guessing for most of its runtime, even if you suspect how some of the big conflicts are going to play out.
There are plenty of other things the movie does well too. All of the actors, including young De Wilde, do a solid job. There’s a bit of suspense right out of Hitchcock’s playbook, which I definitely wasn’t expecting. And while they don’t do much individually, the combined boldness, bravery, and attitude of Verna, Charlie, and a supporting character called Miss Vittles (Olive Carey) is enough to make them contenders for the Best Female Characters list. That sort of thing is always a plus, but in a movie like this, it’s the icing on the cake.
This is definitely a movie worth checking out. It’s well-executed, doesn’t have many noticeable flaws, and while it’s probably not making it onto my “Best of” list, it’s a movie that strikes the right balance between conventional and trying something new, and thus I admire it. With luck, this review will encourage others to give it a try and see if they feel the same way.
I’ve had Night Passage on my “to watch” list for several years now, long enough that when I finally went to watch it, I’d forgotten the reason I had it on the list. While that meant it would be even more of a gamble than usual whether or not I’d enjoy it, I liked going in blind, because that way I could be surprised by the whole story. And this time, I’d say the gamble paid off.
The movie is a Western, and in the first surprise, it’s one of the rare ones where the railroad is seen as a good thing. The plot revolves around a railroad being built in Colorado, which is threatening to stop construction on the grounds that the last three payrolls for the workers have been stolen by a gang led by Whitey Harbin (Dan Duryea). In desperation, railroad head Ben Kimball (Jay C. Flippen) calls in a man he fired several years ago, Grant McLaine (James Stewart) to carry the payroll on his person and ride the train to the end of the line, where they’ll finally pay the workers. Of course, Whitey’s gang attacks the train again, and what follows is a lot of different conflicts, including Whitey taking Kimball’s wife Verna (Elaine Stewart) as a hostage, a boy named Joey (Brandon De Wilde) who’s part of the gang but wants out, and the knowledge that someone has been leaking information about the payroll to the gang, but no one’s sure who. And in the midst of all this, we also learn more about Grant’s past, including the fact that he’s got some sort of history with another member of Whitey’s gang, who’s only known as the Utica Kid (Audie Murphy). All this, and they manage to tell a coherent story in an hour and a half. They really understood economy of storytelling back then, didn’t they?
One thing I like about the movie is that it reveals details in bits and pieces instead of via exposition dumps. We figure out pretty quickly that Grant was fired from the railroad and has been subsisting by busking with his accordion, that there used to be two women in his life (Verna and a café waitress nicknamed Charlie [Dianne Foster]), that he’s got unfinished business with the Utica Kid, and most importantly that he’s a good man even if the railroad heads distrust him. It makes you want to keep watching to find out his backstory just as much as you want to keep watching to see how it all plays out. It does start to feel like there are too many moving parts when you factor in the other elements I mentioned in the summary, but to the movie’s credit, all of them do fit together, even if a few are a bit extraneous. Besides, there’s a certain appeal to a movie that can keep you guessing for most of its runtime, even if you suspect how some of the big conflicts are going to play out.
There are plenty of other things the movie does well too. All of the actors, including young De Wilde, do a solid job. There’s a bit of suspense right out of Hitchcock’s playbook, which I definitely wasn’t expecting. And while they don’t do much individually, the combined boldness, bravery, and attitude of Verna, Charlie, and a supporting character called Miss Vittles (Olive Carey) is enough to make them contenders for the Best Female Characters list. That sort of thing is always a plus, but in a movie like this, it’s the icing on the cake.
This is definitely a movie worth checking out. It’s well-executed, doesn’t have many noticeable flaws, and while it’s probably not making it onto my “Best of” list, it’s a movie that strikes the right balance between conventional and trying something new, and thus I admire it. With luck, this review will encourage others to give it a try and see if they feel the same way.