Three Faces West (1940)

Director:

Bernard Vorhaus

Writers:

F. Hugh Herbert (original screenplay) &
Joseph Moncure March (original screenplay) ...

Release Date:

3 July 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Back from the living dead . . to claim a ghostly promise of love!

Plot:

Viennese surgeon Dr. Braun and his daughter Leni come to a small town in North Dakota as refugees from Hitler...

Plot Keywords:

Third Reich | Surgeon | North Dakota | Oregon | Refugee

Cast

John Wayne	...	John Phillips
Sigrid Gurie	...	Leni 'Lenchen' Braun
Charles Coburn	...	Dr. Karl Braun
Spencer Charters	...	Dr. 'Nunk' Atterbury
Helen MacKellar	...	Mrs. Welles
Roland Varno	...	Dr. Eric Von Scherer
Sonny Bupp	...	Billy Welles
Wade Boteler	...	Mr. Harris, Department of Agriculture Official
Trevor Bardette	...	Clem Higgins
Russell Simpson	...	Minister
Charles Waldron	...	Dr. William Thorpe
Wendell Niles	...	Man-on-the-Street Radio Announcer

Also Known As:

The Refugee (UK)

Runtime:

79 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA High Fidelity Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #6239)

Filming Locations:

Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Company:

Republic Pictures

Quotes:

Farmer: There ain't no college professor gonna teach me how to farm my land.
John Phillips: How much land you got left that hasn't blown away? Look, men, let's quit arguing and kidding ourselves. We're all in the same boat. And we're all gonna sink unless we stick together. Every one of us has been served with a "dispossess notice," not by Uncle Sam or a bank or some mortgage company, but by a little ol' gal we've been kicking in the teeth, Mother Nature.

Dust Bowl-lite

A slight moral tale set in the Dust Bowl. If there is a theme it's duty v. pleasure, which crops up in a variety of difficult situations, all of which could be treated seriously, but they're not. The formula goes something like this: A wants to throw up the straight and narrow and follow the heart/creature comforts/line of least resistance. A dose of gentle moralising from B is prescribed; in severe cases, an act of God or Father precludes the alternative. A thereupon grits his/her teeth and sets to, and hey presto, in five (film) minutes the path of duty is shown to be strewn with sweet flowers and to lead direct to heaven - in this case Oregon. Along with this comes an irritating folksiness and the apparently universal assumption that the privilege of living in A-me-ri-ca - even a ratty rotting corner of it - is so great that a even a mild complaint is a sin, forgivable if repented of, but a sin, nonetheless.

Best point: the Dust Bowl sequences and various location shots on the road west, but they've all been done better. Skip this and watch 'The Grapes of Wrath' instead.