The Virginian

Remarkable the way the Owen Wister story keeps on arriving with minimal alteration.

This one is unsurprising and quite assured for the time. Tom Forman's handling is mainly unexceptional, though he does manage a few striking compositions for the Cattleman's Association posse's pursuit of the rustlers - the cliff base camp with one man on the summit, shadows thrown upwards on the rock wall and the piney woods neck tie party. The cowboy detail is quite good.

Kenneth Harlan never looks like holding his own with the character's other distinguished versions but he gets by, as do O'Malley and Hatton. It's Vidor's New England Puritan school teacher, learning the Code of the West, that scores. Pity we couldn't have her with Gary Cooper. A younger black mustached Russell Simpson makes an impressively nasty Trampas too.