Colorado Territory

Raoul Walsh’s underrated Colorado Territory (the same year as his blazing White Heat) finds righteous bandit Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) on the run from the law. Bound for the Colorado Territory, he soon falls in with a gang of thieves and begins plotting one last train robbery. Transposing his own High Sierra to a Western setting, Walsh perfectly illustrates the porous, intermingled relationship between key, all-American archetypes. As such, what should have been a studio cash grab offers a surprising dialogue between past and present: where cowboys are undistinguishable from gangsters, the Western gives way to film noir, and the tenacity of masculine myths are laid bare as such, through careful repetition and uncanny cinematic echoes.

20/1 (Sat): Film talk with Long Tin