NR | 1h 44m | Drama, Western | 1955
Classic frontier pictures can make a person grateful for the convenience of grocery stores, plumbing, and the miracle of shoes that don’t wear out after getting wet. They also remind us how wild the American expansion period was for ordinary people with very little cushion under them.
Men could be hunting for new opportunities, hiding from the law, chasing dreams of gold, or hauling their entire families out west. Some poor souls simply wanted to outrun the last thing in their lives that went wrong. The frontier accepted all types of folks, who were rewarded with blisters.
In 19th-century America, the outer edges of society were barely settled. Towns were popping up all over the place, while trails were hardening into roads, and whole families kept gambling that the next place they ventured into would treat them better than the last one.
That frontier hunger sits at the center of “The Kentuckian,” a 1955 adventure-Western directed by Burt Lancaster. This is one of the two films he directed—the other being “Midnight Man,” a puzzling 1974 noir effort. Lancaster also stars in this oater, playing Big Eli Wakefield, a widowed Kentucky man in the 1820s.
Big Eli has a hankering to take his son, Little Eli (Donald MacDonald), and their dog Blackie, to Texas and the freedom he believes is there. The film has a straightforward premise: a father, a boy, a dog, and a country where every stranger they come across can mean help, trouble, or a mixture of both.
Trouble Before Texas
After setting out for Texas, Big and Little Eli Wakefield stumble into a river town called Humility, where adult Eli blows his entire travel fund to purchase the freedom of an indentured servant named Hannah Bolen (Dianne Foster). His act of decency leaves him broke enough to accept work from his well-to-do brother, Zack Wakefield (John McIntire).Zack wants his young nephew raised more respectably than his own upbringing: steady work, clean clothes, and the sort of life that makes sense to people who sleep indoors on purpose. Susie Spann (Diana Lynn), the local schoolteacher, also sees promise in Big Eli. She seeks to domesticate the wild frontiersman. Both mean well in their own ways, but neither seems to understand that Big Eli treats settled life like a cage with nice curtains.
A Handsome Frontier Ride
Eli faces a straightforward choice between two totally different women who represent two possible futures. Susie wants him to wash his neck once in a while and become a respectable local merchant. Hannah understands why sleeping on the ground is vastly superior to paying a mortgage.Seeing a young Walter Matthau playing a vicious bad guy is something to behold. He gives Bodine a perpetual nasty sneer and zero redeeming qualities, besides his ability to extinguish candles with flicks of his whip. He’s a playground bully who happens to own a tavern and a highly dangerous weapon.
Lancaster is capable behind the lens, but his main calling is performance; the camera simply likes him too much for him to disappear behind it.
The second act offers a surprise when the film briefly flirts with becoming a musical, as Big Eli and his companions break into the old-time tune “Possum up a Gum Tree.”
“The Kentuckian” is uneven in that old-Hollywood adventure way: too clean in spots and sometimes too slow. Still, there’s plenty to like. The father-son scenes have warmth, worry, and the nervous comedy of a boy slowly realizing his hero may actually be terrible at planning things out.
Its hopeful side comes from Big Eli’s refusal to be fully purchased by comfort. He may be reckless, proud, and occasionally impossible, but he keeps moving toward a place where his son might have more room to become himself.
