Jesse James (1939)

Jesse James
Directed by Henry King
Written by Nunnally Johnson
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Engineer: What you aimin’ to do, pardner?

Jesse Woodson James: I ain’t aimin’ to do nuthin’. I’m doin’ it. I’m holdin’ up this train.

Engineer: The whole train?[/box]

I didn’t know what to expect but I found this to be a solid and enjoyable western.

This is a highly fictionalized account of the criminal career of Jesse James (Tyrone Power) and his brother Frank (Henry Fonda).  As such it emphasizes the folk hero aspect of their exploits.  The story takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War.  Rapacious railroad companies have hired armed thugs to bilk farmers out of their land at unconscionable prices.  Jesse and Frank fight with the men who try to take their mother’s farm.  The railroad agents organize a posse to arrest the brothers for attempted murder and frighten the mother (Jane Darwell) into a premature death.

Many local men are in the same boat and Jesse and Frank easily organize a gang to take revenge by holding up trains.  The communities believe that this is simple justice and support the boys.  But as Jesse’s wife (Nancy Kelly) predicts, he soon descends into common criminality.  With Brian Donlevy as a particularly evil railroad man, Donald Meek as the railroad president, Randolph Scott as a local lawman, Henry Hull as Jesse’s father-in-law and crusading editor, and John Carradine as the coward Robert Ford.

This kept my interest throughout despite the seemingly obligatory love triangle sub-plot. This features one of Tyrone Powers’ better performances and all the character actors are first-rate.  It was interesting to see Henry Fonda be a robber after his more noble 1939 performances.  He steals all the scenes he is in.

Two horses were actually blindfolded and forced to go over a cliff during an escape scene. The incident led the American Humane Association to begin overseeing the use of animals in films and eventually to its certification: “No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture.”

Clips – Confronation between Frank and Jesse James – comparison of scenes between this film and The True Story of Jesse James (1957, dir. Nicholas Ray)