Canyon Passage (1946) Technicolor Approx. 91 Min. Optional subtitles in English or French Shown in original aspect ratio, Playable in North America - The US, Canada, Mexico, etc.
Starring: Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Patricia Roc, Ward Bond, Hoagy Carmichael, Fay Holden, Stanley Ridges, Lloyd Bridges and Andy Devine. Written by Ernest Pascal and Ernest Haycox, based on Saturday Evening Post magazine (1945 novelette). Directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Portland, Oregon - 1856. An ambitious freight company / pack mule line and store owner Logan Stuart (Dana Andrews) agrees to escort Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward) from the bustling seaport town of Portland home to the rough-hewn mining settlement of rustic log buildings of Jacksonville, in the old Oregon Territory, along with his latest shipment of goods. Lucy is engaged to Logan's best friend, George Camrose (Brian Donlevy). The night before they depart, however, Logan must defend himself from a sneak attack while he was sleeping in his hotel room; though it was too dark to be sure he believes his assailant is Honey Bragg (Ward Bond). Later, he explains to Lucy that he once saw Bragg leaving the vicinity of two murdered miners. Despite Logan's unwillingness to accuse Bragg directly, Bragg apparently wants to take no chances.
On the soundtrack:
Rogue River Valley
Music and Lyrics by Hoagy Carmichael
I'm Gettin' Married in the Mornin'
Music and Lyrics by Hoagy Carmichael
Silver Saddle
Music and Lyrics by Hoagy Carmichael
Ole Buttermilk Sky
By Hoagy Carmichael & Jack Brooks
1947 Nominee Oscar for Best Music, Original Song
Hoagy Carmichael (music)Jack Brooks (lyrics)
The brawny, brawling saga of the Great Northwest!
The film's reputation has grown substantially over the 79 years since its original release.. Chris Fujiwara called it "one of the greatest westerns" in his book “The Cinema of Nightfall: Jacques Tourneur” and noted film critic and author Jonathan Rosenbaum, hailed it in 2006 as one of a dozen "eccentric Westerns", perhaps the most complex and most impressive of director Tourneur's westerns. Richard Brody, of The New Yorker magazine, would champion the film as well, describing it as "a complex array of subplots and side characters that offers a quasi-sociological view of frontier life. The relentless drinking, gambling, gunplay, and battles with Native Americans blend with struggles for love and money to evoke a raw and violent culture that plays, in the year after the Second World War, had ended, as utterly contemporary; avoiding history and politics, Tourneur serves up, in a dreamlike Technicolor glow, a pastoral film noir." Elliott Stein of The Village Voice would also call it in 2009, a "great, dazzling, underrated and unconventional Western...memorable largely for the director’s concentration on the massive beauty of the American landscape."
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