A massive gold rush takes diverse types of California, where they meet their destinies. Some find gold, most melt into the background, some run saloons, others gamble and win saloons from the others, some are pervicaciously greedy and deprive others of water, some wear sandals and lift weights on Muscle Beach, some organize a personal militia to fight against the statehood that would deprive them of their unethical power and their mountain of riches, some found loony religious cults.
Everyone except Anthony Quinn is miscast. Ray Milland is a suave Englishman, not a wandering cowboy who needs a shave. George Coulouris isn't bad as the powerful heavy and gang leader, but Barry Fitzgerald does not belong in the small part of the grizzled side kick. That's Gabby Hayes' or Walter Brennan's role. Barbara Stanwyck is miscast too. She belongs in the city, not singing in Coulouris's gambling den and bar. She gets to sing (dubbed) two or three fully orchestrated 1947-era songs.
There are a few unexpected objets trouvee in the script. Stanwyck's songs are dumb, but there is a pretty Mexican folk song, "Carmel, Carmela," sung by a tenor with a simple guitar accompaniment. And Coulouris gets a bit of sympathy from his personal background -- poverty and sadness -- during his apparently genuine proposal to Stanwyck that the ordinary bad guy is usually denied in these perfunctory scripts. I mean, after all, Coulouris was the captain of a slave ships. The horror, the horror.
And, unexpectedly, the hero, Ray Milland, gets clobbered in two fist fights. True, he's outnumbered or outweighed, but that usually doesn't stop the hero from winning, even if, in the process, he winds up with a tiny and colorful trickle of blood from the corner of his lips. The viewer also acquires a bit of incidental learning regarding the history of the state of California in the lead-up to the Civil War.
Everyone except Anthony Quinn is miscast. Ray Milland is a suave Englishman, not a wandering cowboy who needs a shave. George Coulouris isn't bad as the powerful heavy and gang leader, but Barry Fitzgerald does not belong in the small part of the grizzled side kick. That's Gabby Hayes' or Walter Brennan's role. Barbara Stanwyck is miscast too. She belongs in the city, not singing in Coulouris's gambling den and bar. She gets to sing (dubbed) two or three fully orchestrated 1947-era songs.
There are a few unexpected objets trouvee in the script. Stanwyck's songs are dumb, but there is a pretty Mexican folk song, "Carmel, Carmela," sung by a tenor with a simple guitar accompaniment. And Coulouris gets a bit of sympathy from his personal background -- poverty and sadness -- during his apparently genuine proposal to Stanwyck that the ordinary bad guy is usually denied in these perfunctory scripts. I mean, after all, Coulouris was the captain of a slave ships. The horror, the horror.
And, unexpectedly, the hero, Ray Milland, gets clobbered in two fist fights. True, he's outnumbered or outweighed, but that usually doesn't stop the hero from winning, even if, in the process, he winds up with a tiny and colorful trickle of blood from the corner of his lips. The viewer also acquires a bit of incidental learning regarding the history of the state of California in the lead-up to the Civil War.