Bend of the River

A western set on the Oregon Trail. Glyn is guiding a wagon party. Families are moving west and will build farms in a valley. On the way he saves a man. Cole was about to be hanged from a tree and Glyn cuts the rope. The two have the same past. Before the war Glyn ran with border raiders and carries a mark on his neck from that time; he tells nobody. The party settles in the valley. The winter supplies will come from Portland and the money has been paid in advance. The supplies do not come. Gold has been found in the region, prices have jumped, and the merchant will not release the goods. From there the film is a story about transport. A steamer, mules, a mountain road, and a mining camp behind them. Cole decides to sell the goods himself. They leave Glyn behind. What the narrative is interested in is not robbery but change: the argument at its centre is whether a person can get free of his past, and the two men are the two answers. Glyn states it once: put a rotten apple in the barrel and it spoils the rest. Cole believes it; Glyn does not want to. The landscape is part of the narrative. The river, the forest and the snowy passes were shot on real locations. This is the second of the westerns the director and his lead made together; the series changed the tone of the genre by showing its hero as morally soiled. James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams, Rock Hudson and Jay C. Flippen are in the cast. Anthony Mann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the hard westerns of the 1950s. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a clear good and bad; the film keeps both blurred.