Devil's Doorway

Broken Lance Poole fought as a sergeant in the Union army and was decorated. Back in Wyoming he raises cattle on his father's land. Then a new law arrives: native people cannot hold title. He cannot register the land in his own name, cannot go to court, and the sheep farmers who want his pasture are legally in the right. The subject is not the western but law being writable so as not to recognise a group. Poole breaks no rule; he tries to stay inside the system and every door closes. Reaching for a gun is presented not as a choice but as what is left. The form is close to noir. Anthony Mann uses dark interiors, hard shadows and tight frames; the wide landscape of the western tradition is almost absent. Its fate was decided by timing. It coincided with another production of the same year centred on native people; the studio kept this one in the background and released it narrowly. That the lead is played by a white actor in makeup is now its most obvious problem, while the legal criticism in the text is unusually direct for its period. Robert Taylor plays Poole and Paula Raymond the lawyer. Who it is for: viewers interested in the dark branch of the classical western. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the casting; the objection is fair and indefensible on the film's part.