Rancho Notorious

Vern's fiancée is killed in a shop. Who did it is unknown. He sets out after the killer with a single clue: one word. That word takes him to a distant ranch. The ranch called Chuck-a-Luck is a place where wanted men hide; its owner Altar Keane takes a share of what they bring and asks nobody about their past. Vern gets in and believes the man he is after is there. Something begins between him and Altar, and the most dangerous man on the ranch notices. Fritz Lang directs. Marlene Dietrich plays Altar and Arthur Kennedy plays Vern; Mel Ferrer is also in the cast. The structure is built around a song; a ballad works as narrator through the film and sums up the events. The matter it works at is revenge changing a man; as the narrative proceeds Vern comes to resemble those he is hunting. Lang made this during his American period and it is one of the few times he worked in the western. There were serious disagreements between Dietrich and Lang during shooting and the two never worked together again. The visual work was built inside the studio; exteriors are barely used and that gives the film an artificial look. The ending does not follow the classical western resolution and nobody wins. Who it is for: anyone curious about classic westerns and Lang's American period. Who it is not for: the artificial sets are noticeable, the pace uneven, and the narrative is broken up by the song.