The Gunfighter

Jimmy Ringo is reckoned the fastest gun in the country, and that is exactly why he cannot stay anywhere. In every bar he enters, some young man wants a reputation by trying him. He comes to a town to find his wife and the son he has never seen. He sits down for an hour and waits. The subject is not the duel but fame as a trap. Ringo does not want to kill anyone; the problem is that nobody will let him stop. Most of the film passes in a bar, watching a clock. The form is unusually static for a western: no chases, little landscape, almost everything inside the town. The tension comes from who will walk through the door. Gregory Peck grew a moustache for the role, and a studio executive believed it hurt the box office; the incident is often cited in arguments about star image from that era. The film underperformed and was later counted among the most influential in the genre, establishing the ageing gunfighter as a type in the American western. Henry King directs. Millard Mitchell plays the marshal and Helen Westcott his wife. Who it is for: viewers who like character-driven westerns and stories whose ending is known in advance. Who it is not for: anyone wanting action; this is almost entirely waiting and talk.