The Hanging Tree

A gold rush camp in Montana. Doctor Joseph Frail arrives and tells nobody about his past. He treats Elizabeth, a Swiss woman robbed and left in the desert and temporarily blinded, and keeps her in his cabin until she recovers. As she gets better it becomes clear he does not want to let her go. The film is not interested in the western. It is interested in possession dressed as care: Frail tends her, protects her, and at the same time allows her to see no one. It does not present this as a romantic gesture but ties it to his own guilt. The form is late classical western: camp mud, crowds of miners, a lynching and mountain landscapes. The final section, where the crowd becomes ungovernable, is its strongest. Delmer Daves directed, from Dorothy M. Johnson's story. Marty Robbins sings the title song, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Gary Cooper plays Frail, Maria Schell plays Elizabeth and Karl Malden the miner. It comes from Cooper's last years and the character is markedly darker than his customary hero. Who it is for: viewers who like classical westerns and dark protagonists. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the woman to make her own decisions. Elizabeth spends most of the film subject to other people's.