The Hangman

A federal marshal known as the Hangman, because nearly everyone he brings in ends on the gallows, follows a robbery suspect to a small town. The man he wants is living there under another name, liked and trusted by his neighbours. When the town refuses to give him up, the film stops being a manhunt and becomes a wait, with the marshal left alone with his own hardness and with the question of what the law is actually for. It is one of Michael Curtiz's late pictures, short and plain, using the classical Western shapes at a slowed pace. Robert Taylor at this stage of his career is not the hero but the unwelcome officer. Dudley Nichols wrote the screenplay. The parts played by Tina Louise and Fess Parker give the town's protection of the suspect a basis in what they have witnessed rather than in stubborn sentiment.