The Return of Frank James

Jesse James was shot in the back. The Ford brothers who killed him are tried and pardoned by the governor. Frank James hears of it. He had been living quietly on his farm; he does not any longer. With his helper Pinky he sets out to find the Fords. On the road he meets a young reporter; Eleanor is after a story and follows him. Frank has to commit a robbery and a man dies during it. Now there are the men he is hunting and a case opened against him. In the end he stands in a courtroom. Fritz Lang directs. Henry Fonda plays Frank, Gene Tierney plays Eleanor and Ernest Whitman plays Pinky. It is Lang's first western; the director worked in the genre for the first time after moving from Germany to America. The production is a sequel to the Jesse James film made a year earlier and Henry Fonda continues in the same part. It was Gene Tierney's first film. It was shot in colour, which was not yet common for westerns of the period. The matter it treats is what revenge returns; Frank gets what he wanted and it is shown to have gained nobody anything. The courtroom section is its best passage and the blurring between law and crime is made plain there. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds in pieces and the romance is weak. Who it is for: viewers who like classic westerns and Fritz Lang. Who it is not for: the pace is uneven, the plot loose, and the genre shape dated.