The Violent Men

An embattled war veteran returns home to a morally chaotic world in Rudolph Maté’s The Violent Men, a Technicolor western noir which features three of film noir’s most popular faces, including femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck attempting one of the most evil murders of the noir cycle. Glenn Ford plays John Parrish, a small landowner looking to sell so he can head east with his bride-to-be Caroline (May Wynn). He changes his mind, however, after one of his men is tortured and killed by the the saddled-up thugs who guard Anchor Ranch, the vast tracts of land owned by the crippled Lew Wilkison (Edgar G. Robinson) who’s been expanding his holdings by buying up the smaller nearby ranches or intimidating the owners to flee. Parrish decides to stay and fight for the smaller landowners, which means war with Wilkison and his slimy brother Cole (Brian Kieth). In the meantime, Wilkison’s wife Martha (Stanwyck) is having an affair with Cole, her own brother-in-law, and can hardly wait for Lew’s demise (“I’ve lived with half a man for years,” she says. “I hate myself and I hate him”). The film lives up to its name, as bloodshed is abundant between the two camps and verges on sadism at times: one of Parrish’s men is whipped, lassoed, dragged, strung up, and shot by a gang of five. These are not nice people. Maté makes use of the open landscape to add scale to the destruction, such as the impressive stampede of horses used as a distraction so John and his men can set the ranch ablaze.