oscar-35
*Spoiler/plot- I shot Jessie James, 1949. After a bank robbery goes bad, Jesse James and a wounded Bob Ford hide out and quit for 6 months. Ford is thrilled to learn that his love, Cynthy Waters, is in town acting on stage with a traveling company. She's happy to see him but both realize that with a price on his head. They are unlikely to ever marry so their happiness is in doubt. When the Governor announces an amnesty for any criminal that brings in Jesse James, dead or alive; Ford decides to act and shoots his best friend in the back. He receives a pardon from the Governor but finds that he's become something of a pariah. Ford is being labeled both a traitor and a coward by the public. He goes off to make his fortune in mining but finds that there is nothing he can do to get Cynthy love him again with this curse of his actions. *Special Stars- John Ireland, Preston Foster, Barbara Britton. DIR: Sam Fuller.*Theme- Bad people should not be canonized as heroes.*Trivia/location/goofs- B&W. Directorial debut of Samuel Fuller. The character played by Robin Short, identified in the cast merely as "Troubadour," is obviously based on the real-life traveling musician Billy Gashade, who shortly after Jesse James' death wrote the "Ballad of Jesse James" sung by Short in the film. It's also used as a recurring theme by composer Albert Glasser. *Emotion- I enjoyed this film for it's realism and honesty. Director Samuel Fuller said that he wanted to make this picture because, unlike many filmmakers in Hollywood, he did not see the real Jesse James as a "folk hero" or someone to be admired. Fuller saw him as a cold-blooded psychopath who shot down women, children, the elderly, the helpless (his gang once stopped a Union hospital train and executed every wounded federal soldier on it) In Fuller's words, Bob Ford "did something that should have been done quite a bit earlier in the life of Jesse Woodson James". *Based On- A new more honest view of Jesse James.
lastliberal
If you have not seen Samuel Fuller's White Dog, you need to get it quick to see what a great director he was. This is his first film. He wrote and directed this, and his promise shows throughout.Jesse (Reed Hadley) doesn't have the young look that I have come to expect. He almost looks like Abe Lincoln with his beard and mustache.John Ireland, who received an Oscar nomination for All the King's Men the same year as this film, was Bob Ford, whose love for Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton) caused him to kill Jesse.Of course, everything goes wrong as people likes Jesse, and he was shunned. He also suffered remorse for killing his friend, but you know the story.It was a good tale of the killing of Jesse James, and the aftermath for Ford.The bar scene with the traveling troubadour (Robin Short) singing about the "coward Robert Ford" was hilarious.
Terrell-4
"Whatya got to eat?" asks Bob Ford, who backshot his great friend Jesse James not too long ago. Says Joe, the bartender at the Silver King Saloon in Creede, Colorado, "Sweet corn, cornmeal mush, cornpone with cracklins and corn whiskey." "I'll have it," says Bob. Lukewarm corn, cooked ambitiously, is about all there is in Sam Fuller's debut as a director. Fuller had been writing scripts and story outlines in Hollywood for quite awhile. Finally he made a three-movie deal with a B movie producer: If I can direct the movies, and I won't charge you, I'll write the screenplays. The first of the three, I Shot Jesse James, is a potentially intriguing story of a loser, but told with a script that has little tension, directed with little flair and acted, for the most part, with a dull, steady cadence. A good deal of the dialogue and many of the actors are just competent. Still, if you're a Fuller fan, I Killed Jesse James may be worth watching. It's part of Criterion's Eclipse Series 5 - The First Films of Samuel Fuller. The set includes The Baron of Arizona and Steel Helmet. Fuller, in my view, was not one of the great directors (or screenwriters; he usually wrote his own screenplays). He wasn't one of the great craftsmen, either. What he had was a tough, knock-about personal story, a confident willingness to dance to his own music, a streak of subversiveness that could undermine the fatuousness of Hollywood, the establishment and the nervous, and enough talent to take the commonplace material and actors he often was dealt and turn at least parts of his movies into something to admire. He was the kind of Hollywood non-Hollywood director that some cineastes and film critics adore. It would take a person wearing blinders, however, not to recognize that his movies are, at best, variable. Most of them don't hold up very well unless the viewer has been first captured by Sam Fuller's iconic anti-establishment reputation. Pickup on South Street is probably his best work, with fine performances by an A-level cast, an unusual script considering it was originally intended as an anti-Commie screed, and a story that Fuller keeps moving along. The Big Red One, highly praised by many, is an effective and realistic war movie dear to Fuller's heart. But it seems (to me) to go indulgently on and on and on. For the rest of his movies, those that I've seen, there's just excellent bits and pieces mixed into a B-movie sensibility, awkward dialogue (almost any scenes involving a man and woman), and too much discursiveness. Fuller, in my opinion, needed a strong editor to work with and a strong writer with whom to collaborate. I have a feeling that Fuller would find either prospect completely unsatisfactory. Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, anointed by Criterion, for me aren't just pulp movies, they're almost embarrassing examples of overwrought pulp movies. This is all just opinion. Watch The Naked Kiss and see what you think.But back to I Shot Jesse James. When Bob Ford (John Ireland) puts a bullet in the back of his friend, Jesse James, Ford hopes to gain amnesty and a large reward. He'd been befriended by James and had been part of James' gang. Ford wants to marry the love of his life, the singer Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton). He thinks he can leave the criminal life and settle down with Cynthy. Instead she rejects him. He's called a coward and a backshooter. Most people hold him in contempt. He gets only a small part of the reward. He still thinks that if only he can make money he can win Cynthy. And there's that straight talking' guy who likes Cynthy, too, a man named John Kelley (Preston Foster, top billed) who keeps showing up. There's a showdown, and that's that. John Ireland, in my view, had a lot of screen presence, but he needed a good script and strong direction to be at his best. Just watch him as Fantail in Raw Deal (1948), as Cherry Valance in Red River (1948) and as Jack Burden in All the King's Men (1949). Even in a piece of Brit noir schlock, The Glass Tomb (1955), he brings enough quality and interest to make it worth watching. Here, he's constrained by an uninspired script that gives him no opportunity to do anything but show what a sad sack loser Bob Ford is. But wait until that showdown. It only lasts a couple of minutes, but John Ireland shows what he can do.
funkyfry
Sam Fuller wrote and directed this unusual version of the Jesse James story from the perspective of his murderer, the "cowardly" Robert Ford (John Ireland). Although Ireland is billed beneath 30s oater star Preston Foster ("Outcasts of Poker Flat") and his love interest Cynthy played by Barbara Britton, he's definitely the star of this show and it's the story of Ford and not James or any other character. In fact James is shown as something of a trusting simpleton -- unless you want to dig into the possibility that's implied in some of the film's images that James and Ford are lovers. In fact if you've watched to the very end there's sort of a stark recognition there depending on how you see it. But there's a definite note of tenderness when James touches Ford's injured shoulder, and then there's that scene where James has Ford scrub his back in the tub....There's a lot of interesting character work from Ireland, who doesn't do that well with the earlier scenes like where he's supposed to be dreaming of his freedom, but who kicks into high gear as soon as his lady-love seems to reject him. Ireland is very convincing at conveying passion and also at playing a guy who's trying hard to hide his passion. That's never more clear than in the great scene when a wandering musician plays the song about "the dirty little coward Robert Ford" for him in the bar. I also really liked the scene with he and Foster when he held back from getting involved in the bar fight until the other man drew a gun.Foster himself isn't given nearly as much to do in the film but he was always a solid screen presence, he's convincingly grizzled and world-weary. A lot of times in these types of movies the Foster character would have ended up getting the girl, but things are a bit more unclear in this story. We don't get the sense that there's really much chemistry between them. Britton's work is pretty good I thought. She convinced me that her character didn't really know what she wanted.Good B movie, glad to finally get a chance to see it.
