I Shot Jesse James (1949)

it reminds the Biblical stories. or damned characters of Dostoievski.in fact, it is an inspired western, proposing a hero, a coward mate and the fall of dreams, a show as remind of guilt and the public contempt. a film who did not demonstrate anything. only gives a large picture about gestures and fragile and obscure border between bad and good. and this transforms "I Shot Jesse James" more than a B western but a demonstration about values and expectations and illusion and friendship. the noble Jesse James and the knavish Ford. a story with moral veil who remains nice demonstration about limits and falls.

I think this movie is more about Robert Ford than say Jesse James. John Ireland does a great job as the cowardly Bob Ford.. the James gang just having finished another robbery is on the run hiding out somewhere in Missouri,, Jesse is living under an alias. One thing that this movie presented to me was that the James' somehow are related to the Younger's and the Dalton's interesting fact if its' true. With that price of 10,000 on Jesse's head it becomes almost impossible for Bob Ford to resist it,, he plans on getting a house in the country and marrying his sweetheart Cynthy,, so he figures to cash in on his friend Jesse's head dead or alive,, what he doesn't count on is 2 things,, first being the public outcry of Jesse's death,, also the shrinking of the reward money,, and secondly how Cynthy would react,, he figures she'd be happy so that they could get married and so on.. wrong ,,, she has a conscious, and starts to despise Bob,, and at best pity him. this is a pretty good telling of the story of Jesse getting shot by Bob.

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.

"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.