Refocus: The Films of Delmer Daves eds. by Matthew Carter, Andrew Patrick Nelson (review)

In The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968), Andrew Sarris' controversial hierarchy of directors, Delmer Daves is relegated to the "Lightly Likeable" category reserved for "talented but uneven directors with the saving grace of unpretentiousness" (171) such as Michael Curtiz, Henry Hathaway, and Mitchell Leisen. Daves should have been flattered to be numbered among the directors of Casablanca (1942), The House on 92^nd St. (1945), and Easy Living (1937). Unpretentious Daves was, but not unprofound, as the ten essays in this excellent collection proves. Actually, there are eleven. The editors modestly refer to their joint article as an "Introduction," in which they make a case for Daves as an auteur with a vision that he not so much imposed on his material as allowed to come out of it. But before the editors reach that conclusion, they take us along the torturous route that led to auteurism, from Astruc's caméra-stylo, film as a form of writing, which implies a signature, to the signers themselves—directors who have given expression to narratives that they have not written but could tell in a way that the writers could not. Anyone teaching a course in Film Theory should make the "Introduction" required reading. I have yet to see a better analysis of authorship refracted through the prism of structuralism and post-structuralism.

There is a rich humanity in Daves' vision seen particularly in his portrayal of indigenous peoples in Broken Arrow (1950), Bird of Paradise (1951), and Drum Beat (1954). Although, as Andrew Patrick Nelson notes in "Authorship and the Westerns of Delmer Daves," the director "spent three months living among the Hopi and Navajo" (54) after graduating from Stanford University in 1926, he made nine films between 1944 and 1949—six with a World War II background—before he attempted his first western, Broken Arrow (1950), which seemed revisionist at the time for its sympathetic treatment of native Americans within the setting of a doomed interracial romance.

The western most associated with Daves is 3:10 to Yuma (1957), which Fran Pheasant-Kelly brilliantly analyzes in "Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma: Aesthetics, Reception, and Cultural Significance," treating it both as a filmic text with close attention to framing, camera angles, and lighting and as a quest narrative about an impoverished farmer (Van Heflin), who, having failed to intervene during a stagecoach robbery, volunteers to deliver an outlaw (Glenn Ford) to Yuma prison both for the money and the opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his wife and sons. To set his film apart from the traditional western, Daves intertwined the pursuit of manhood with the doubling of a flawed hero and an amiable villain, who is unusually deferential toward women. Small wonder that the Library of Congress designated 3:10 to Yuma as worthy of preservation for its historical, aesthetic, and cultural significance.

An equally important western is Jubal (1956), but for reasons that have more to do with its noirish overtones than its place in the western canon. Don't be put off by Matthew Carter's unwieldy title: "'This Is Where He Brought Me: 10,000 Acres of Nothing!'": The Femme Fatale and other Film Noir Tropes in Delmer Daves' Jubal. "This is the highlight of the collection. While not a noir western like Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947), Jubal is an atypical variation on the eternal triangle (husband, wife, wife's lover) with a stolid but genial husband (Ernest Borgnine), his unfulfilled wife (Valerie French), and the innocent victim of her sexual aggressiveness (Glenn Ford), who kills the husband in self-defense. The film's steaminess, reflected in both the wife's vampish behavior and a ranch hand's (Rod Steiger) palpable lust for her, counterbalanced by Ford's almost puritanical rejection of her advances, reveals Daves' refusal to make anything resembling a pure western.

While all the essays afford valuable insights into Daves' art, one wishes the editors had commissioned a few more dealing...