THE OUTLAW is wildly uneven and overall a failure. A couple of points: This film shows how much damage a bad musical score can do to a movie. This idiot composer thinks he's creating a new Tchaikovsky symphony (in fact he plagiarizes whole pages from some of Tchaikovsky's best-known works). The music is hyperactive, overbearing, overblown, and ludicrously inappropriate to this tough, unsentimental frontier story.
What does come across clearly is the powerful sex appeal of the two leads. Jane Russell, a former dental hygienist, supplies a sultry presence and bountiful bosoms in a pre-silicone era when such an endowment was really something special.
Less remarked-on is Jack Buetel, an insurance clerk who, unlike Russell, failed to become a star after this film. But no question he is one of the sexiest young men ever to appear in a Hollywood movie.
Some posters refer to THE OUTLAW's "homoerotic" qualities. I don't see anything like that in the story, but Buetel exudes such a powerful sensuality, he singlehandedly casts a homoerotic glow over the production.
Note: I just read Wikipedia's article on Buetel. It says Hawks wanted the young actor for RED RIVER, but Hughes wouldn't let him do it, so he cast Montgomery Clift instead:
"The film producer Cubby Broccoli who had worked with Hughes on The Outlaw, explained the reason that Buetel's career had been allowed to stagnate. He said that Hughes had coerced Buetel into a sexual relationship that began before filming started and which continued occasionally for the duration of Buetel's seven year contract. Broccoli explained that Buetel had refused to perform certain sexual acts and as a result had angered and frustrated Hughes, who was accustomed to aspiring actors and actresses being more compliant. The relationship was also described similarly by the author Lawrence Quirk, and by the assistant cameraman on The Outlaw, Lucien Ballard."
Wow, Scorsese should have used that to spice up THE AVIATOR, huh? LOL.
THE OUTLAW is no one's idea of a good movie, but it's worth checking out (even if you only see part of it)for Russell's auspicious, bodacious debut and moments, here and there, when the story actually works.
What does come across clearly is the powerful sex appeal of the two leads. Jane Russell, a former dental hygienist, supplies a sultry presence and bountiful bosoms in a pre-silicone era when such an endowment was really something special.
Less remarked-on is Jack Buetel, an insurance clerk who, unlike Russell, failed to become a star after this film. But no question he is one of the sexiest young men ever to appear in a Hollywood movie.
Some posters refer to THE OUTLAW's "homoerotic" qualities. I don't see anything like that in the story, but Buetel exudes such a powerful sensuality, he singlehandedly casts a homoerotic glow over the production.
Note: I just read Wikipedia's article on Buetel. It says Hawks wanted the young actor for RED RIVER, but Hughes wouldn't let him do it, so he cast Montgomery Clift instead:
"The film producer Cubby Broccoli who had worked with Hughes on The Outlaw, explained the reason that Buetel's career had been allowed to stagnate. He said that Hughes had coerced Buetel into a sexual relationship that began before filming started and which continued occasionally for the duration of Buetel's seven year contract. Broccoli explained that Buetel had refused to perform certain sexual acts and as a result had angered and frustrated Hughes, who was accustomed to aspiring actors and actresses being more compliant. The relationship was also described similarly by the author Lawrence Quirk, and by the assistant cameraman on The Outlaw, Lucien Ballard."
Wow, Scorsese should have used that to spice up THE AVIATOR, huh? LOL.
THE OUTLAW is no one's idea of a good movie, but it's worth checking out (even if you only see part of it)for Russell's auspicious, bodacious debut and moments, here and there, when the story actually works.