There are certain similarities between "Jesse James" and "They Died with Their Boots On", another Western from two years later. Both films are loosely based on the life of a legendary hero of the Old West, James here and General Custer in the supporting film. (At least, the films treat their subjects as heroes; whether either man really deserves that title is another matter). Both feature a famously handsome and dashing star in the leading role. Both are notorious for their historical inaccuracy and gloss over many aspects of their subjects' lives, especially their character flaws. And in both films the main villains are the representatives of a corrupt railroad company; during the era of the "New Deal" Hollywood seems to have been more critical of Big Business than it was to become after the war.
The film's departures from historical fact are many and varied; some are major, others minor. Among the minor discrepancies; James's killer Robert Ford was much younger than the character played here by John Carradine. The maiden name of James's wife Zerelda (known as Zee) was Mimms, not Cobb. James and Zee were first cousins, but this fact is omitted from the script, possibly because cousin marriage, quite common in the America of James's day, had been banned in many states by 1939.
More seriously, James's mother (also named Zerelda- her niece was named after her) was not killed by agents of the railroad as shown here. In fact, she outlived her son by many years, dying in 1911 at the age of 86. In the film it is this incident which forces Jesse and his brother Frank, previously honest, law-abiding young men, into a life of crime as they can see no other way of getting justice for their mother's death. In reality, the brothers began their life of crime as "bushwhackers", pro-Confederate irregulars during the Civil War, but the political aspects of their career are totally ignored by the film.
The standard of acting tends to vary. Nancy Kelly makes a rather weak, simpering Zee, but the most annoying actor in the film must be Henry Hull as Zee's uncle Rufus, an elderly and comically eccentric newspaper editor. (The Annoying Old Man became a stock comic figure in Westerns; "They Died with Their Boots On" has another example in the figure of California). There is a running joke about how Rufus is always running the same editorial in his paper insisting that the only solution to the problems of the West is to take some group of people and "shoot them down like dogs", the only difference being the identity of the group which Rufus wants shot. (Politicians, lawyers, dentists, railroad executives). This sort of comic relief does not sit well with the generally serious, at times tragic, tone of the film, and seems particularly inappropriate in a film made in 1939, a year in which the leaders of Germany and Russia were, in all seriousness, advocating collective murder as the solution to all the world's problems.
The two male leads, however, are splendid, their different styles of acting complementing each other well. Tyrone Power plays Jesse as the more dashing, hot-headed and impetuous of the two brothers, while Henry Fonda's Frank is the calmer and more level-headed. There is also a good contribution from Randolph Scott as Marshal Will Wright, the lawman investigating the crimes of the James gang. Marshal Wright is something of a morally ambiguous character; on the one hand he is a liberal who sees the James brothers as being as much sinned against as sinning and who is concerned that they receive a fair trial, unlike the railroad company who would prefer to see them lynched. On the other hand, there is an implication that he may be motivated as much by a romantic interest in Zee as by any abstract concern for justice.
"Jesse James" was made in Technicolor at a time when black-and-white was very much the rule rather than the exception. This suggests that the studio intended it to be a grand, spectacular movie, and to some extent they succeeded in this. It's not quite "Gone with the Wind", but it contains a lot more in the way of action sequences than do most films from the thirties, and some of them stand out, particularly the train robbery and the raid on the bank at Northfield.
Nobody would go to a film like this for a history lesson, at least not if you wanted a lesson about the life of Jesse James himself, although today films like this do, if only inadvertently, perhaps offer us a lesson about the period during which they were made. "Jesse James" today can be seen as a highly entertaining example of the way in which Hollywood sought to mythologise America's past and to provide folk- heroes for what was still a relatively young nation. This film might not show Jesse James as he was in real life, but it certainly shows him as people preferred to remember him. 7/10
The film's departures from historical fact are many and varied; some are major, others minor. Among the minor discrepancies; James's killer Robert Ford was much younger than the character played here by John Carradine. The maiden name of James's wife Zerelda (known as Zee) was Mimms, not Cobb. James and Zee were first cousins, but this fact is omitted from the script, possibly because cousin marriage, quite common in the America of James's day, had been banned in many states by 1939.
More seriously, James's mother (also named Zerelda- her niece was named after her) was not killed by agents of the railroad as shown here. In fact, she outlived her son by many years, dying in 1911 at the age of 86. In the film it is this incident which forces Jesse and his brother Frank, previously honest, law-abiding young men, into a life of crime as they can see no other way of getting justice for their mother's death. In reality, the brothers began their life of crime as "bushwhackers", pro-Confederate irregulars during the Civil War, but the political aspects of their career are totally ignored by the film.
The standard of acting tends to vary. Nancy Kelly makes a rather weak, simpering Zee, but the most annoying actor in the film must be Henry Hull as Zee's uncle Rufus, an elderly and comically eccentric newspaper editor. (The Annoying Old Man became a stock comic figure in Westerns; "They Died with Their Boots On" has another example in the figure of California). There is a running joke about how Rufus is always running the same editorial in his paper insisting that the only solution to the problems of the West is to take some group of people and "shoot them down like dogs", the only difference being the identity of the group which Rufus wants shot. (Politicians, lawyers, dentists, railroad executives). This sort of comic relief does not sit well with the generally serious, at times tragic, tone of the film, and seems particularly inappropriate in a film made in 1939, a year in which the leaders of Germany and Russia were, in all seriousness, advocating collective murder as the solution to all the world's problems.
The two male leads, however, are splendid, their different styles of acting complementing each other well. Tyrone Power plays Jesse as the more dashing, hot-headed and impetuous of the two brothers, while Henry Fonda's Frank is the calmer and more level-headed. There is also a good contribution from Randolph Scott as Marshal Will Wright, the lawman investigating the crimes of the James gang. Marshal Wright is something of a morally ambiguous character; on the one hand he is a liberal who sees the James brothers as being as much sinned against as sinning and who is concerned that they receive a fair trial, unlike the railroad company who would prefer to see them lynched. On the other hand, there is an implication that he may be motivated as much by a romantic interest in Zee as by any abstract concern for justice.
"Jesse James" was made in Technicolor at a time when black-and-white was very much the rule rather than the exception. This suggests that the studio intended it to be a grand, spectacular movie, and to some extent they succeeded in this. It's not quite "Gone with the Wind", but it contains a lot more in the way of action sequences than do most films from the thirties, and some of them stand out, particularly the train robbery and the raid on the bank at Northfield.
Nobody would go to a film like this for a history lesson, at least not if you wanted a lesson about the life of Jesse James himself, although today films like this do, if only inadvertently, perhaps offer us a lesson about the period during which they were made. "Jesse James" today can be seen as a highly entertaining example of the way in which Hollywood sought to mythologise America's past and to provide folk- heroes for what was still a relatively young nation. This film might not show Jesse James as he was in real life, but it certainly shows him as people preferred to remember him. 7/10