Abilene Town

Rating:
Summary: Cattlemen vs homesteaders vs law
Review: In this opus,town marshall(Randolph Scott)his his hands full keeping trail hands,at the end of a drive from treeing his town. Added to this is an enept sheriff(Edgar Bucannan),a hot headed farmer (Lloyd Bridges)and the town's saloon keepers -who will do anything to make a fast buck

Rating:
Summary: The tame always win
Review: Smart and briskly told, ABILENE TOWN is an above-average homesteader vs. cattle rancher movie. Randolph Scott stars as the town marshal of Abilene who finds himself in the middle of a land war. Short of only John Wayne, Scott is the man for the task. The movie opens with Scott in church, singing hymns with the angelic Rhonda Fleming. The pious music is interrupted by the sound of gunfire. The cattle drovers are in town, shooting up the honey pots.
Check that - they're shooting up-wards in the saloons, more in emphatic syncopation with song and dance girl Ann Dvorak's act that in meanness. The wranglers and ramrods are saving that meanness for act two, when the hymn singing, sodbusting homesteaders arrive and begin planting houses and barb-wiring up the northern terminus of the Abilene Trail. That levels out their aim some.
ABILENE TOWN is about the tension of opposites, with Randolph Scott smack in the middle. His character is a failed rancher who sympathizes with the "decent life" desiring homesteaders. He has to chose between Good Girl Rhonda Fleming and Bad Girl (with a heart of gold) Ann Dvorak. The movie also pits the merchants against the saloons, cattle against wheat, the pious against the profane. It's a contest between a restoration of the status quo and the establishment of a new order.
With its strong story, straight-ahead direction, and solid cast, ABILENE TOWN is a treat. Scott is well within his competent comfort zone as the man with the badge, Edgar Buchanan and Ann Dvorak leaven things with amusing diversions, and a young Lloyd Bridge is effective as the firebrand leader of the sodbusters. Hired thug Chet Younger, played by the underrated Jack Lambert, burns enough barns and shoots enough defenseless women and children to keep our sympathies from straying over to the wrong side of the fence. The transfer print on the review copy was faded out some, which tends to flatten out the picture. Nothing major. Otherwise it's in good shape, a real bargain considering its deeply discounted price.
ABILENE TOWN is a classic western that will delight fans of the genre and quite possibly hold the attention of non-converts as well.


Rating:
Summary: From cattle chaos to homesteading order
Review: This film is interesting because it shows how a city that was built and that prospered thanks to the driving of cattle from the SouthWest to the Middle West becomes a farming town. The fight between the drovers and the homesteaders is very well depicted, with its killings when the drovers deem it necessary to impose their domination. But the city is cut in two. On one side of the street the saloons. On the other side of the street the shops. The change comes when the homesteaders cut the trail with their barbed wire and when the shopkeepers understand that there is more money on the homesteaders' side than on the drovers'. The drovers push their last pawns, with the support at first of the saloonkeepers. But it means killing some homesteaders and the local marshall opposes it and imposes law and order. The drovers are driven out of the city. The city becomes a farming city and Kansas moves from a state that is crossed by herds of cattle to a farming state. This is possible, though never really said, because the railroads make it feasible to transport the cattle from Texas to Illinois without having to cross any farmland any more. But this future is made a reality because of the alliance of the shopkeepers with the homesteaders. We thus are shown history in its making.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU