If justice can’t be fully meted out, then outraged morals can at least be assuaged, and so it is that certain undesirable elements are to be run out of town. That robbery, where Ryker cynically betrays and sacrifices his confederates, sees some new graves filled and a residue of bitterness left among the miners. These are the men led by Ryker (Cameron Mitchell), and they are on their way to the assay office, planning to raid the safe within. Yet, there are a few figures abroad, detaching themselves from the shadows momentarily to move from one brightly lit establishment to another, although a handful are heading in another direction. The foul and muddy streets glisten in the night, and few people are to be seen, most are whooping it up in the saloons as they drink and gamble the evening away. The story begins in the town of Poker Flat, in deep and forbidding darkness. All the best examples of the western hinge on this, and The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952) is no exception in that regard. One of the central tenets of that idea, to my mind anyway, relates to rebirth, renewal and, that word which is hard to avoid under the circumstances, redemption. I think the myth of the Old West as portrayed on screen is one of the strongest representations of the myth of America, and I’m referring to America here as an idea as much as a nation. In filmmaking terms, it’s the ultimate American genre, and for many that makes it part of the bedrock of cinema. There are all sorts of theories propounded to account for that popularity, and I guess we’ve all become familiar with a fair few of them.

If respectability hadn’t entirely been conferred or, as the above quote from Miriam Hopkins’ character asserts, wasn’t even something worth angling for, it would be hard to deny the popularity the genre was experiencing. Mind you, the relative dearth of awards bestowed on the genre, even in these peak golden years, possibly contradicts that. If there’s one thing that turns my stomach, it’s respectability.īy the 1950s the western itself could be said to have attained something very close to respectability.

The outcasts of poker flat answer