"THE TEXANS"

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 21 January 1939, Page 13

"THE TEXANS"

HAS ACTION, THRILLS AND ROMANCE ENACTED iN SPECTACULAR SETTINGS

A picture with a great amount of movement, incident and a rapid succession of events that keeps the attention from wandering is “The Texans.” Extraordinary care has been lavished upon detail and made very spectacular with natural forces largely contributing, such as fires and storms, while fights with the Indians hit up the thrills and suspense. It goes back to the Civil War period in America, after the war when law and order is struggling to lift its bsad above the chaos and to re-organise life upon sane grounds .May Robson and grand-daughter, Joan Bennett, are the owners of large estates and huge herds of cattle, which the new government has cast envious eyes upon with intent to grab and tax. Randolph Scott advises them to get out of the taxing area and to take their cattle to Kansas and sell them there. This they attempt to do, and are pursued by government cavalry with Robert Barrat leading up hill and down dale, through every kind of hardship and obstacle that nature knows how to present Some of the scenes are extremely spectacular and exciting, the fording of a wide river of the herd and several wagons being one with the cavalry thundering hard behind, the river saving the refugees as the other shore is the boundary of another state which is

out of the jurisdiction of the band. The turbulent atmosphere of the period is well depicted at the opening of the picture, and it permeates the story throughout by the symbolic use of restless cattle. It is these cattle that furnish the magnificent spectacle of the production. Some of these are quite noteworthy, the most remarkable being the crowded sequences in which the beasts darken the horizon with their ceaseless movement, ford swollen rivers, shiver in heavy blizzards, and are blinded by duststorms or stampeded across blazing plains set alight by warring Indians blocking the progress of the herds. The owner has hurried them across unfamiliar country to escape an exorbitant cattle tax imposed by corrupt officials, who use the remnants of an army during this period of moral and economic collapse to further their ends. No dramatic angle of these stirring episodes has been missed by the cameras, and the insignificance of the human characters at these moments is implied by the great mass of the cattle as they surge on to their destination. “The Texaqs” is a notable film about cowboys and Indians. On account of its historical background it is as interesting to sober as well as to frivollous theatre-goers.