Sierra Baron (1958) Online

I happen too see this wonderful film by chance, some years ago, on Encore's Western channel.It's a fine, vivid telling of the Anglo encroachment into mid 1800"s California. Rick Jason is exceptional as the son of a recently murdered Spainish land baron, who is thrust into the forefront of trying to protect what has been his family's land for generations ,against the white settlers who move in now and answer questions later .Brian Keith, in one of his fine low key performances, plays a man who(gets things done), for the Anglo powers that be,but decides to think for himself after being befriended by Jason's character.The rest of the cast is stellar as well as the writing ,direction, music and the glorious color photography. This is a rare gem, not many U.S. films like it...if any.

This is one of my personal favorite movies, and one of the first to develop the life of the Californios on film, before and during the coming of the United States as visitors, settlers, invaders, enemies and later overlords. It was shot in some real locations and is quite colorful to my eyes; it has a coherent and consistently moving script, I suggest, due to the logic of Tom Blackburn's darker novel and Houston Branch's intelligent screen-play plus the intrinsic drama of the story-line. The story in fact opens just at the time the United States is winning its war against Mexico and General Santa Ana and annexing California. One man, Rufus Bynham, has jumped the gun and established a town on the land belonging to a Spanish grandee, young Miguel DelMonte, who has just taken over the Princessa Grant territory upon the death of his father. The new patron, found drinking with his co-eval friends in Mexico by a ranch-hand, sobers as he hears the news of his father's death. They ride home and encounter some of Bynham's men. The toughs try to beat them up but instead DelMonte defeats their instigator and tells the other interlopers to get off his land. He hastens home to find his sister awaiting him; Felicia is anxious but very glad to see him. A man helped him when someone tried to pull a gun, and Miguel has borough the man, Jack McCracken, home with him. So there are three fascinating strands going on simultaneously: the lives of those living at the important rancho and especially its three lead characters, the activities of Bynham and the townspeople who bought lots from him in good faith, and later a wagon train filled with desperate folk whom he allows to stay on the land to sow a crop and to whom he sends aid, including a young woman, Sue Russell, who has lost her husband on the trek west, with whom he falls in love while she does not want to think of love that soon at all. The strands are each followed and developed quite intelligently, I suggest. Jack teaches Miguel how to use a swivel draw of a gun while facing away from an opponent. The townspeople talk among themselves and the sensible ones refuse to join a mob that Bynham tries to stir up after DelMonte rides through with his men and reminds them they are on his land. The fact that he helps the train's folk and allow them to stay is used against him. Riots occur in Sacramento, California's capital, when the government of the United States recognizes the old Spanish land grants after all. The mob that confronts Miguel are not all bad men. Bynham's men have beaten up Jack for siding with Miguel, and Felicia has been nursing him as he falls in love with her and tries to tell her the truth about himself, in some very moving scenes. Miguel defuses the situation by telling the townsfolk their claims are theirs; they can stay--his quarrel is with Bynham and he will take it to court. Realizing the jig is up Bynham flees, pursued by angry men of both sides. He finally turns up at the rancho and gets the drop with his six-gun on Miguel and Jack. Miguel kills him, using the trick that had been taught to him, but the villain has time to kill Jack. As he dies, he lies to Felicia and tells her he was plotting to kill Miguel and take over all along; she does not believe him. Because she so nearly lost him, Sue Russell accepts Miguel's love, and he understands. "A heart can hold many kinds of love," he acknowledges, and promises never to leave her. The scene shifts--perhaps brilliantly--then to the modern day. A group of sightseers is visiting, discovering the grave markers on the old DelMonte property. In this clever way, we learn the fate of the participants in the historical drama. The last to be accounted for are Sister Felicia of the Cross and Jack McCracken. One of the young women, also named Felicia, finds it odd that "She was a nun...yet they're buried side by side!..." With this unforgettable ending, the fascinating historical drama ends. The film has beautiful cinematography by Alex Phillip and fine art direction John B. Mansbridge, plus a successful and well-paced direction by James B. Clark. The music composed by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter supports the progress and many moods of the complex deeds and events I believe very unobtrusively. Also, the costumes designed by Georgette Somohano are unusually fine as are the period set decorations. Scenes such as the formal served dinner where Jack sits at one end of a long table, Miguel at the other and Felicia in the middle being served by deferential servants is very memorable; so is the dance that Miguel does with Sue to draw her out of her shell, the slow ride into town by Miguel's mounted troops, the refusal of some of the townsmen to join the mob and many other scenes. In the main roles, handsome Rick Jason is likable and more-than-acceptable. Mala Powers and Brian Keith bring intelligent interpretations to their roles; Rita Gam steals the film as the lovely underplayed Felicia; and Steve Brodie is properly ruthless as Rufus Bynham. Also in the cast are Lee Morgan, Alan Russell, Reed Howes, and many others, in minor roles. I find this film very affecting and its every scene interesting. I recommend it to any viewer as a period piece, an historical drama, a romance, and a lovely example of "B" film-making from beginning to end. By the way, the novel is quite different; I prefer the filmed story.

Well done oater. It's something of an oddball—a TCF production with typically good production values, an unusual premise, but no marquee names. In fact, screen time is divided between two "heroes", Keith and Jason, neither of whom was a big name at the time. Still, the movie's crowd scenes plus epic location filming suggest an A-production with hopes for a lesser-known cast.

It's a big canvas storyline as land rights between an old Spanish land grant and the ambitions of newcomer white settlers clash. Jason certainly looks the part of an aristocratic Spanish padrone, while Keith acts out a low-key gunslinger in usual fine fashion. Each, of course, has a love interest, lovelies Gam and Powers, respectively. Naturally it takes a while for the various conflicting interests to get sorted out, no thanks to the one irredeemable bad guy, Steve Brodie. There are several likable scenes—a charming folk dance among the settlers, along with a very well conceived last scene that serves as a fitting epilogue.

I suspect this 1958 release got lost in the waves of Westerns consuming much of TV and movies of the time. I'm sure it was hard to compete with the likes of The Big Country (1958) with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston that received a ton of promotion. Still, this obscure feature remains a good slice of entertainment, along with some food for thought.

It's 1848 and while the US Senate debates the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War already Americans are pouring into the area known as the Mexican Cession. Especially in California where most of the Mexican population was in any event.

Steve Brodie was one of the first as he starts land speculating giving cut rate land deals to American settlers on some Mexican land. Cuz there ain't no way the Senate will ratify a treaty that will recognize Mexican land rights.

Two people fighting back are the Delmontes, brother and sister Rick Jason and Rita Gam. They've got a lot of acreage in California and a few vaqueros to back them up.

Two people they get involved with are American widowed settler Mala Powers who Jason rescues on the desert with her child. Brian Keith plays a Texan gunfighter who switches sides and helps the Delmontes. He's a puzzling figure even in his own mind and a tragic one. To him go the acting honors in Sierra Baron.

Of course Brodie figures wrong because as history tells us the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was passed reognizing the rights of Mexicans already there. They were given the option of going to the now truncated Mexico or becoming American citizens.

The happy ending here was sadly to be shortlived when gold was discovered on John Sutter's estate and the 49ers just poured in like a flood. A bit of irony I'm sure known to a lot of the audience when Sierra Baron was on the big screen in 1958.

An Anglo land speculator in California (Brodie) has the owner of a large land grant with roots dating back to Spanish colonialism murdered, but doesn't count on his son (Jason) showing up to defend his murdered father's claim. By this time Brodie has already divided up the land and sold it to unsuspecting Anglo settlers. Jason's arrival is pretty well done, as the first Anglo trespasser/settler he meets fights him with a pair of brass knuckles and Jason detaches one of the spurs off of his boots and slashes the guy's face with it. There are some other out-of-the-ordinary scenes in this film that make it moderately fun to watch, though the film for some reason cloaks Jason's character as a Spaniard, when he's really Mexican, and all of the land was Mexico until the treaty ended the war that enabled the US to confiscate it. But whatever, Brian Keith's hired gun character is pretty decent, and Jason's rescue of Mala Powers in the desert is not bad at all. Same with Brodie, who nails the part of the scheming real estate broker.

NOTES: First film produced by Plato Skouras was made entirely in Mexico. Originally, Andre De Toth was signed to direct.

COMMENT: It's an amazing thing, but the most dramatically attractive deployments of CinemaScope were not generally found in products of the Hollywood "A" feature factories, but in Continental pictures like "The Great War" and "No Sun in Venice", and in independent "B" movies like this one.

Superbly photographed by Alex Phillips, one of the world's greatest masters of color cinematography, "Sierra Baron" offers scenic vistas of such pictorial splendor, that the human eye can hardly take them all in. I strongly advise viewers not to sit too close to the screen but take a back seat in the theater where the full, brilliantly framed panoramas, stunningly composed and strikingly vivid in color and contrast, will hit the spectator to the fullest extent of all their wide-wide-screen excitements.

Unfortunately, aside from the music score (one of the best emanating from the Sawtell-Shefter team), the rest of the film is nowhere up to the Phillips standard. Clark's direction, Branch's script, and the performances of such luminaries as Brian Keith, Rick Jason, Mala Powers and Steve Brodie, could all best be described as no more than passably routine.