You know the stories of these programmer westerns, also called "juveniles" were trite. There's the "good guy", here George O'Brien, and there's the villain, always scheming to grab all the money, and who seems to be winning in the struggle right up until the very end. And there's "the Girl" who hates the hero until the very end when they decide to get married. But these pictures succeeded or failed with their audiences by their ability to deliver ACTION. The Painted Desert has plenty of action packed into less than a hour. First of all there is the beautiful scenery of just riding across the undulating desert with its scrub vegetation of Red Rock Canyon. Then there's a stamped and a perilous run of ore loaded wagons along a vertiginous cliff and lastly a great mine explosion. I note that IMDb informs us that much footage was lifted from an earlier, 1931, version. Even excepting that the cinematography from Harry Wild, later a master of noir cinema, is remarkable. There is a scene inside the mine that's drop dead gorgeous. I don't want to make a big deal about what is just an hour's entertainment, but its pleasant to report on a film which maintains a dignity and integrity when far more prestigious productions have strayed into inarticulate spectacle.
Review of Painted Desert
