Cattle Queen of Montana

This film earns points for me merely from the fact that it is a studio era, Technicolor western. I suppose then it's too bad that it's really not a very good film, despite some good ideas. Director Allan Dwan remains one of the lesser semi-auteurs of the studio era whose greatest film was The Sands of Iwo Jima which is not only a great film, but remains one of the very best films about WWII. This film stars Barbara Stanwyck who seems out of place in her surroundings as she makes a better femme fatale than cattle barroness. Soon she finds herself bullied by a local rancher who wants her land and cattle. Ronald Reagan isn't at the top of his game as one of her few friends, and Jack Elam will be forgotten here and always remembered in Once Upon a Time in the West. Where it succeeds, however, is in the sensitive treatment of the complex relations between whites and Indians at the time. Dwan reveals misunderstandings and treacheries on both sides leading to those conflicts which would come to tame the West. Still, you've gotta love that Technicolor landscape, even if he isn't the artist of say John Ford with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.