Hangman's Knot (1952)

Directed by Roy Huggins; produced by Harry Joe Brown

In the last days of the American Civil War, a Confederate Army major (Randolph Scott), dispatched to Nevada to capture a Union wagon carrying gold, carries out his mission, killing all of the wagon’s escort. Returning to their local contact, the Southerners discover that the war had ended a month before, and that they are liable to hang for murder and theft. Their one chance is to escape to Mexico. But chased by a posse and soon cornered, that chance starts looking remote.

About 1946, Randolph Scott made the decision to act only in westerns, and for the next 16 years and the last forty films of his career (excepting a cameo as himself in a 1951 film), he did just that. The decision served him well, especially when he teamed with director Budd Boetticher. Huggins isn’t in Boetticher’s league – directing only this one feature – but Hangman’s Knot is a good, solid entry in Scott’s genre of choice. More likeable than John Wayne and tougher than Joel McCrea, Scott is a strong, tolerant, moral leader in the film, the sort of character the viewer immediately trusts and admires.

The other actors turn in creditable performances and create more than just cardboard people. Claude Jarman Jr plays a young soldier who clearly would prefer to have remained at peace on his family’s farm, and Lee Marvin is convincing as Scott’s subordinate who wavers uncomfortably close to villainy. Donna Reed’s role as the leading lady is almost perfunctory, however; hers is the weakest character. Frank Faylen (who portrayed Ernie the cab-driver in It’s a Wonderful Life, also starring Donna Reed) has a good role as an easy-going, almost philosophical soldier.

(I find it interesting that a number of older movies (from the 1940s and ‘50s) seemed to have had an easier time believably illustrating the diversity of types in an army than do movies now, the latter often coming across as self-conscious in such attempts. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that in the said decades, almost everyone in the U.S., Canada and Europe had been or had known men who had served in war.)

Huggins’s writing is rather better than his directing, and makes use of the stolen gold as a catalyst. The posse who pursue Scott and his men may or may not be legitimate sheriff’s deputies, but the distraction the gold exerts on them is real. It has an effect on the Southerners, too, with even Scott’s character being vexed as to what to do with the incriminating cargo.

A positive aspect of Hangman’s Knot is the stunts. Yakima Canutt, the famous and pioneering Hollywood stuntman, is the movie’s second unit director, and undoubtedly had a hand in devising the physicality of the film. That’s probably him in the ambush scene, leapfrogging onto a horse to get away; it’s a jump that he perfected for the cinema.

While no classic, Hangman’s Knot provides a satisfying time, with good action, a decent story and commendable performances.