Love and other troubles Disappointment awaited the tall and stately Rocklin upon arrival in one of the provincial Arizona towns. He went to one of the many local ranches where he was hired by Rod Cordell, a local landowner and card player. He had serious intentions: he even sent a letter, and even with a deposit of $ 150 - a lot of money at that time, I must say. Cordell passed away three weeks ago, and Rocklin only finds out a few miles from the destination of his trip. Give bail to the victim's lawyer and go home? It's not like that.
The usual desert landscapes for westerns, thick road dust, saloons with flap doors, several not the most impressive shooting scenes and a couple of hand-to-hand fights - the picture does not carry any super-surprises, except that the concentration of half-jokes at the beginning of the film is slightly overestimated. Well, come on, what can not be done to make the viewer slightly stretch. However, it is too early to brand the film directed by Marin the most ordinary and unremarkable example of the genre. “In the Saddle” stands out for the reason that the main character, reminiscent of Lermontov’s Pechorin by being handsome, knows and knows everything you need and want, except how to find your place in life, is far from the only one who deserves the most close attention. Of course, courage, directness, strength, icy calmness and huge size inner dignity - all the attributes characteristic of a good guy in the movie genre of Western are present here. Nevertheless, the system of female images draws much more attention, the variety of which is pleasantly surprising. Here you and a fatal cowboy with an imaginary tune, under which the whole city dances; and a “flying”, gentle blonde lady with a thin voice and invariably in colorful dresses; her elderly aunt, hoping to rob herself what does not belong to her rightfully. Thus, the director Marin does not seem to limit himself to only gunshots from revolvers on the main street of the city and other purely “male” showdowns.
However, as you can guess, where women appear, there is this bloody love. There are too many conversations about her, there are ridiculous love scenes without showing the viewer the emotional transformations that would make these scenes possible, there are additional troubles associated with all these attachments. Turns out everything that starting to make a western with a melodramatic taste, Marin ended up almost melodrama against the backdrop of the scenery of Arizona. The director was very close to bringing everything to the absolutely disgusting conclusion here "why all this, if not for the sake of the most beautiful feeling in the world?", but at the last moment he did steer to more moral and pious notes-motives than he saved his offspring, leaving love as something really weighty, but secondary. At the head of the corner is still the cause and its meaning, and everything else is only later, after.
No matter how the director Marin tried to make a rather traditional plot interesting with his games with genres, no matter how he tried to saturate the picture with many characters and detective affairs, he failed to make a qualitative transition to a new level. Just because none of the lines were really worked out, except for the character, but it's kind of not enough for the film to enter the annals. And yet, as it turned out, they shoot here a little, and almost do not fight, and there is only one chase in the film, in the light of which the dynamism is almost completely absent. "In the saddle" turned out to be a thing, by and large, passable. That’s probably all I have to say about him.
