Cover yourself in blood and glory California is a little more than four hundred and fifty thousand square kilometers, which since the middle of the nineteenth century belong to the United States of America. The local farmers bought land from the Spaniards for eight dollars per acre; valleys and hills passed from Mexicans to Spaniards, then to Southern Americans, turned from deserts to forests, then to mines, to wheat fields and pastures, again to mines, to gardens and even vineyards.
A few decades after the gold rush and joining the Union of States settled here farmers had to face a new wave of gold prospectors. But this time the adventurers brought with them not only pickaxes and sieve for washing rock, but also powerful water-pressure machines that literally cut the soil, turning everything in its path into tons of dirt, rubble and logs. The waters of Sacramento became muddy, and pastures in the lowlands were drowned with silt. And even a court decision, once wise, which protected landlords from prospectors, helped only on paper. In fact, the local discontent under the command of Colonel Ferres had to defend with their own hands wheat fields and apple orchards, which are much more expensive than any gold.
This introduction is as long and uninteresting as the beginning of the film, in which an important voiceover brings us up to date, giving a brief historiographical background against the backdrop of chic color shots of Technicolor. It can be watched half-eyed, as this pathos is nothing more than a traditional western with the California sun, horses, red neck scarves, guns, dynamite and love against the background of nature. Perhaps, it is the visual moment of “Gold...” that is the most winning. Succulent colors and combined shooting (and this is the thirty-eighth year, gentlemen!) can not but please the eye, but all this is not good for the plot. The studio and Michael Curtitz were so eager to release something in color and plug the hole in front of Robin Hood, which was not yet ready, that this slurred script was born. Generally speaking, the confrontation between farmers and prospectors is good and interesting, but in the end the main character with a silly smile of George Brent can not decide which side he occupies. Mr. Whitby, we have an engineer, a mine manager, and a gallant gentleman who is in the habit of caring for the charming daughter of a local landowner. Of course, it is impossible to combine all this without damage, because the authorities on top demand more gold, and the future father-in-law is unhappy with the thawing inheritance that Whitby and his miners frighteningly quickly flood. At first, our hero does not understand that water pressure machines cause irreparable damage to the local nature, then he undertakes to instruct the young brother of his beloved, setting him up against his father and pushing the well with his eyes burning directly into the abyss, and then completely changes the landmarks. It seems that the only reason why the heroine of Olivia de Havilland falls in love with him is Whitby’s faint interest in her hobby: Daddy generously gave her fifty acres for an apple orchard, apparently anticipating what it is worth investing money and land in the future in this region.
The only reason to watch this film, in addition to the already mentioned and certainly beautiful Technicolor frames, can be called Claude Raines. He is the same Colonel Ferres: a strict but fair leader of the local farmers, an affectionate father to a daughter and an oboltus son, a proud head of the clan who causes eternal discontent with his brother and his gossip wife, and an unwanted father-in-law for Whitby. Reigns, as I happened to read somewhere, could just read out loud in his unique voice script tape, and it would have made it an order of magnitude better. His Ferres remains practically the only adequate man in this mess, making every effort to ensure that neither the courtroom nor his own living room become a place of vulgar clarification of relations. The louder his son Lance screams, revealing all the worst aspects of teenage denial of authority, the quieter and more significant Ferrez speaks. He smiles as he looks at Lincoln’s blackboard phrase that democracy is the power of people over people and for their good, and it seems that his whole life before the episode of this film was subordinated to these words. In general, there is something about Claude Raines that makes the choice of his hero a herald of public opinion surprisingly natural. His sonorous voice, his gift of persuasion, his confidence and the feeling that as long as he stands firmly on his feet, everyone around him will be under his protection, is simply hypnotizing. And all this is the same Raines who rose to fame mostly as heroes with, to put it mildly, controversial moral values. The more interesting is “Gold...” in which we can fully enjoy Raines the Righteous. Well, maybe not completely, because the wig chosen for Ferres makes Claude Raines almost unrecognizable.
Young and beautiful Olivia de Havilland, planting apple trees, California landscapes, dynamite explosions, one high-society reception with a vivid demonstration of the rejection of scientific and technological progress by the southerners, the edifying beginning and end and the beautiful game of Claude Raines - if this is not enough to justify the existence of "Gold...", then let us consider this film a very bright and colorful excursion into the history of California, on the glorious pages of which there is so much fruit and gold.