The first few years of talking movies -- Waterfront was made only six years after Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, the first major talkie -- were a strange hybrid of silent and sound styles. Director James Cruze had made some well-received movies in the earliest eras of the motion picture, but he doesn't seem to be able to take advantage of the greater mobility and other possibilities the more advanced technology of 1933 offered. Torrence, on the other hand, a kind of Alan Rickman of his day known for his playing of steely-eyed villains, bridged the gap well and easily multiplied his villainy by his voice. Lyon and Colbert anticipate the snappy patter of later screen couples/antagonists and display a back and forth no set of title cards could keep moving fast enough.
Waterfront was made pre-Hayes Code, meaning that whether Julie was actually swimming nude when Joe meets her or not, it is certainly implied that she was. It's a good showcase of early versions of some of Hollywood's best mid-century themes, like the screwball comedies, repartee-heavy romances and noir classics that would dominate those years. It unfortunately also displays the backward racial assumptions of the era regarding the Chinese and other Asian people. The actual racism -- ethnic name-calling, etc. -- is less than the racism by omission we see in never learning much of anything about Eli Kirk's victims, so Waterfront is more uncomfortable than unwatchable. While the discomfort should be mild enough to not turn most folks away, some might still wish to take a pass.
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By 1975, Clint Eastwood had a significant amount of clout as a director and box-office star. He used it to direct the adaptation of Trevanian's book The Eiger Sanction, about an assassination requiring the hitman to do his work while climbing the deadly Mt. Eiger.
Eastwood is Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor who used to be a government assassin. He used his earnings to buy some of his favorite pieces of art, and the organization that used to use him now blackmails him with threats about asking the IRS how many college professors can afford a multi-million dollar art collection. Hemlock carries out the first hit with no problem but refuses the second, so the blackmail dial is turned up. A little sweetener is thrown in: the target was probably an agent who betrayed Hemlock's team and caused the death of a friend. His exact identity isn't known, but it is known he will be part of a team trying to climb the Eiger -- and Hemlock, in addition to being an art professor and assassin, is also an expert climber who has failed to conquer the Eiger before. Thus persuaded and tempted, he begins training with his friend Bowman (George Kennedy). Along the way he will have to thwart an attempt to kill him from former partner Miles Mellough (Jack Cassidy) and the betrayal by a woman he has met, Jemima Brown (Vonetta McGee).
As mentioned above, some of the one-liners are outstanding. When a flunky tells Hemlock he's been sent to collect him, he says, "My superiors want to see you." Hemlock replies, "That doesn't narrow the field very much, does it." The climbing sequences are also phenomenal. Eastwood did many of his own stunts, and several serious injuries marred the production filming at the Eiger. But there aren't enough of either. There's plenty of Bondesque babe-bedding, but Eastwood is far too laconic to pull off 007's suave charm. The training section of the movie has some great cinematography of climbing in the desert Southwest, but stuck haphazardly into a time-wasting side plot with Mellough. And there's barely a half-hour of time on the actual mountain, in a movie whose title features the mountain!
Eiger more or less flopped at the box office, and Eastwood blamed Universal Studios before heading out the door. He would return to his Western roots with the 1976 revenge drama The Outlaw Josey Wales, gaining some more experience strengthening his skills in the more familiar surroundings.
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Wayne plays Bob Seton, a cowboy traveling with a shady dentist (Gabby Hayes) who helps drum up business by punching men out when they insult the president. This being Kansas in the years leading up to the Civil War, business is good. When the pair hit Lawrence, Kansas, they decide to stay awhile, not the least because Seton has spied Mary McLeod (Trevor), the beautiful daughter of the town banker. Mary's attentions, however, are on schoolteacher William Cantrell (Walter Pidgeon), who soon finds himself at odds with Seton as they compete in an election for the new town marshal. Seton wins, and the bitter Cantrell decides to acquire wealth and power by working the other side of the law-enforcement street. Like Quantrill on whom he is based, Cantrell raids both Northern and Southern sympathizers equally, robbing from anyone who has anything. His raids draw attention from Seton, who suspects him but can't prove anything, and the gap between Seton and Mary widens when he has to arrest her brother for shooting a man. The brother was played by Roy Rogers in one of his earliest big-picture roles; Command therefore is the only movie in which famed screen cowboys John Wayne and Roy Rogers worked together.
The five main cast -- Wayne, Trevor, Pidgeon, Hayes and Rogers -- all nail their roles, as does Marjorie Main in a small but important part as Cantrell's mother. Wayne and Trevor continue the sparring they developed in Stagecoach, with Trevor now portraying a respectable woman of society and Wayne far more nimble and expressive verbally as well as physically than he would be during most of his icon years. Pidgeon is very convincing as a man whose ambition and greed drive him to take what he feels is rightfully his, whether or not it's legitimately his at all. Hayes and Rogers fill in their own smaller roles with confidence and skill; Hayes displaying his great gift for irascibility and comic timing and Rogers showing he was as much an actor as a "singing cowboy."
The Dark Command isn't as famous as Stagecoach, and although Walsh wouldn't work with Wayne nearly as often as John Ford would, it was easy to see that with good direction, a solid story and talented castmates, John Wayne came by his movie stardom honestly -- he was a pretty good actor in the right places at the right times.
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