I have been an avid fan with keen appreciation for Ken Maynard since I was just a kid but had never taken a look at this film, "Strawberry Roan." This is because I sensed the film would be merely sentimental and, for the most part, an uninteresting exercise about a horse. But, on the contrary, the film provides a most unusual, involving, and really quite powerful film-viewing experience.
Make not a mistake, the film is a horse story, inspired by the famous cowboy song that predates the film by nearly twenty years, but it is more than that. For me "Roan" is less a story about good vs. Evil than it is a brawny tale of men being men among men and, concomitantly, about horses being horses among horses.
There is so much to enjoy here, beginning, of course, with the lyrical and intense story. The feel is strongly rustic veering on primitive and there is a romantic undercurrent that is stronger than that played up for most B-western heroes (although unpracticed in the ways of on-screen romance, Ken's acting skills here impart a sensitivity that provide an additional perspective to his character). I have always admired Ken's acting style, one hallmark of which is his throwaway chatter, really a form of "bits of business."
Then there is the music, with the song taking a prominent position, most notably by Ken himself, singing beautifully in an affecting, Appalachian style and sawing on the fiddle for accompaniment (I understand that most cowboys of the 1800's indeed came out of Appalachia). Charles King, slender and tender, is shockingly one of Ken's musical cohorts (you've got to love Charles King!)
The introduction to the story, after the beautiful, music-filled opening credits, shows Ken and Tarzan coming across the glowing campfire of a group of singing cowboys after day's work has been done, really serves to get the viewer comfortable and ready for what one begins to suspect will be a film with a difference.
There are little surprises throughout the show, too, including camera angles, astounding locales (possibly including California's Red Rock Canyon area), a tender scene with a deer, and horse fights and other equine antics, including a monumentally-captured horse stampede, and some grand views of a giant, fully-packed (with scores of extras) saloon.
This is a wonderful movie for 1933, with so much and varied content jammed into its hour-long run time. The director Alan James and the entire crew should have been proud and satisfied with the result. The closing scene is beautiful, and even the ending credits, with upwelling music, of course, are marvelous to behold (as it charmingly reads "A good cast is worth repeating").
If you are interested enough to be looking at this movie's IMDb page you definitely need to see it.
