User reviews

Released in 1955, "The Kentuckian" is one of only a couple films directed by Burt Lancaster.

THE STORY takes place during the presidency of James Monroe circa 1820. Lancaster plays Eli Wakefield, a Kentuckian who desires more room to breath in Texas. Still in Kentucky, they blow their "Texas money" on freeing a beautiful indentured servant, Hannah (Dianne Foster). They don't get past the next frontier town where Eli takes up with his brother in the tobacco business and Hannah gets a job as a bar matron. Eli's dreams of Texas are sidetracked when he meets up with a schoolmarm (Diana Lynn) who encourages him to settle down and make a family with her. The problem is that Eli's son prefers Hannah and doesn't want to give up their Texas dream. Meanwhile feuders are hot on Eli's trail, not to mention malevolent local businessman with a whip (Walter Matthau).

Some highlights include:

• Lush Eastern locations. The film was shot in Levi Jackson State Park, Kentucky (near London), as well as Owensboro, Kentucky, which is on the Ohio River, and Rockport, which is just across the river in Indiana. The river depicted in the film is supposed to be the Tennessee River (I think), but it was shot on the Ohio. In any event, although "The Kentuckian" is classified as a Western, it's actually an Eastern.

• The film offers a good glimpse of what the Eastern USA was like back when it was still a frontier -- the cabin-styled houses, sleeping in the woods, etc. No internet, cable, video games, DVDs or microwaves. People actually sat down with other people and communed.

• The story is realistic, albeit with some lame dialogue. Regardless,you don't have to worry about any goofiness or unbelievable bits that plague some 50's Westerns, except for the too-wooden-they're-funny feudalists.

• Back then a huge riverboat coming to town was an exciting attraction. Americans today, by contrast, get all excited over the shenanigans of some celebrity.

• Dianne Foster (Hannah) is a beautiful redhead. One wonders how a woman like this would stay single very long on the frontier.

• The whip fight with Matthau is great. Lancaster is almost whipped to shreds (!).

• Loyalty is a sub-theme here. Eli's son is loyal to Hannah and never warms up to the schoolmarm, although there's it's clear that there's nothing wrong with the latter. And Hannah is loyal to the man who delivered her from bondage (Eli), despite his infatuation with the marm.

• I liked the bit on Eli being a laughing stock because of a worthless freshwater pearl, but he gets the last laugh with a letter from the President (or is it?) and additional help.

• Lastly, Lancaster is a likable protagonist with his charismatic joy-of-living persona; he's humble and respectful, the antithesis of Eastwood's amoral and lifeless 'man with no name' a decade later.

The film runs an hour and 44 minutes.

BOTTOM LINE: "The Kentuckian" is breath of fresh air and I enjoyed it from beginning to end for all the above reasons; it's sort of like "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992) of its era, albeit no where as good. It's innocuous and easy-going, but sometimes surprisingly brutal (the dog fight and whip fight). If you can acclimate to the style of filmmaking of the mid-50s it's worth checking out.

GRADE: B

I think one of the worst problems with American films from the 1930s-1950s is that way too many Westerns were made. Part of the problem that plot-wise, most are very, very derivative--with the same basic plot being rehashed yet again (if I see one more Western about rich guy who runs the town and is trying to force all the farmers/ranchers/sheep herders to sell out to him, I'm gonna puke). Because of this, I love films that talk about American history that are unusual--not Westerns or war films--just something different. This film is about life 'out west' (in the Tennessee area) circa 1820--a period WAAAY underrepresented in American films...heck, it's hardly ever even mentioned! So, from the onset, I was pretty happy about the setting of this film.

Burt Lancaster plays an outdoorsman--sort of a Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone sort of fellow. The main difference is that he also has a young son AND doesn't want to abandon him (Crockett and Boone should have taken note NOT to do this). The problem, however, is money. He and his son love the carefree outdoor life--but it takes money to get to this promised land. In the meantime, the two are forced to hang around civilization (at least what approximated it out on the frontier). Here in town, Lancaster's brother (played by John McIntyre--a guy who looked nothing like Burt and seemed too old for the part) pushed for him to go into business with him--and get rid of his buckskin clothes and settle down. In addition, two women wanted him--the school teacher (who represented domesticity) and the indentured servant (who believed in his dream). What will happen? Will Burt and son become domesticated and civilized or will they eventually make it to the wide open lands of Texas? Overall, this is not one of Burt Lancaster's best acting performances. He's good--but also pretty unremarkable. But, the film is different and reasonably well made--and it's hard to dismiss it. A nice film, at least from a history teacher's perspective, and well worth seeing.

In the first of two films Burt Lancaster directs as well as stars, he plays the title role of Eli Wakefield who is The Kentuckian. The part of the frontiersman in the James Monroe presidency fits Lancaster's robust personality perfectly. He's very much a combination of both the William Holden and Robert Mitchum characters in Rachel and the Stranger, taking the best aspects of both for his portrayal. Like Mitchum he's got 'woodsy' ways and like Holden he aims to see his son grows out of those ways.

Just where and how little David McDonald does grow up does concern Lancaster and he does during the course of The Kentuckian reexamine just what it is he wants for himself and his son. He's also got a real problem in the shape of a pair of inbred mountain people called Fromes whose family has feuded with the Wakefields for a couple of generations.

Burt's moving west with his boy to get away from the mountain feud so his kid has a chance to grow up and their destination is Texas which the Mexicans had opened up for Yankee settlers eventually to their regret. But he helps a lady in distress in the person of bond servant Dianne Foster and spends his 'Texas' money buying out her contract from Will Wright.

So a planned visit with brother John McIntire and sister-in-law Una Merkel is going to be longer than he thought especially with McIntire wanting to remake Lancaster into a merchant like himself. McIntire also has a wife picked out for him in the person of school teacher Diana Lynn.

The film was shot in Owensboro, Kentucky and presumably in 1955 there was still enough 'woodsy' territory that it still looked like 1820 frontier America. Director Lancaster got good performances out of his cast which included Walter Matthau making his motion picture debut. Matthau plays a tavern owner and town bully, a mean man with a bull-whip who goes after an unarmed Lancaster with one. That scene is really the climax of the film.

However the two to watch for here are the Fromes brothers, Paul Wexler and Douglas Spencer. They are a pair of evil looking dudes, no doubt ancestors of those guys from Deliverance.

In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster, because of some disparaging comments Lancaster made about directors, the Director's Guild first refused to let him direct his own film. Eventually the production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster got a waiver from the Guild. I think they wanted to Burt to sweat a little. For him though directing turned out not to be something he wanted to do, he got through the film with some difficulty and it was no accident that while he was on the production end, Lancaster only directed one other film in his career, Midnight Man.

The Kentuckian is a good film, perfectly suited to Burt Lancaster's athleticism and charisma, a must for his fans.

Burt Lancaster remains one of my all-time favorite American actors, but I do not think his decision to direct THE KENTUCKIAN was his wisest.

Clearly, Burt was concerned with his image from the start, his hair always neatly coiffured despite tackling dense forest in the Kentuckyan wilds, and he wastes no time highlighting his own athleticism, good looks, healthy teeth, and blue eyes.

As Elias Wakefield, he also plays the part of a caring father to a poor Little Eli who suffers abuse at school, but is such a pure, natural child that you overlook how different Little Eli's facial features are from his progenitor's. Elias Sr. also allows himself to beaten up to a pulp before he subdues nasty Bodine (played by Matthau), and at the end he runs out the evil Fromes in great style.

John McIntire plays a solid supporting role as Elias Sr.'s older brother, who seems to care for him as much as he wants him to stay in place and do all the hard work, thereby making poor Elias Sr. the target of brotherly exploitation.

The cherry on this self-enhancing effort is Burt's capacity to have two women swooning over him. First, he is interested in Diane Foster (who is even willing to work to pay his move to Texas) but stops short of giving her the unequivocal nod, which obviously frustrates her; then, without much ado, he kisses and plans to marry Diana Lynn, and to stay in Kentucky; but, at movie's end, he listens to Little Eli and his desire to move to Texas and his preference for Diane Foster (I suppose Elias Sr. was well ahead of his time, listening to his son and acting like a late 20th Century father).

There are some brief and eye-catching sideshows like the river boat, and a band of black musicians who play a delightful tune, and - again - seem to belong more in the 1950s than in the 19th Century.

At the river boat, Elias Sr. achieves another feather for his cap, as a card greenhorn who actually cleans out the house. Attaboy, Burt!

In the end, THE KENTUCKIAN is a kind-hearted movie but I felt that I was never to lose sight of the fact that Burt was pulling all the strings... which, from my standpoint, lowers the film's quality, and gives the wrong impression about the thoughtful, humane, and intelligent human being that Burt Lancaster actually was. 6/10

BURT LANCASTER stars as THE KENTUCKIAN who has a yearning to go where the grass is greener and wants to leave Kentucky for a new life in Texas with his young son in tow. DIANA LYNN is a pretty schoolteacher at the schoolhouse cabin and DIANNE FOSTER is the other female lead, an indentured servant, with a yen for Lancaster.

Good supporting roles for WALTER MATTHAU (making his screen debut) and JOHN CARRADINE. JOHN LITEL makes a welcome appearance as a riverboat man, but the story lacks a strong enough plot to maintain interest in the rather pedestrian proceedings. Filmed in widescreen color and CinemaScope, it looks as though a lavish budget has been expended on a tiresome script.

Fortunately, the film picks up interest toward the last fifteen minutes when Lancaster and his son have to defend themselves against badman Matthau and his cohorts. There's also a confrontational bullwhip scene with Matthau and Lancaster that is well staged and effective.

But the story is rather trite and there's nothing special about Lancaster's performance or his direction. I would have preferred a more appealing youngster for Young Eli than DONALD MacDONALD who walks through his role without ever inhabiting it.

Burt Lancaster starred in, and directed, this story of a well meaning traveller ("Big Eli") and his young son "Little Eli" (Donald MacDonald) heading to Texas hoping to make a decent living for him and his son. Along the way he encounters (and buys) an indentured slave "Susie" (Diana Lynn) who only complicates their already interesting journey as he fights his own demons with women, booze and a particularly nasty Walter Matthau ("Bodine"). It's a beautifully shot piece of cinema, this, and the mischievous charm of the star is writ large. It's too long, though - frequently sagging as the romantic elements go quickly from humorously hostile to schmaltzy just a bit too quickly. Matthau and his whip are the stuff of cinema legend though, and the young MacDomald plays his part well. Fans of Burt will love this, but I found I was bored by the half way mark as what pace it does have it doesn't really sustain.

Although "The Kentuckian" is sometimes described as a Western, it is set several decades earlier and a long way further east than most films in the genre. It may seem obvious that first the East and then the Midwest had to be won before Americans could make a start on winning the West, but in fact there are relatively few films about frontier life in the early nineteenth century compared with the thousands set in the West during the second half of that century. The explanation I have heard is that the Hollywood studios had on their doorstep the California deserts which could easily represent Texas, or Nevada, or any one of several other Western states without too many people noticing, but nowhere that could convincingly stand in for the deciduous forests of the eastern USA in the same way.

The action can be dated (by references to the Presidency of James Monroe) to the period 1817-25, and takes place in Kentucky. (This does not necessarily follow from the title. "The Virginian", after all, did not take place in Virginia). The main character is Elias "Big Eli" Wakefield, a widowed frontiersman who is considering leaving the state and moving to Texas. His reason for leaving, apparently, is that Kentucky is becoming "too crowded", even though in 1820 the state only had about half a million people spread over its 40,000 square miles. One thing that is never mentioned in the film is that at this period Texas would have been ruled by either Spain or Mexico; perhaps it would have been considered unpatriotic to have stated explicitly that Wakefield is considering emigrating from the USA to a foreign land.

Urging Big Eli to leave is his son "Little Eli", who is looking forward to a life of adventure in Texas. Urging him to stay is his elder brother Zack, who hopes that Eli will settle down in Kentucky and join him in his business. A further complication is that two women take a liking to Big Eli, indentured servant Hannah who wants to go to Texas to escape from her villainous master Stan Bodine and schoolteacher Susie who wants to stay in Kentucky.

Burt Lancaster, who also directed, also stars as Big Eli, but this is not one of his better performances. Indeed, most of the acting is not very good. Dianne Foster as Hannah and Diana Lynn as Susie are both dull, and Donald MacDonald as Little Eli, with his whiny voice and perpetually sulky expression, must rank as one of the least appealing screen youngsters ever. Probably the best is Walter Matthau (in his first feature film) as Bodine, played as an American version, complete with moustache and bullwhip, of the villainous Squire Jasper from a Victorian melodrama.

This film was Burt Lancaster's first experience of directing; indeed, it was the only film on which he acted as sole director. (He was also credited as joint director of "The Midnight Man", made nearly twenty years later). I have often wondered what attracted him to this story. In his later career he was often drawn to complex, socially significant movies, often ones with a message in line with his own left-wing convictions. There is nothing, however, complex or significant about "The Kentuckian", a film with a turgid plot taken from an obscure novel. The gist of the story is Big Eli's indecision about whether he should move house or stay put, and even the most experienced and gifted of directors would have struggled to make that particular plot line interesting. There is very little apart from its setting to distinguish this film from dozens of standard Western B-movies. The one good about the film is that the experience clearly persuaded Lancaster that his future in the film industry lay in the field of acting rather than directing, and as a result we were not deprived of all the wonderful performances he was to give over the next three decades. 4/10

The Kentuckian is directed by, and stars, Burt Lancaster. It's adapted to screenplay by A.B. Guthrie Junior from the novel The Gabriel Horn written by Felix Holt. Also starring with Lancaster are Dianne Foster, Diana Lynn, John McIntire, Donald MacDonald, Walter Matthau and John Carradine. A Technicolor/CinemaScope production filmed on location at Kentucky sites, with cinematography by Ernest Laszlo and music scored by Bernard Herrmann.

Lancaster plays a Elias Wakefield, a Kentuckian pioneer and widower bound for 1820's Texas with his young son (MacDonald). But ill education, romance and mean townsfolk stunt his progress.

Burt Lancaster had great designs to be a director, even planning to give up acting as early as 1955 to make directing his sole career. Foolishly thinking, and proclaiming, it to be an easy job, his experiences on making The Kentuckian would halt him in his tracks and the film would remain his only sole directing credit for the rest of his life. Unfortunately the film shows that the film world hasn't missed a great director in the making.

It's a decent film, more because it is an interesting misfire than any great dramatic thrust. There's very good period flavours here, the photography is often gorgeous, Herrmann's score (used better in Jason and the Argonauts 8 years later) is appealingly tone setting and a few scenes really do hit the mark, but the pace is stop-start and Lancaster isn't sure how to direct himself, with the big man turning in a performance that sits somewhere between camp and aww shucks machismo. He handles his other cast members well, where it's good to see two female characters properly impact on the storyline, but the screenplay sometimes falls flat and scene skipping cheapens the production (one moment Lancaster is in jail, we see a hand lift a key out a coat pocket and the next shot he and his son are relaxing out in the wilderness with Diana Lynn!).

Another major problem is the ludicrous nature of the main villain, Walter Matthau's whip-wielding Stan Bodine, the daftness of such Matthau (in his first big screen role) himself would decry later in his career at how ridiculous the role was. Yet the character features in the best scene in the film, as Bodine and Wakefield are pitched in a fight, man with whip against man with only brawn on his side. This oddness (stupid character features in best scene) that says volumes about The Kentuckian's variable quality. Other strong scenes flit in and out, such as a riverboat gambling sequence, while the finale that sees Lancaster run full pelt across a river to take down a foe, is hugely entertaining. But once the end credit flashes up you may find yourself scratching your head and pondering just what you had just sat through?

Entertaingly messy! 6/10

This picture shows Burt Lancaster was a much better actor than a director. After "The Kentuckian" he never tried directing again - a decision good for him and much better for the audience. The direction is lazy and slow-going, the script disappointing (I wonder that A.B. Guthrie, the writer of brilliant old-west-novels, didn't make a better job). The photography is good, the landscapes are great and few actors are fine, for example Walter Matthau as slimy bad guy. There are two special moments in the picture you surely will not forget: The bull-whip-fight between Matthau and Lancaster is exciting and the showdown, when Burt is running fast across the river while his enemy tries to load his rifle, is very different to other western-shootouts. This scenes will compensate viewers for foregoing boredom. I give five out of ten stars.

Lancaster's only directing role. A decent western with a twist or two, especially at the ending showdown, which features 10 dramatic seconds of feat that only Lancaster could make suspenseful.

How does a man defeat an armed enemy while standing opposite a 40 yard wide stream, and with no gun? The daring Lancaster meets this challenge with a surprising, brash dash. Check it out.

Burt Lancaster's first and only directorial effort is a pretty routine vehicle, worth seeing for Walter Matthau's film debut as Burt's nasty bullwhip cracking nemesis. The acting is pretty lacklustre, the script mediocre at best with not much plot or character development. Some nice scenery and a great old River Boat sequence pass the time, and it's fun to see Burt with long hair. But not a classic must see by any means. Kills a couple hours and Lancaster and Matthau fans will get the most out of it. Burt was famous for taking on challenging roles and picking insightful material, but here it's just a B frontier tale all the way.

That was the boastful phrase uttered by Walter Matthau to everyone else at the gathering; he stood before them snapping his bullwhip in air, its wicked cracking part of an old cultural ritual where a man stands before the tribe boasting of his might.

This movie is totally underrated--not only does Matthau give one of his best performances in a smaller role, but there is tons of folklore and history in this gem.

"The Kentuckian" is one of those films that made young men in the mid-20th century dream about adventure in the pioneer days. It's every bit as good an entertainment film for the young folks of the early 21st century. If only they can pry themselves away from their hand phones.

All of the cast do a fine job in this look back at the early pioneer days when the West in the U.S. was still east of the Mississippi River. Bolstering the plot and action and adventure is some tremendous camera work and scenes in beautiful outdoor settings.

It seems that modern films have all but forgotten about the early years of the settlement and expansion of America. This is a fine film to introduce a peek at what that early history was like, with a story that no doubt replayed itself many a time in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Burt Lancaster and crew provide an entertaining look back when boys of yesterday dreamed about early adventure in the new world.

Give Burt Lancaster credit; he was not afraid to direct himself in a film, and he was also not afraid to poke fun at his character, a charming, but naive Kentuckian, who comes into contact with a young whippersnapper named Walter Matthau. The famous Hatfield and McCoys feud is featured under another name, but we know who they are talking about. Very few actors could have played this role and done the dramatic ending scene except for Lancaster. A very entertaining oater.

Burt Lancaster was a great action star of the 50's and already becoming a very influential Hollywood player, by the time he both directed and starred in The Kentuckian for his own production company. So you'd be forgiven for thinking the Crimson Pirate himself, would be helming a rip-roaring western adventure. If so, you'd be wrong.

The Kentuckian is an extremely, slow-moving, lack-lustre affair, which rather than focusing on the titular "hero", Big Eli, you know, the bloke we've all come to see, instead shifts the perspective unwisely to his son, Little Eli (get it!), who has this unfortunate habit of breaking into tears, oh, just about every 5 minutes of screen time. So instead of adventures encountered in a cross-country trek to Texas during the 1820's, we are served up a mish-mash of seen it all before sub-threads. Will Little Eli adjust to school life (without crying!)? Will Big Eli fall for the school teacher or the attractive vixen who busted him out of jail? Will the clan feud, that the Eli's seem to know little about, finally deliver us some much needed action to this wearisome oater?

The Kentuckian is a very attractive film with richly colourful outdoor scenes and the addition of CinemaScope providing a touch of real spectacle to a picture that lacks it in every other way. It takes a little seen period of American western history and then serves us up, a tiresome, weakly contrived storyline, that has little meaningful to do, with the depicted times. One finishes watching the film with the feeling that directing and starring was a bridge too far for Lancaster, who was clearly unable to pump any life into what is a pretty anaemic script. Two positives should be mentioned. Walter Matthau has an auspicious screen debut, as a whip-cracking villain, who does have a too-late change of heart. The Elis' hound dog steals every scene he's in, with devilishly, abundant, canine charm.

A Kentucky widower (Burt Lancaster) bound for 1820s Texas with his young son (Donald MacDonald) is thwarted in his efforts by a corrupt constable (Rhys Williams), a long-standing family feud, and a beautiful indentured servant (Dianne Foster).

Big Eli has to deal with the villainous Stan Bodine (Walter Matthau), who cracks a bullwhip. This is crucial in retrospect because it marked the film debut of Matthau, who is probably more familiar to audiences today (2017) than Lancaster is. Obviously Lancaster is the bigger star in the grand scheme of things, but that is not how time and fame works.

Also of note, the movie also features an appearance by the famed sternwheel riverboat Gordon C. Greene, the same steamboat used in "Gone with the Wind" and "Steamboat Round the Bend".

Burt Lancaster does a terrible "aw shucks" acting job here. The son is even worse and spends the whole movie crying. Pathetic.

Burt Lancaster plays Elias Wakefield, a rugged frontiersman from Kentucky who feels his native state has become too civilized, so sets out for Texas with his young son in tow. Along the way, he picks up an indentured servant, a young woman whom he falls sorry for, and decides would be good company for them, though he also feels that she may weigh them down. Things get more complicated when he is hassled by a corrupt businessman(well played by Walter Matthau, in his film debut) who loves to use his whip, and also learns of a family feud that he finds himself in the middle of. Lancaster also directs, and does a fine job, giving a robust performance in this moderately interesting and exciting tale.