The Kentuckian

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 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.

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 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.

This is a delightful movie. For one thing, it does a fine job of putting you in the time and place - the set interiors are wonderful. Burt Lancaster is great as the boy grown up who wants his son to be free in a free country, to "take life in big bites", as he has done. That events conspire against him is inevitable, and the story pulls you along convincingly. The one to watch for is Walter Matthau, in a very early role, who is a real SOB with a wicked bullwhip. While the dialogue may sound preposterous and stilted, this is the way people spoke back in 18th century America, and the movie wins on many points. While it is definitely a product of the 50's, and feels like it, it still rings authentic and heart felt in a way that many other similar movies from the same period simply do not. A cut above, and definitely worth the time to seek out and watch.