Silver City Blu-ray Review
Assay can you see?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 25, 2012
In 1971, Yvonne De Carlo entered the pantheon of Unforgettable Musical Theater Moments with her blistering reading
of the classic Stephen Sondheim song "I'm Still Here" in the legendary musical
Follies. De Carlo, playing "been
there, done that" former Follies star Carlotta, sang about a life full of ups and downs, but one stanza of the song which
De Carlo stated Sondheim wrote just for her seemed crafted
by the master composer-lyricist most especially for the actress:
Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock, but I'm here
Top billing Monday, Tuesday, you're touring in stock, but I'm here
First you're another sloe eyed vamp
Then someone's mother, then you're camp
Then you career from career to career
I'm almost through my memoirs, and I'm here!
The central "evolution" (if that's the right word) described in the stanza's interior section certainly is a stunningly
accurate
précis of De Carlo's rather odd career, one which saw her burst onto the screen with an alluring
sexuality and kind of strangely exotic persona, only to see it dissipate in a series of less and less interesting roles until
she was, indeed, both a mother and a camp icon as Lily Munster in
The Munsters.
De Carlo was about ten years into her film career by the time she co-starred in
Silver City in 1951, still young
enough to exude an earthy sexuality, but too old to play a traditional ingénue role. Her Candace Surrency is a woman
who knows her own mind (and heart) and isn't afraid to state her opinion, rather forcefully at times. But she's also a
somewhat vulnerable character, one only too aware of the limitations being a female in the semi-wild west imposes on
her. That includes her inability to effectively manage a mining operation that has uncovered a major hoard of silver,
albeit
in a mine that Candace's father Dutch (
Petticoat Junction's Edgar Buchanan) has a lease on for only another
twelve days (isn't that always the way?). That brings Candace into needy contact with assay agent Larkin Moffatt
(Edmond O'Brien), a man with a past (isn't that always the way?) who nonetheless ultimately agrees to help Candace
and
Dutch extract as much silver as possible in the allotted time, despite the nefarious schemes to prevent them from doing
so
by the mine's actual owner, Jarboe (Barry Fitzgerald).
I may be the only person living who would have ever noticed this similarity, but
Silver City bears some uncanny
resemblances to a 1940 Warner Brothers programmer called
Flowing Gold, a sort of
Boom Town knockoff
which starred John Garfield, Frances Farmer and Pat O'Brien. Though that film dealt with oil well diggers, there are a
number of remarkable similarities between the two films. First of all, each features a hero with a criminal past, trying to
make good by helping a headstrong woman whose father has leased a mine (and/or well) which is under an impending
timeline before mineral (and/or oil) rights lapse. Of course,
Flowing Gold was a contemporarily based film and
Silver City purports to be taking place in some unnamed frontier era (though there's an anachronism or two,
discussed below), but the basic plots of the two films are remarkably the same.
Silver City is a sort of middling to pretty good western that benefits from a host of interesting performances.
Star Edmond O'Brien was never really a traditional romantic lead, and that fact hampers this film somewhat, a situation
exacerbated by the fact that O'Brien really isn't much of a traditional
action star, either. O'Brien always excelled
at crafting strong, often unforgettable, character portrayals (including his Oscar winning turn in 1954's
The Barefoot
Contessa), but he simply doesn't have the charisma necessary to really carry a film like this. He's fine in the role,
but there's a certain void at the center of
Silver City that not even a host of colorful supporting performances
can completely fill. Those supporting performances include a kind of devilishly evil depiction by the usually lovable Barry
Fitzgerald, who brings a smarmy charm to the character of Jarboe. There is also a fantastic mini-
tour de force by
the lovely Laura Elliot (later self-renamed Kasey Rogers and forever embedded in the minds of television viewers of a
certain age as the wife of Larry Tate in
Bewitched), who plays a onetime fiancée of Moffatt who is now married
to Moffatt's former partner (played by the always stalwart Richard Arlen).
The film is also (supposedly unintentionally) laugh out loud funny in a couple of key moments, something that doesn't
reflect especially well on its screenwriting or execution. After Moffatt's assaying office is destroyed by Jarboe and his
henchman, Moffatt returns the favor by breaking into Jarboe's office and smashing everything to bits. It's just kind of
ludicrously humorous to see big, beefy O'Brien pulling little trinkets off the wall and smashing them willy nilly on the
floor, and then almost falling over in the debris field he's created. Several scenes have O'Brien (not to mention a quite
obvious stunt double) seemingly instantaneously involved in fist fights for no good reason other than that the film
needed a bit of action interpolated into it at any given moment.
Silver City does have two fantastic set pieces bookending the kind of drab interior part of the film. The opening
sequence has Moffatt chasing after some would be thieves (with whom Moffatt is in cahoots), with all three of them
ending up on a train that is chugging along over some treacherous territory. The film ends with a really distinctive tear
through a logging mill, and it's here that there seems to be some anachronistic elements. I'm no expert on logging
history or machinery, but this completely automated, machine driven mill seems
way out of place for the
timeframe supposedly being portrayed. How did they manage to get all of these hydraulic arms, not to mention
manifold saw blades, working without electricity? Was it all steam generated? It seems awfully strange. Putting that
qualm aside, this sequence is
really effective, as Moffatt and one of the bad guys hop on and off of logs that are
being decimated by the machinery. This doesn't appear to have been achieved via special effects and the results are
adrenaline pumping, to say the least.
My wife, who watched
Silver City with me (despite her general dislike for westerns), joked with me after the film
was over, "I never knew the term 'assay' could be used so much in one film." The emphasis on the technical ability to
ferret out the worth of mineral or ore deposits may be one of the few innovative things about
Silver City, but
while the film never really rises above its fairly standard trappings, it's colorful and strangely enjoyable. It was more
than likely a programmer in its day, and it still plays as such. With appropriate expectations, it's a decent enough time
killer that may not be overly exciting, but has some nice performances and features De Carlo proving that she was
there through (in the inimitable words of Stephen Sondheim) "good times and bum times".
