(Jacques Tourneur, US 1946, 92 min., 35mm nitrate)
Print sources: Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA (nitrate reels); anonymous (triacetate reels)
Ernest Haycox’s story of the settling of the Oregon frontier, serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in early 1945, was purchased by producer Walter Wanger even before its run was completed. Wanger planned to cast John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and Thomas Mitchell, all of whom had great success in Wanger’s 1939 hit Stagecoach (also based on a Haycox story). Wanger’s first two choices for director, Stuart Heisler and George Marshall, had other commitments, so he turned to RKO to borrow Jacques Tourneur, whose value had risen since directing three distinctive horror films for Val Lewton: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943).
Canyon Passage, Tourneur’s first Technicolor film, was also the first Technicolor feature to be filmed in Oregon, and many reviewers singled out the beautiful scenery as the foremost reason to see the film. Tourneur’s approach to filming in color, which was more about naturalistic lighting than the colors used, is evident in the subtly illuminated frontier interiors and contrasting bright daylight of the exterior scenes. Wanger urged Tourneur to add more closeups, claiming color made it too difficult to see actors’ expressions. Tourneur’s preference for in-camera editing, however, meant his characteristic medium and long shots ultimately prevailed, and very few inserted closeups made it into the finished film.
The film’s high cost of $2.3 million was largely due to filming on location with a cast and crew of over 130 people under unpredictable weather. Locals were extensively employed, particularly in the cabin-raising sequence. The cabin itself was first constructed by lumberjacks using frontier methods, then disassembled and rebuilt by the actors. A fire at Universal Studios resulted in a shortage of wagons, equipment, and furniture for the film, necessitating a call to locals to supply whatever they could from their own storehouses.
The dark mood is lightened somewhat by singer-songwriter Hoagy Carmichael as a folksy pioneer troubadour singing four songs he wrote for the film, including the Oscar-nominated hit “Ole Buttermilk Sky.”
This original print has numerous perforation and edge repairs, a high splice count, and a reasonable shrinkage rate of 0.65%. Fifteen minutes of missing footage will be fulfilled by a 1952 triacetate print.
– Nancy Kauffman