SCFZ poll: George Sherman

[flip]

Polling the films of director George Sherman

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the G. Sherman films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Friday, in seven days, whatever day that is

- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline up to three days, if someone requests an extension

- next poll: whoever posts the first ballot in this thread is free to nominate the director we poll next, unless you've nominated in this round already (everyone should get a chance). Already nominated this round: umbugbene, greennui, evelyn

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

one rule for nominees: at least 3 scfzers need to have seen 10+ of a nominee's films, or at least 4 scfzers need to have seen at least 8 of the nom's films, so if it isn't clear if that will be the case, we'll confirm that's true before moving forward

if 24 hours pass after a poll opens, and no one eligible to nominate has posted a ballot, then i'll nominate someone, and then we'll start over, and everyone will be able to nominate again

[flip]

We'll definitely use the extended rules for this:

- if you have seen an odd number of G Sherman films, you can round up instead of down when deciding the length of your ballots (so with 7 seen, you can vote for 4, not 3)

- if you have seen more than ten, feel free to make your ballot longer than five films, in accordance with the 'divide by 2' rule, rounding up and not down

[flip]

Reprisal!
Dawn at Socorro
London Blackout Murders
Wyoming Outlaw

seen three - edit, seen seven

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Yay! I'll be watching films for this (currently at 13), but I figure I'll post some recommendations now before I vote, in case others are looking for some recommendations (or just want to know who this is).

George Sherman was a specialist in B genre films, especially westerns, who worked in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. His virtues are a talent for visual staging of action and suspense sequences, virtues that most often show themselves in scripts that are nasty, cynical, and violent. Recommendations:

• Wyoming Outlaw (1939) - Grim political 3 Mesquiteers entry about a Depression-era Robin Hood outlaw with a staunch anti-Establishment fury.

• Relentless (1948) - Mournful, well-shot western with good use of motifs and with plausible queer resonances.

• Tomahawk (1951) - An early '50s conscience western with Van Heflin as a simmering kettle of cavalry-hating anti-racism, far from perfect but a more thorough criticism of US settler colonialism than I was expecting.

• Dawn at Socorro (1954) - The best Sherman I've seen: an expert eulogy for the Wild West myth at the dawning of its twilight, a beautiful work of minor art.

• Hell Bent for Leather (1960) - His only Audie Murphy, a very entertaining, nasty tale of corrupt law, with engaging widescreen staging decisions.

[Curtis, baby]

The secret of the whistler

[Curtis, baby]

I guess I'll go for Noah baumbach

[MrCarmady]

I guess I'll go for Noah baumbach

I've got 8 and loved 5-6 of them, tough choices ahead.

Never heard of Sherman, thanks for the summary and the recs, Evelyn!

[Holymanm]

only seen the sleeping city, would almost vote for it but not quite

[St. Gloede]

Only seen The Sleeping City as well, and while reasonably good I didn't enjoy it enough to vote for it.

Seen 7 Baumbachs, but still not seen Marriage Story, so if you need help from an 8 I can always catch that.

[flip]

as long as someone has seen 10 by baumbach, which would mean being a near completist, then he has enough views for a poll, so if anyone has seen ten, please post here and we'll go ahead with that as our next poll

[...]

The Sleeping City
Against All Flags
The Lady and the Monster
Feudin', Fusssin', and A-Fightin'
The Bandit of Sherwood Forest

[Curtis, baby]

in case it wasn't clear i have seen 10 (actually 11, including shorts) by baumbach

[liquidnature]

Interesting pick, Evelyn. Haven't seen anything from Sherman, but from the looks of his filmography it should provide a lot of fun viewings, especially Westerns, for years to come. I'm especially intrigued by Dawn at Socorro.

[john ryan]

I've seen 10 Baumbach

[wba]

Wonderful Director!!
Been exploring him for some years now.

01. The Last of the Fast Guns (1958)
02. Dawn at Socorro (1954)
03. Against All Flags (1952)
04. Hell Bent for Leather (1960)
05. Black Bart (1948)

Sherman seen: 10

PS: I've made so many great screenshots for DAWN AT SOCORRO that it has been a choice for our GUESS THE MOVIE-thread for a few years now - unfortunately (as with almost all my other possible choices) almost no one seems to have seen the film [according to letterboxd views]. If I remember correctly, I did use some screenshots for THE LAST OF THE FAST GUNS, though, cause that one seemed to be better known.

PPS: If anyone is thinking about a first Sherman to watch: my first one was AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952) which is available in a good Blu-ray transfer, and after seeing it I was immediately hooked on Sherman.

[nrh]

watched last of the fast guns last night and loved it. it has similar virtues to socorro, but is a very different experience altogether - where that film is a series of gradually constricting chamber setpeices, leading up to inevitably fatal confrontations, fast guns starts with an open grave and what seems like a death quest and gradually opens up, going from doom and disillusion to something like hope.

still surprisingly melancholy, with almost all of the lead characters displaced, exiled, or facing their inevitably fatal end points. much of this plays out in loose, ruminative conversation on the trail; in a weird way it plays almost like a bridge between the boetticher b westerns and something like the '60s hellman films, if that makes any sense at all.

more than socorro too this shows off sherman's facility with landscape, which isn't quite as expressive as mann or delmer daves at their best but still impressive, especially in the late portions of the film where the search nears its destination.

[flip]

i've watched four sherman films this week, maybe one or two mild spoilers:

X Marks the Spot (1942) -- another of those short 'mystery' films from the era that has no mystery to it, daft plotting where the charmless 'detective' stumbles into each lead by improbable coincidence, lots of pointless fistfights, routine filmmaking. the weird dial-up jukebox service is interesting though (did that really exist?). can't recommend this at all.

London Blackout Murders (1943) -- i was expecting this to be more of the same, but it's totally different from X Marks. the performances, mise en scene, camera work, it's all much more serious and more persuasive here. set in a neighbourhood where i used to live (apparently, there was no easy way to tell), this is partly wartime propaganda, and it ends up trying to make some point about wartime morality i didn't care about, but i found a lot of it compelling and suspenseful, and it's an oddly structured film. leslie matthews hovers over everyone with a wry unflappable quality that brought william powell to mind. no one else on letterboxd seems to like this at all, but i did.

Wyoming Outlaw (1939) -- exercise in robin hood moral relativism, the sins of the propertied are crimes, those of the working poor are immediately forgiven. there's a lot of cartoonish fisticuffs early on, but it turns into something else altogether in the second half, the outlaw of the title has a fatalistic monologue wondering what the point of everything is, all really surprising from a film of this type. it would make an interesting double-bill with lonely are the brave, both westerns with contemporary settings and technology (which always seems anachronistic to me) and long cliffside manhunt scenes.

Dawn at Socorro (1954) -- right from the opening voiceover, this film sets out its agenda to demythologize the old west, and so it fits in well with a small number of contemporaneous films (notably the robert parrish 1950s westerns) that to me feel like forerunners of the revisionist western. what nrh says about the boetticher-hellman bridge makes a lot of sense to me. lots of shades of ambiguity, and piper laurie gives a bizarrely affectless performance like she walked onto a bresson set. i probably would have appreciated the filmmaking more had i seen a version that wasn't cropped.

[liquidnature]

Watched Socorro - add me to the list of people that loved it. Much like Fregonese's The Raid and Apache Drums, a b-western with superior direction and raw emotive power. Differing from some reviewers who opposed Wade's character, I found his character and Calhoun's representation of him to be sincere and redemptive. Big fan.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Final votes. Seen 15.

1. Dawn at Socorro (1954)
2. Hell Bent for Leather (1960)
3. Tomahawk (1951)
4. Relentless (1948)
5. Wyoming Outlaw (1939)
6. Reprisal! (1956)
7. Red River Range (1938)
8. Three Texas Steers (1939)

So glad we got to poll him, and that several members went on Sherman kicks for this. That's always fun.

[flip]

not sure if nrh or liquidnature wanted to participate in the poll, i didn't count the posts above as ballots but i'd be happy to factor in your votes if either of you want to support the films you wrote about

[flip]

i think i like these director polls best, where i have no way to guess in advance what might win, where the director didn't make a couple of films that are a lot more famous than their other work. i hadn't even heard of the top two finishers before the poll started. we also got votes for 17 different george sherman films, which i'm not sure would happen on many film sites

results

1. Dawn at Socorro (1954) -- 12 pts
2. Against All Flags (1952) -- 7 pts
3. Hell Bent for Leather (1960) -- 6 pts
4. The Last of the Fast Guns (1958) -- 5 pts
4. The Sleeping City (1950) -- 5 pts
6. Reprisal! (1956) -- 4.5 pts
7. Tomahawk (1951) -- 3 pts
7. The Lady and the Monster (1944) -- 3 pts
9. Wyoming Outlaw (1939) -- 2 pts
9. Relentless (1948) -- 2 pts
9. London Blackout Murders (1943) -- 2 pts
9. Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' (1948) -- 2 pts
13. Black Bart (1948) -- 1 pt
13. The Secret of the Whistler (1946) -- 1 pt
13. The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946) -- 1 pt
16. Red River Range (1938) -- 0.3 pts
17. Three Texas Steers (1939) -- 0.1 pts

[flip]

posted to letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-231/