Three years before making his directorial debut with this Ray Milland had starred in The Thief which was notable for a complete absence of dialogue (though there were FX) and clearly something had rubbed off because the entire first reel of A Man Alone lacks dialogue of any kind and even when it comes it is throwaway stuff during a poker game in the saloon. Milland had given the best years of his active life to Paramount but had to go to Poverty Row for a chance to direct, in fact this was one of the last films turned out by Republic. Though Milland is the only major star on offer he does feature familiar faces like Ward Bond, Alan Hale Jnr,Lee Van Cleef and Raymond Burr playing what feels like the one millionth crooked banker in Westerns. Milland in fact employs an interesting mixture of cliché and innovation; he begins with the time-honored sequence of a lone rider gradually coming closer. The rider is Milland himself who, when his horse goes lame on him is obliged to shoot it and continue on foot. Director Milland doles out information with an eye-dropper; initially he could be anyone, good, bad or indifferent, but when he has to continue on foot he discards his saddle but not before removing two large wads of serious folding money planting the suspicion that he may be a bank robber. Eventually he comes across a deserted stage coach surrounded by stiffs. He borrows one of the team and makes for the nearest town where trigger-happy deputy Alan Hale Jnr draws on him and is wounded for his pains. This is where it tends to part company with reality. On the run from a mob Milland steps into the local bank - whose back door is conveniently open even though it is night, well past opening house and especially careless inasmuch as banker Raymond Burr is discussing how he engineered the stagecoach robbery via hired hand Lee Van Cleef, who more or less admits responsibility for the carnage. Burr's partner finds this hard to stomach so Burr puts one in his back unaware that he will be able to blame this on Milland. Despite minor script flaws like this Milland turned out a fairly good first feature.
Review of A Man Alone
