Two versions of the same story, both directed by Raoul Walsh. The earlier one is a Noir (starring Humphrey Bogart) and the remake is a Western. The latter is included in Criterion’s High Sierra Blu-Ray, which was collecting dust in my shelves until the other day when I finally got around to watching it, and then a few days later I plopped in disc 2.
The story is very similar on both versions: a career criminal is helped out of prison by a former associate under the condition that he take part in one last very lucrative job. There are two hot-headed accomplices and two love interests and double-crossing. But I have to say that I liked the Western version better. I thought it was leaner and wisely avoided some melodramatic plot points that the Noir version had. Plus, it has some pretty exciting horse-riding and train sequences.
Has anyone seen either of those, or both?
I have seen
High Sierra twice, most recently this past November on Turner Classic Movies. (I do not actually receive TCM nowadays thanks to Comcast's decision in late 2019 to ax this wonderful station from the company's basic cable package, but thankfully many recent TCM screenings are available On Demand.) I first viewed
High Sierra in December 2004 on TCM, and I have seen
Colorado Territory at least once, also on TCM—but not since the fall of 2003.
I never really drew a connection between the two, perhaps because they are different enough in historical setting and tone. In fact, only thanks to your post and my subsequent cursory research do I realize that the two films share the same director, the famous Raoul Walsh. I saw
Colorado Territory more as a tale that sort of anticipates
Bonnie & Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), which rather affirms your point about it being "leaner" and less "melodramatic." Since it has been over twenty years since I last viewed it, and since I may have only seen it once (at least in full), I cannot speak that definitively about it, but I really like
Colorado Territory. Virginia Mayo looks great, and classic Western star Joel McCrea is certainly in his element.
I am not sure if
High Sierra fully, or truly, constitutes a film
noir, nor do I feel that there is a historical consensus defining it as such. Indeed, to the extent that a consensus exists, it seems to suggest that another Bogart movie, this one released the following year (1941) and directed by John Huston,
The Maltese Falcon, represents the first full-fledged film
noir, truly establishing the archetypes and tropes (both thematic and visual) that would start to become commonplace in the mid-1940s, thus building a distinct genre.
High Sierra is perhaps a touch more sentimental than most films
noir, and one could see it as more of a gangster movie—and the one that anticipates Bogart's conversion from villainous roles to heroic ones, although he would of course make those heroic parts rather ambiguous, moody, and morally complex.
Of course, definitions of
noir can be somewhat fungible, and
High Sierra certainly anticipates the evolution of
noir, both in some visual traits and also its sense of a shaded protagonist (ostensibly a bad guy, but one with a heart, trying to do right). I rather agree with scholar Douglas Gomery in his essay on Walsh in
The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (1998, edited by Andrew Sarris), where he refers to
High Sierra as a "crime melodrama" in its studio's (Warner Brothers) mold, but that "
High Sierra looked ahead to the film noir of the 1940s. In that film the gangster became a sympathetic character trapped by forces he did not understand" (page 545).
Regardless of classification, I consider
High Sierra "very good." The story is rather forgettable, but Bogart's sense of doom, combined with his palpable desire for transcendence (meaning a different life), makes for a powerfully paradoxical performance. Most notable is the film's climactic chase sequences. The editing and location shooting are riveting, and the use of extremely steep high and low angles during the ultimate mountainside shootout are stunning. Indeed,
High Sierra is a film that I would love to see in the theater, and I imagine that it made quite an impact on those who saw it back in 1940.
