Is Gun Hill’s Last Train plagiarized by another Westerner?

January 27, 1960, and Gun Hill’s Last Train hit French screens. This Western, starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn, is Douglas co-producer and director John Sturgess, with whom the actor recently filmed settling accounts at OK Corral. Nevertheless, the film received mixed reviews, especially due to suspicions of plagiarism.

Gun Hill presents the adventures of Sheriff Matt Morgan (Douglas) who vowed to find those who killed and killed his wife. Leading the investigation, he discovers that one of them is the son of his old friend Craig Belden (Quinn). But he refuses to supply it. Except that nothing will stop Morgan from seeking justice.

Some critics, including the authors of the paper 50 years of American cinema The Last Train from Gun Hill is quite harsh, criticizing him especially for his closeness to another Western: 3:10 for Yuma, which came out three years earlier, because judging that this is just “Shamelessly fasting” Yuma.

Directed by Delmer Davis, 3:10 Leading for Yuma are Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. And we have to admit that it has a few things in common with the Gun Hill events, because in both cases:

• The protagonist must lead from point A to point B.
• This trip eventually requires boarding a train that we will have to wait nervously for departure.
• The bandits are trying to free the illegal.
• The hero is seen alone against everyone.
• The key scene of the film shows the protagonist waiting to be locked in a hotel room with his prisoner.

True, the list goes on and on. However, the scripts are adapted from a variety of sources: the Elmore Leonard story for Gun Hill and the novel. Display Les Crutchfields for Yuma. But we must add that there are huge differences between the two Westerners and their attitudes towards the same situation.

Yuma is primarily a psychological western, as was increasingly the case in the 1950s. The most common example is The Train Will Whistle Three Times. The idea of ​​these films was to introduce new themes into the genre, often diminished by the quarrels of bandits or against Indians.

The psychological aspect of Yuma especially appears on the screen during a discussion in a hotel room between the protagonist and the bandit, the latter casting doubt on the mind of Van Heflin’s character and trying to break him.

In Gun Hill, on the other hand, the viewer finds himself more tragic, with a more caricatured villain, with a less sophisticated and much more “indescribable” appearance. The main thing is his conflicted relationship with his father, played by Anthony Quinn, and the confrontation between two friends because one son killed the other’s wife. The conclusion of the two films, which we will not reveal here, is also very different.

Finally, these two films are radically different in their staging. Yuma chooses the oppressive direction, fills the frame with close-up faces, or places several characters hugging each other, which enhances the sense of drowning experienced by both the protagonist and the viewer.

Gun Hill chooses the exact opposite, losing the characters in the frame to better show the lawyer’s mess alone, to fulfill his dangerous mission, and the loneliness of each character who suffers from their confrontation.

For all these reasons, it seems that instead of confronting Gun Hill and Yuma, it is possible to master their common canvases to better appreciate their radical visual and narrative differences. Sturgeon’s film may be a partial 3:10 “plagiarism” for Yuma, but it clearly has its own tone, very different characters, and other purpose, and it deserves to be rediscovered, but also, undoubtedly, re-evaluated.

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