Union Pacific (1939)
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Writers: Walter DeLeon, C. Gardner Sullivan
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff
Runtime: 135 minutes
Plot: In 1862, Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads compete westward across the wilderness toward California.
Review: The picture has been generously and interestingly staged, so that its plus-two-hour running time seems not too long, and the performances are almost uniformly good. If any of the players must be singled out for special mention, they would be Miss Stanwyck for a lively and surprisingly convincing characterization of the Irish spitfire and Mr. Preston for his portrayal of the reckless Dick Allen.
He stages a romantic dialogue on a hand-car hemmed in by grunting bison, a tender farewell in a caboose surrounded by whooping redskins, his sentimental death scenes in a gambling hell and beneath the smoking fragments of a wrecked locomotive. When he has a chance for real action, of course, the sky's the limit—Indian raids, shooting scrapes, brawls, fist-fights, train robberies, fires, chases and trestle-breaks. Mr. DeMille's little opus is a mighty fine movie, colorful, spectacular and of distinguished ancestry. "The Iron Horse" sired it.
Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam
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