Decision at Sundown (1957)

One way to describe the Ranown Westerns? Minimalist.

In a user review for The Tall T, someone wrote that the characters weren't developed enough. I'm not sure I agree.

What's definitely true is that both The Tall T and Decision at Sundown focus on a moment in time. These are not stories that tell us much about the moment before, and they may leave us uncertain about the moment after. All we get is the Now.

Sundown is the name of the town. The name itself should tell us something. Consider a town that is named Sundown as opposed to Sunrise. Sundown is somehow more foreboding.

The "now" of the moment is the Tate Kimbrough (John Carroll) wedding. Even though he's been with Ruby (Valerie French), even right up to before the wedding ceremony apparently, he's marrying Lucy (Karen Steele). Why? Because Ruby isn't the marrying kind. She's lowkey made out to be a "salon worker" and all that entails. Why would Lucy put up with this? Ruby even plans to go to the wedding, because she basically feels like Tate owes her a wedding, and even if Tate won't marry her, she will be there front and center.

What we know about Tate. He's a man that does what he wants. He's a man that has the power to make others do what he wants them to do. The entire town is scared of him, and he is the de facto boss. Is this difficult to understand? Do we need a whole long backstory to understand how this happened? Not really.

We also know that many in the town wish they could remove Tate's influence and get their own lives back. So, when Bart Allison (Randolph Scott) comes to town, promising to kill Tate, many people silently wish him luck.

Bart has been on a three-year mission to track down Tate and get revenge on him. Apparently, Bart was in the War, and his wife liked to do what and who she liked. One of the men she did it with was Tate. Everyone knows what kind of woman Bart's wife was, but they never tell Bart, and Bart doesn't want to believe it. His wife ended up killing herself, and he blames Tate.

So, the title promises a decision. What is the decision? I suppose Bart has to decide if he will go through with the killing of Tate, or if he will let the man live. Maybe he's not the only one who has to make a decision. Lucy, for example, will need to decide whether she will marry Tate.

And Ruby. For most of the movie, she hasn't been in any position to make a decision. Tate plans to stay in Sundown with his bride, and he has asked Ruby to leave town. I guess that's the original decision she needs to make: Will she stay or will she go? But by the end of the movie, the decision Ruby must make changes. Her decision is to shoot Tate in order so that he might live. Her decision stops Bart from carrying out his revenge, and it also changes who ends up leaving town and with whom.

At the beginning of the day, Tate was going to get married to Lucy and stay in town. By the end of the day, the town gets its freedom, and an injured Tate leaves with Ruby.

Meanwhile, the only person to die is Sam (Noah Beery), Bart's best friend. He was the man who stood up for Bart and the one who helped him track down Tate. Until "now," he had never told Bart what kind of woman his wife really was, and although he helped track down Tate, he somehow didn't know that Bart was planning to kill Tate. It's odd that so much can happen, and that so much truth can come out, in a single day.

Overall, the story felt a little more complex and layered than The Tall T. I like the movie better for that reason, although I find that I like Scott's character better in the Tall T... which kind of cancels the two things out. Good movie.

Rating: 4/5 stars

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I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history. She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process.

The Writer's Poke

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