The True Story of Jesse James

Robert Wagner as Jesse James

Nicholas Ray's The True Story of Jesse James, from 1957, is one of his more wan and underwhelming features. Part of the problem is the three leads; Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, and Hope Lange. A triple scoop of vanilla, if you ask me. The film seeks to present Jesse James as a youth who emerged from the Civil War addicted to the thrill of violence. Mr. Wagner was not up to the challenge. He could outline the suave patina of a modern psychopath in A Kiss Before Dying, but the Dionysian rage demanded here is beyond him.

The screenplay, credited to Walter Newman and based on Nunnally Johnson's script for the 1939 Henry King biopic, is wholly beholden to the romantic myth of the Confederacy. Johnson's Southern sympathies can not only be gleaned from the two James pics, but also his screenplays for The Prisoner of Shark Island and Tobacco Road. In this film, James is a callow youth galvanized by Yankee aggression and brutality into becoming an outlaw. Despite being born below the Mason-Dixon line, I recognize this as a pernicious myth. James was not a heroic rebel, but a sociopathic brigand. The cinematic portrayals of James that come closest to the historic truth are Robert Duvall's in Philip Kaufman's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and Brad Pitt's in Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. For the real story and not the legend, I heartily recommend T.J.  Stiles' superb biography, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War.

There are a few moments in The True Story of Jesse James in which Ray seems engaged: a riverside baptism and a tracking shot of James and his wife strolling down main street. Mostly, though, it feels like Ray is fulfilling his contractual obligation to 20th Century Fox and nothing more. Ray and cinematographer Joe McDonald craft a handsome Cinemascope picture, but the screenplay's usage of multiple flashbacks results in a jumble. There is little narrative clarity or momentum. The film features Agnes Moorehead, Alan Hale Jr., John Carradine, and Frank Gorshin.