The professional detractors of Ford and Hawks almost invariably attempt to palm off Hathaway as a reasonable facsimile, but such a comparison is patently absurd.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, The University of Chicago Press, 1968
Nevada Smith is a combination of The Searchers (John Ford,1956) and Seven Men From Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) but it is without the beauty or passion of either. Director Henry Hathaway is as detached as his star, Steve McQueen, who seems uncomfortable in his role as someone hunting down the three men who murdered his parents: he kills one in a stream, one in a swamp and one in a cattle stampede. The screenplay by John Michael Hayes (who did several screenplays for Hitchcock) is workmanlike and the score by Alfred Newman is minimal; the real star is the cinematography of Lucien Ballard(who also did films for Peckinpah and Walsh), with its wide-screen vistas of dusty towns and elegant mountains. Also giving one pleasure are the many older stars -- Brian Keith, Paul Fix, Ted de Corsia -- who give the film a whiff of authenticity.
Hathaway has directed some enjoyable films, but he always seems to be at a distance from them, whether it's an Oscar vehicle for John Wayne (True Grit, 1969) or the comic strip Prince Valiant (1954). Nevada Smith was made as a "prequel" to the very successful The Carpetbaggers (directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1964 from the Harold Robbins novel).
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