Fritz Lang's Western Union (1941)

 Don't forget the Western is not only the history of this country, it is what the Saga of the Nibelungen is for the European.

-- Fritz Lang

Western Union is a tense and colorful Western, with an unusual depth of field in the early days of Technicolor, cinematography by Deward Cronjager and Allen M. Davey.  It is about, among other things, the building of a telegraph line from Omaha to Salt Lake City, which involves a fair amount of tricking the Native Americans into giving up their land.  The film was shot in Arizona and Utah in landscapes beautifully filmed by Lang and his crew.  There are a number of themes common to Lang's films, including dual identities --Randolph Scott/Vernon Shaw is a former outlaw, Robert Young/Richard Blake is an apparent "tenderfoot" who is really a superb horseman, bad guy Baron MacLane/Jack Slade disguises himself as an Indian, etc. -- and there is an element of destiny in the building of the telegraph line and the sacrificial death of Vernon Shaw at the end, an unusual fatalistic ending for a pre-war Western.

This film shows clearly Lang's roots in the expressionism of his early silent films in Germany, including the use of shadows in crowded scenes, which effectively include a fair number of grizzled veterans as cowboys:  John Carradine, Chill Wills, Victor Kilian, Francis Ford.  This was one of three Westerns Lang made in America, the other two being The Return of Frank James (1940) and Rancho Notorious (1952).