Commentaires

Jacques Lourcelles estime qu'avec The Wonderful Country (rebaptisé renommé L'Aventurier du Rio Grande en France), Robert Parrish a donné le meilleur de lui-même. « Western mélancolique, lyrique par endroits [...] le film trouve son unité interne dans deux éléments forts : son thème principal, la régénérescence morale d'un homme pris entre deux modes de vie, deux cultures, deux patries, et la superbe composition de l'image qui donne aux hésitations du héros, aux vicissitudes de son destin leur relief et leur densité particulière. »

De son côté, Robert Parrish confie : « C'est un film qui signifie tant de choses pour moi, qui m'est tellement personnel. Un film aux dimensions d'un pays. Je me souviendrai toujours de la dernière nuit de tournage. [...] Nous avions filmé la fête qui se déroule dans le village américain, et nous l'avons continuée pour de vrai. [...] Tout le monde pensait que l'on avait réalisé un chef-d'œuvre. Je sentais que j'avais réussi mon meilleur film, et cette nuit a été immense. »

Loner "against all odds" - None better than Mitchum

Author: david-564 (david@kehela.freeserve.co.uk) from London UK
10 July 2000

I admit to a bias here as the great Robert Mitchum was and is my idol,but this film is another illustration of how a great actor can not only ennoble a role,but single-handed can lift a good-average story into a very credit worthy film. The plot is a good one and the other actors played their part well. This is one of my favourite movies of Mitchum and of course the Mex-american accent was no problem for him. I can quote several lines of dialogue verbatim and not only have the video but the excellent film music score as well. I hope this film will rise in the estimation of Bob Mitchum fans,also film buffs who admire a great actor at his craft (Supreme in an understated way)

Wonderful Country, Wonderful Movie

Author: howdymax from Las Cruces, New Mexico
6 December 2003

So many times the title of the movie misleads the viewer. Not in this case. The title "Wonderful Country" perfectly describes this movie. The desert photography and imagery of frontier Texas and Old Mexico is almost overwhelming.

With a few exceptions, I have never been a Robert Mitchum fan, but this role brings out those qualities in him that have always attracted the fans. When commenting on his acting ability, he once said, "I only know two ways to act. With or without a horse." This is a great example of how to act with a horse. As a matter of fact, one of his co-stars in this movie IS his horse.

The story somewhat routine. Mitchum flees across the Rio Grande as a youngster after killing the man who killed his father. There he becomes a pistolero in the employ of a couple of corrupt brothers who control that part of Mexico.On a gun buying trip north across the border,he is thrown by his horse and is unable to return to Mexico. While in Texas he meets and falls for the wife of the military governor played by Julie London, in probably her only significant role. As he recovers, he is involved in another shooting and finally escapes back to Mexico, where he is falls out of favor with his patrons for losing the guns.

It isn't the story that makes this movie. It's the photography. It's the musical score and Mariachi orchestration. It's the touching performances of all the principal players. It is a BIG movie. The dusty majesty and corruption of Old Mexico along with the personal imagery of everyday life is riviting. In my opinion, this movie rates right up there with other Western giants like: Shane, The Searchers, Stagecoach, and a half dozen others. This is a movie that would be best seen on the big screen. Do it - if you ever get the chance.

An American (Robert Mitchum), raised in Mexico, crosses back over the border

Author: dougbrode from United States
18 March 2006

The Wonderful Country, the Big Land, the Young Land, The Big Country . . . there were so many westerns during the late 50s with strikingly similar titles that you needed a score card to keep them all straight. One of the least remembered - though that's a shame - is director Robert Parrish's (from a fine novel by Tom Lea, himself a forgotten figure but a western novelist worth rediscovering by buffs) yarn about a rangy American (Robert Mitchum) who has been hiding out in Mexico, returns to U.S. soil, and discovers that he's virtually a man without a country - he doesn't really belong anywhere.

This had to be one of the films that influenced Sergio Leone, and his Man With No Name character played by Clint Eastwood, in that I'm not sure there was an anti-hero wrapped in a serape before Mitchum in this movie. No mule for him, though - he rides a magnificent horse, and his relationship to it - symbolic as well as realistic - will remind you of a later, greater western, Lonely Are the Brave (1962) with Kirk Douglas and 'Whiskey.' Here, the metaphor is kept more subtle. Julie London appears as the sexually frustrated wife of an army commander (Gary Merrill), and while she's certainly beautiful enough for the role, her acting is slightly more stilted and wooden than that of Kim Novak.

One neat bit of trivia: This is the only film to co-star the great athlete Satchel Paige, as a 'buffalo soldier' - and here's yet another innovation, for you'd have to search hard and long to find an earlier Hollywood film that depicted members of the black army of the west. Overall, a very good show - not too much action, but gorgeous color and music,, characterizations, and overall atmosphere.

Julie London