Tornadoes of Our Lives

One of the greatest directors possessed of pure instinct for cinematic language was Samuel Fuller. 1957's Forty Guns exhibits his genius beautifully.

Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica Drummond, a wealthy landowner on the vanishing frontier who rules over a retinue of 40 gunmen. Meanwhile, a grim, infamous gunfighter named Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), along with his brothers, comes to town and is compelled to bring justice to one of Jessica's men who's murdered the local marshal.

This surprisingly doesn't put Jessica and Griff at odds, in fact they seem to have an immediate attraction and respect for each other. This culminates when they're out alone on her property, looking for places her renegade employees can hide out, and they're caught in a tornado.

It's a terrific scene. Fuller makes the brilliant decision to omit any mention of the tornado in dialogue. We just watch these two badasses struggle in a sudden, increasingly deadly situation. Fuller piles on wind and dust, Jessica's dragged by her horse, Griff's coach is destroyed. They crawl on their bellies into the ruins of a tiny home. We catch up with them later, laying beside each other, chatting about the past and the future as two people who've obviously just had sex.

The production code was gone at this point, Fuller didn't need to have the tornado as a code for sex. He has it because it works so damned well.

Griff has to be one of the great, grim, solemn old gunfighters in western history, which he proves in a breathtaking finale.

Forty Guns is available on The Criterion Channel until the end of the month.