Wednesday | March 20, 2002 9:30 pm

Western Union

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Robert Young, Randolph Scott, Dean Jagger.
US, 1940, 35mm, color, 95 min.

After the box office success of The Return of Frank James, producer Darryl Zanuck offered Lang another Western. Here he depicts the travails and challenges of the pioneers who laid the first telegraph line across the West, focusing on their altercations with crooked politicians and hired guns. Vance Shaw (Scott) is trapped in a tragic conflict of loyalties between the Western Union company, for whom he scouts, and his brother, a gang leader whom he cannot bring himself to betray. With its blend of conventional action and dark undertones, Western Union brings to the genre a surprising amount of psychology, a stunning use of color, and pictorial richness in the form of expansive landscapes and expressive interiors.