Three Violent People

1956 "Violent love ... violent hate ... violent conflicts."
6.3| 1h40m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 01 December 1956 Released
Producted By: Paramount Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A rancher, his shady bride and his one-armed brother fight amid carpetbaggers in Texas.

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Reviews

Dorathen Better Late Then Never
TeenzTen An action-packed slog
Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
ma-cortes Highly watchable Western based on a story by Barney Slater with screenplay by expert James Edward Grant ; dealing with confrontation between family members . The picture gets action Western , shootouts , wonderful outdoors and turns out to be quite entertaining with amazing visual style . This interesting movie is set in post-Civil War ; it features a previous dance hall girl and ex-prostitute called Lorna (Anne Baxter) , masquerading as a lady , meets and impulsively marries Confederate ex-officer Colt Saunders (Charlton Heston) , returning to run the family ranch in Texas . Everyone there is enchanted with Lorna ; however , the carpetbag state commissioner (Bruce Bennett) and his hoodlum (Forrest Tucker) are set to grab all the big ranches , unless some ranchers led by Colt decide to battle . And one of the carpetbaggers knows Lorna's secret . Meanwhile , Colt's brother (Tom Tryon) wants to sell the ranch in order to get his share of inheritance . Later on , things go wrong when Colt finds out his wife was once a whore . Enjoyable Western packs drama about family squabbles , thrills , shootouts , go riding and some moving action sequences . It's a medium budget film with good actors , technicians, production values and pleasing results . In this case family feuds don't make for a really thrilling film and contains some flaws and gaps . Produced immediately after Charlton Heston completed Ten Commandments (1956) and reunited him with co-star Anne Baxter. This was Heston's last film under his original Paramount contract ; he felt that Tom Tryon, who was cast as his brother, was not right for the part . However, because "The Ten Commandments" had not yet been released, Heston hadn't yet achieved the star clout necessary to demand cast changes . ¨Three violent people¨ belongs a trilogy directed by Rudolph Mate regarding to the ranch scenarios , adding ranchers confrontations , joining Western with melodrama , including the followings : ¨Branded¨ (1951) with Alan Ladd and ¨The violent men¨ with Glenn Ford and Edward G. Robinson . Good performances from Charlton Heston as obstinate war veteran and rich owner returning to his Texas ranch , Anne Baxter as his wife with a dark past and Tom Tryon as a crippled brother that lost one arm in his childhood blaming to Heston . Large plethora of secondaries , such as Gilbert Roland , Bruce Bennett , Peter Hansen , Barton MacLane , Elaine Stritch and some of them uncredited as Robert Blake and Jamie Farr . Colorful and glimmer cinematography by Loyal Griggs in Vistavision , Hi-Fi . Evocative as well as atmospheric musical score by Walter Scharf . The motion picture was directed in sure visual eye by Rudolph Mate . Polish-born (Cracovia) and passed away Beverly Hills (1964) Mate was an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda and later worked throughout Europe with noted cameraman Karl Freund , director Carl Theodor Dreyer and Erich Pommer . Dreyer was so impressed with his work that they hired him as cinematographer on The Passion of Joan of Arc . Mate is considered to be one of the best cameramen of cinema story . Mate was soon working on some of Europe's most prestigious films, cementing his reputation as one of the continent's premier cinematographers. Hollywood came calling in 1935, and Mate shot films there for the next 12 years before turning to directing in 1947 . Unfortunately, while many of his directorial efforts were visually impressive ,especially his sci-fi ¨When the worlds collide¨ (1951) , his labour as cameraman was excellent . He realized a variety films of all kind of genres as Adventures : ¨The Black Shield of Falworth¨ , ¨Seven Seas to Calais¨ , Western about themes of card players on riverboat as ¨The Mississipi gambler¨(1963) and ¨The rawhide years¨(1956) and about conflicts between Indians and cavalry as ¨In the siege at Red River¨(1954) and Noir films : ¨Union Station¨ , ¨Second chance¨ . He also directed Epic films as ¨The Barbarians¨ and ¨The 300 Spartans¨ . The films themselves were for the most part undistinguished, with his best work probably being the film-noir classic ¨DOA¨ (1950). ¨Three Violent people¨ rating : Passable and acceptable , 6 . Well worth watching .
oldblackandwhite Three Violent People could have been little more than an standard western about post-Civil War Texans struggling against thuggish carpetbaggers trying to take their land away -- not the commonest western plot, but we could call it "Plot Eleven". Had already been done a number of times by this movie's 1956 release, perhaps best in an unpretentious 1947 Wild Bill Elliot opus. An excellent cast headed by stalwart Carlton Heston, beautiful Anne Baxter, and the always interesting Gilbert Roland would have raised Three Violent People a cut above the average oater, even if it had been filmed in black & white or standard screen color, and it would have been an entertaining and enjoyable watch. What really made it quite a lot more than just a standard western with an overpriced staff was the gorgeous Technicolor Vista Vision cinematography.When the wide-screen craze hit in the mid-fifties, there soon were a number of competing processes, including Cinemascope, Superscope, Metroscope, 1.66:1 flat, and 1.85:1 flat. Vista Vision, pioneered by Paramount Studios, was by far the most aesthetically successful of any. Cinemascope and the later, more successful Panavision used a wide-angle lens on the camera to compress the picture into a standard 35mm frame, then a reverse lens on the projector expanded the picture so that it was 75 percent wider than the old standard 4:3 ratio screen. The "flat" widescreen processes filmed with an ordinary camera lens on standard 35 mm film but with the camera far enough back that the resulting picture could be masked at the top and the bottom to create the wide-screen effect. The problem with all of these was that the blown-up picture when projected on a large screen lost resolution, contrast, and sharpness. The loss of quality was compounded by the new less-flammable, but somewhat grainier and less transparent film with which the studios had recently replaced the old crystal-clear nitrate film, which had given us all of those beautiful, luminous black & white movies of the late 1930's and 1940's. The difference was noticeable even in Technicolor films, but it had been a minor effect until the wide-screen movies.Vista Vision was filmed with a special camera with vertical sprockets which ran the film thru sideways, creating a negative three times the area of the 35 mm print, which was masked and blown-up to widescreen with a projector aperture. The result was incredibly high resolution, sharpness, richness of color, and illusion of depth, even when projected on the largest screens.The cinematography with this wonderful and expensive process as exhibited in Three Violent people is absolutely breathtaking. It makes this movie a sensuous pleasure to watch. The clarity, color, and added sense of depth that comes through even on a wide-screen digital TV delivers an almost 3-D effect. The effect was just as strong in the indoor lamplight scenes as in the expansive views of the photogenic Arizona landscape (thinly disguised as the Texas Hill Country).Three Violent People had an intelligent if not inspired script. The dialog likewise was good, though melodramatic at times. Gilbert Roland's excesses of poetry got irritating at times. It fit with his colorful character, but could have been toned down a bit. Rudolph Mate's direction was surprisingly slow-paced, especially from one who had turned out a classic thriller like DOA. It was slow-moving in the first half, but not boring because of the strong acting and solid story development. But it really picked up after Heston discovered his wife was a shady lady, and she and his brother absconded with his valuable herd of horses. There was more melodrama than action in this one, but the action was well-staged. The runaway wagon in a stampede of horses is a western cliché, but it was much better than average executed here. Also very good was the climactic shootout with the Texas ranchers using volleys from single-shot rifles to send the Yankee baddies into headlong retreat. The sets, both inside and outside were very authentic looking. Likewise, the clothes, the rifles, revolvers, and gun leather were all unusually accurate to the late 1860's era.Overall Three Violent People was a satisfying western on every level, but most of all was simply a pleasure to watch because of the stunning Vista Vision cinematography.(Other Vista Vision Westerns: The Searchers, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, One-Eyed Jacks)
FightingWesterner After a whirlwind romance and marriage with lovely Anne Baxter, ex-Confederate Charleton Heston returns home to his Texas ranch, where he has to contend with nasty carpetbaggers Forrest Tucker and Bruce Bennett, his embittered one-armed brother Tom Tryon, and his new wife's checkered past, which everyone is more than willing to use against him.Three Violent People takes it's time, but it's never boring, using great acting and excellent photography, direction to tell an atmospheric tale that's pretty hard-hitting, even though it's not a traditional action-adventure film.Heston, Baxter, and Gilbert Roland all play characters of great strength and courage, with the magnetic Roland in particular always incredible to watch and Tryon a brooding anti-hero. Why wasn't he a bigger star?A few years later, songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, who plays one of Roland's sons, bought bought a variable-speed recorder, changed his stage-name to David Seville, and invented the pop-culture icons known as The Chipmunks!
alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) I saw this film when it was released in 1957 and remember very well that I did not like it. I saw it again yesterday and loved it. How can one explain that? No doubt that when you get older, your taste might change, but in my case that seldom happens with films. Rather I would conclude that the moods of the times change, so in 1957 there was no mood for this type of film, it was categorized as an average western, probably because people were tired of them. Nowadays when they are so rare you learn how to appreciate the good ones. The story is about the unscrupulous treatment some ex confederates were given by some bandits trying to take advantage of the period that followed the war. Heston is one of them and so is his brother Tom Tryon. Heston marries an ex saloon girl Anne Baxter but he does not know about her old profession. There is not much chemistry between Baxter and Heston, this is the only negative point of the film. He combined better with someone like Eleanor Parker with whom he starred in 'The Naked Jungle'. There is a great shootout, the kind of which you don't see in westerns anymore, they just lost the touch. I also did not understand, like mentioned in a previous comment, who are the three violent people, I only noticed two, Heston and Tryon. Baxter? No way.