#john sturges

The Cornish Coast in The Sign of the Ram(1948)

Shot at Lizard Point, Cornwall, England (+ some compositing of the house and lighthouse)

In the establishing shots at the start of the film, Sherida Binyon’s (Phyllis Thaxter) arrival by train to “The Cornish Riviera” is suggested by shots of a fictional rail station called Tremerrion. This sequence includes a real Great Western Railway poster painted by Frank Newbould, which was used to advertise the route from London’s Paddington station to Cornwall. The poster was apparently in use from 1923-1947. Amazingly, this sequence does not have a single shot of a train!

I appreciate the cheekiness of introducing the film’s setting with an idyllic painting of a quaint fishing village shielded by cliffs when that is so far from what The Sign of the Ramdepicts.

Here’s the poster in color:

This particular poster isn’t included on the National Railway Museum’s website, but there are a lot of other wonderful posters featured in their online collection.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) Directed by John Sturges 

Any hot summer day is a good excuse to draw the curtains, get the room dark and cool, and watch this mid-century thriller that now stands as a minor masterwork of distinctly American cinema.
In an unforgettable establishing shot, one-armed WWII veteran Spencer Tracy steps off a Southern Pacific streamliner at the far end of the high desert in Nowheresville, California. Actually he’s in Black Rock, a dusty, near-vacant town surrounded on all sides by vast, dry expanses of…well, vast dry expanses.

He’s looking for a Japanese man who lives a few miles away in the mountains, and he’s asking for a ride out to the property. The nine or so town residents, who range in demeanor from weirdly suspicious to full-on menacing, don’t like that idea at all. In fact, these grim heavies (Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin as a trio of Post-War rattlesnakes) don’t like Tracy on principle.
After all, this is the first time in four years that train has even slowed down in Black Rock, and this visitor keeps asking about the Japanese guy even after everyone says he should forget about the Japanese guy.
One can’t help suspecting that a kind of storm cloud is building strength way out near the horizon.

The tension grows at an excruciating pace, thanks to a taut script superbly complemented by wide, lingering, but never wasted CinemaScope angles.
(You could almost say this is why CinemaScope cameras were invented and why director John Sturges was born.)
In any case, once Tracy clashes head-on with the town, the moment is like a sudden lightening bolt on a hot, dry day: no wind, no rain, just scorched earth and a cloud of dust.

The Magnificent Seven

(1960) Directed by John Sturges.

Everyone knows the first notes of Elmer Bernstein’s rousing score.
In addition, who doesn’t like a picture by John Sturges, that manly maker of man-sized action movies? And this one’s more than man-sized, filling big screens with Charles Lang’s stunning Panavision cinematography.
Granted, there’s a generation of folks today who simply will not watch a western, but think of this picture as a fable and it takes on a different texture altogether (it’s based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, after all). 

This is also an opportunity to see some major actors such as Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson before they became mega-stars.
A shiny-bald Yul Brynner is the man in black, leader of six gunslingers who rescue a poor Mexican village from a vicious band of, well, bandoleros.
Eli Wallach is the head bandito, and he pretty much makes this his picture at times, if only because of his wicked sense of humor.

Nonetheless, other players have their moments, specifically Coburn, who can pull a knife from behind his neck and throw it before anyone else can draw a Colt revolver. As for those neat little tricks with a shotgun by which Steve McQueen frequently shows off—he was doing them to upstage Brynner.
Robert Vaughn (soon to be Napoleon Solo in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) is the best dressed among the seven (excluding Brynner), with tailored city-slicker duds and accoutrement.
Bronson, not surprisingly, is a brooding badass with a heart of gold.
Yes, this is a guy film.

“Chino / The Valdez Horses” by John Sturges & Duilio Coletti (1973) Charles Bronson in Poblado Tecisa (Tabernas desert), Almeria.

JOE KIDD (1972). Clint Eastwood stars in John Sturges’ Western about a bounty hunter.

The Magnificent Seven (1960). French-language poster.