A crash-landed crop-duster betrays a fugitive and his girlfriend to Mexican bounty hunters.
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To put it mildly, the film is unrewarding at best.At times, the film is so slow moving that you can actually start to feel the heat from the desert and you still can't empathize or sympathize with the characters.The Spanish thespians only speak Spanish so there is the constant need to be reading the English sub-titles below the screen.Yvette Mimieux mumbles and you know that Fernandez is as greedy as they come and will ultimately want all the reward money in question, no matter what it takes to attain it.It actually takes a while before you can get the gist of whatever a story there is. Fortunately, for the boy who was accidentally killed, he is not seen in the film.A very poor imitation of The Treasure of the Sierre Madre.
"The Reward" (1965)is one of the most interesting and well photographed and directed westerns that I've seen. Director Serge Bourguignon ("Sundays and Cybele") proves he's a distinguished director with this tale of two men who try to bring a posse out after a fugitive for the $50,000 reward and end up having to agree to split the reward with the three other men, a sergeant and an Indian and another Mexican. Bourguignon shows his strength just in his casting decisions that he is a top-flight director. In the cast, as his protagonist, a pilot, (Max Von Sydow)paired with Gilbert Roland as an captain, with Emilio Fernandez as the sergeant, Henry Silva as the Indian and Nino Castelnuovo as the other Mexican. Yvette Mimieux plays the girl accompanying Emphrem Zimbalist, Jr. as the fugitive. The cinematography is very well realized by Joe MacDonald in Color By Deluxe. Bourguignon's directorial flourishes abound, the matching of image to sound and the cutting from scene to scene are skillfully wrought. Film Editor was Robert Simpson. Of course, the English subtitles for the Spanish should have been retained. The script was by Bourguignon and Oscar Millard based on a novel by Michael Barrett. Produced by Aaron Rosenberg. There was always a question after "Sundays and Cybele" that it could have been a fluke the film was as good as it was winning Best Foreign Film, (After all it had Patricia Gozzi as the star) but "The Reward" certainly cements his reputation and makes me interested to see his other films. Yes, I think the film should be revived. It is probably more important today than initially upon release. It was a 20th Century-Fox film.
Max van Sydow and Yvette Mimieux in a western? With Efrem Zimbalist? What were they thinking? Even the presence of Emilio Fernandez (the great Mapache from "The Wild Bunch"), Gilbert Roland, and Henry Silva can't rescue this strange re-make of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".The story itself is not so bad and with different actors and a different director it might have been better. Director Serge Bourguignon is a Frenchman best known for "Sundays and Cybele" and "Two Weeks in September", not exactly the kinds of films that you think of when looking at someone to work in the Western genre.When you think of the good westerns made in the mid 60s ("Ride the High Country", "Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "A Fistful of Dollars". "Cheyenne Autumn", "Cat Ballou", "Shenandoah", "Sons of Katie Elder", "The Wild Bunch") this film pales in comparison.
There are some films that you just know are never going to improve with time. I've no burning desire to see Rio Conchos again — though I wouldn't pass up the opportunity if a Scope print became available. On the other hand, there are movies that you just know you didn't fully appreciate at their first viewing. Maybe you were too young, maybe you had the wrong expectations, maybe the audience was distracting, maybe you missed the beginning, or maybe you were simply too tired or had too many other things on your mind. Such a movie for me is The Reward. Fox signed up Bourguignon after he scored such a big hit with Sundays and Cybele. But this movie, lukewarmly received by the critics, was utterly ignored by the public. Bourguignon tried to salvage his reputation with a Brigitte Bardot drama, Two Weeks in September (1967), followed by a Ray Bradbury story, The Picasso Summer, starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, in 1969. I'd love to see The Reward again. The acting may not be as heavy as I remember, nor the story so much of a twice-told tale; and the stylishly evocative cinematography may be even more tightly, broodingly atmospheric and rewarding.