Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Three Faces West Blu-ray Movie Review

John Wayne vs. The Dust Bowl, with the Nazi Menace thrown in for no extra charge.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 11, 2013

One of the side benefits of the glut of John Wayne movies Olive Films has been releasing on Blu-ray over the past many months is the chance to see some of Wayne’s lesser remembered vehicles, including a lot of his early Three Mesquiteers shorts. At least a couple of these outings like Lady for a Night and A Man Betrayed some might argue are actually better left forgotten (though each has its fans, to be sure), while a number of others, like War of the Wildcats and The Fighting Seabees, are at least worthy of a viewing or two, even if they’re not at the top tier of Wayne’s output. Even some rabid Wayne aficionados may have never seen Three Faces West, certainly one of the oddest films in the actor’s long and varied career. This patently bizarre drama mixes elements of The Grapes of Wrath with "getting away from the Nazis" outings like the little remembered 1943 potboiler I Escaped from the Gestapo (the film Frances Farmer was making when she assaulted a hairdresser, ultimately leading to her arrest and years of institutionalization). Just for good measure, there’s a dash of any of the several films called The Oregon Trail (interestingly, one of these is a "lost" John Wayne vehicle from 1936) mixed in to make Three Faces West one decidedly improbable mash up of romance, Nazi intrigue and westward ho travelogue.

The film begins with what looks like a brief stock shot of Rockefeller Center in New York City, something that’s perhaps unintentionally ironic since it’s CBS that gets some on screen credit as we watch a live radio program called “We the People”. The broadcast is featuring recent émigré physicians who are looking for work in the United States. Three Faces West is fascinating in that it hints at the epochal conflicts roiling the globe in 1940 without ever coming right out and calling them by name. Therefore, we simply get allusions to the fact that all of these doctors have escaped from Nazi tyranny and have sought sanctuary in the United States. All of them have agreed to donate their services to rural communities in an effort to prove their worth to their new country. Among these new transplants is famed Dr. Karl Braun (Charles Coburn with a completely unconvincing kind-of accent) and his daughter Leni (Sigrid Gurie) who has been training to become a nurse. After the radio broadcast, a telegram arrives from a John Phillips (John Wayne) offering Braun and his daughter room and board if they’ll come out to Asheville Forks, North Dakota and assume duties there.

Leni and the good doctor take the train out to North Dakota, giving them time to wax rhapsodic about their new land while also lamenting the fact that Leni’s erstwhile fiancé has evidently been killed in Nazi Germany (once again, nothing is mentioned in any detail, but simply alluded to). (For those who love continuity errors, keep an eye on the insert of the photo of her love that Leni pulls out of her suitcase, and then look at what she’s holding in her hand when the film returns to the two shot master.) Once the two arrive at Asheville Forks, they’re shocked to discover a town virtually buried under a vicious dust storm. They’re met at the train station by Phillips and the town’s vet “Nunk” Atterbury (Spencer Charters) who has been providing Asheville Forks with whatever minimal doctoring it’s been receiving of late. While the Brauns are exhausted by their journey, Phillips insists on having them do their first rounds that night, traveling from one desperate family to the next, all the while enduring excruciating conditions in the open air car as they travel from location to location. It’s obvious Leni wants to get the hell out of Dodge (and/or Asheville Forks) as soon as possible, something that Phillips and Nunk have already mentioned between themselves has been the case with every other doctor who’s deigned to drop into the dusty squalor of their town for a day or two.

Dr. Braun attempts to placate Leni but ultimately agrees to stay in Asheville Forks, especially after he’s approached by a mother desperate to help her crippled son, something that was Braun’s specialty in his native land. In the meantime, of course, Leni and Phillips start to feel the pull of attraction and ultimately become a couple. All of this plays out amidst the growing terror of a nonstop draught and inability to farm the land. Initially Phillips urges his fellow ranchers to hang tough and stay, but even he ultimately realizes that things have reached a dusty end in North Dakota. With a new land offer staring them in the face in Oregon, the entire town decides to up and move en masse to the Pacific Northwest.

That decision propels the film into its third act where the modern day “wagon” train proceeds the 1,500 miles westward and simmering tensions begin developing between various members of the caravan. A near mutiny causes Phillips to question his leadership skills, but the good doctor (along with some help from Leni, of course) bring him back to his senses, especially when they “guilt trip” him into realizing that they’ve had to endure much worse than Phillips himself is going through at that particular juncture. While Phillips comes back and reasserts his authority over the group, the doctor and Leni have in the meantime heard the Leni’s fiancé is in fact alive and is waiting for them in San Francisco, evidently putting the kibosh on the nascent romance between Leni and Phillips. While Phillips leads the bulk of the group further north to Oregon, the Brauns continue due west to San Francisco.

It’s here that Three Faces West once again tiptoes around tumultuous world events without really having the courage to totally confront them. The Brauns are stunned to find the fiancé holed up in an improbably luxurious hotel, and once they reunited with him, they find out why: he’s a Nazi Party official. Of course that isn’t stated outright and once again the audience is left to infer the information, but it’s clear that the man has given in to the nefarious ideology of the day in Germany and wants Braun and Leni to return to Germany to aid the Reich. (At least the Reich is mentioned outright.) Needless to say, Braun and Leni refuse and the stage is set for a happy ending in a paradisiacal land of milk and honey, or at least of lots of rain and greenery.

Three Faces West Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Three Faces West is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Aside from some fairly ragged looking stock footage (most utilized to show the disastrous effects of the draught in the Dust Bowl), this is another really solid looking effort from Olive that boasts good contrast, deep blacks and nicely varied gray scale. Fine detail is very good if not overwhelming and the image is suitably sharp given the age of the elements. There's relatively little damage to report here, other than the expected flecks and specks.

Three Faces West Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Three Faces West features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that sounds really nice considering its age. Especially full bodied is Victor Young's nicely vigorous score, one that traffics in gorgeous string work for the romantic aspects but which features a lot of energetic brass motifs for some of the more heroic sequences. Dialogue is cleanly and clearly presented and there's not even much ostensible hiss to be heard here, perhaps because it's masked by the ubiquitous sounds of the dust storms which brew throughout the bulk of the first part of the film.

Three Faces West Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Three Faces West Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Three Faces West is among the most wildly improbable of any of the "contemporary" Wayne outings from this era, but unlike some of his other modern day enterprises, this one is so odd that any shortcomings are subsumed by the overall weirdness of the story, making this a perhaps unexpectedly involving and enjoyable film. Coburn definitely needed a dialect coach, but Gurie, whose Hollywood career was distressingly short lived, is lovely (and spunky) and Wayne is resolute and believable. Like some of the other second string Wayne efforts Olive has been dabbling in lately, Three Faces West is no forgotten masterpiece, but it remains one of the more curious little entries in Wayne's impressive filmography. This Blu-ray features generally excellent video and audio and comes Recommended.