“Grace is for everyone.”
The first time I watched 3:10 to Yuma this line stopped me cold in my tracks. Alice Evans (Leora Dana) says this line right as her family, husband Dan (Van Heflin) and sons Mark and Matthew, are sitting down to dinner. Their guest is Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), an outlaw wanted for a litany of crimes up to and including murder. Alice, normally the one to say grace, has forgotten for this meal. When pressed by her son, he wonders if she skipped grace due to their guest’s criminal status. At the suggestion that “bad” people don’t get grace, Alice lets everyone at the table know that “grace is for everyone.”
On the surface, the plot of 3:10 to Yuma is about as straightforward as it gets. After the opening Wade and his men commit robbery and murder, Wade ends up captured and needs to be transported to Yuma to stand trial for his crimes. Dan, a rancher struggling in the midst of a drought, volunteers in exchange for $200. With Wade crew trying to spring their leader free, the task is simple but the stakes are high. Failure likely means dying at the hands of Wade’s men. Success doesn’t guarantee safety, but at least buys Dan more time.
What struck and stuck with me about the film is the depth of its humanity. From the opening scene, when Dan stands beside his sons as Wade and his men take their horses, 3:10 to Yuma shows itself to have a rich emotional soul underneath its genre trappings. For nearly every Western I’ve ever seen, exploring the masculinity of its characters is table stakes. Granted, if you’re thinking to yourself that I need to watch more Westerns, I agree. As the boys question why Dan did nothing in the face of Wade, he’s not stricken by impotent rage or cowardice, but a world-weariness so bone-deep I felt the urgency of Dan’s situation 70 years after the film was released. When Dan says, “seems like terrible things can happen and all you can do is standby,” those are the words of a man with something to lose, someone who can’t let his life be dictated by pride.
That’s not to diminish the role pride plays in the film, because it’s crucially important to Dan and Wade, both individually and their relationship to each other. Staring down the barrel of a gun, Dan can swallow his pride for the safety of himself, his sons, and his family. But, pride and desperation lead him to volunteering for transport duty, for the betterment of his family. Once Wade is in cuffs and under Dan’s watch, 3:10 to Yuma becomes something like a buddy film. Dan and Wade are a great pair. Ford plays Wade as a man with the confidence to know he can get himself out of any situation without veering into arrogance. Heflin brings the requisite weariness that hangs on Dan like a second shadow. It would be too easy for Wade and Dan to bicker at each other. Instead, Halsted Welles’ script (based on a short story by Elmore Leonard), makes room for the similarities between the men to arise and define their dynamic. The primary thing bonding these men, both leaders, is their understanding of the world and what it takes to survive the paths they’re on. They aren’t a combative duo, but the differences in their lives create a natural friction.
By the fourth time I watched 3:10to Yuma I was convinced that director Delmer Daves and screenwriter Halsted Welles have such a deep understanding of humanity and the underlying forces that dictate our moves in a way that makes the film an object of anthropological genius, in addition to a crackling western. The film is flush with conversational scenes that are every part as thrilling as their action counterparts. Maybe the best scene in the film is when Wade, hiding out in a bar, talks to the woman running the bar. It may be a brief encounter, but the chemistry between the two shows the life they could have if they weren’t bound by their current circumstances. It’s romantic, mournful, and over almost as quickly as it started. It’s one of many reminders throughout the film that grace is, indeed, for everyone.
Criterion’s 4K and blu-ray release presents the film with a vitality that belies the film’s age. On the 4K disc, Charles Lawton Jr.’s cinematography is downright electric. The detail and depth in the compositions almost had me feeling like I was walking the dusty trails alongside the characters. The other big beneficiary of the Criterion treatment is George Duning’s music. Those guitars, I’ll be thinking about them for a while. I watched the film on both the 4K and previously released blu-ray, while I don’t have the sharpest eye for tech specs, there is a noticeable improvement to the image quality on the 4K. The supplements are a little lighter than usual for Criterion, but still plenty informative. The booklet essay is by Kent Jones. There are interviews with Elmore Leonard and Peter Ford, son and biographer of his father Glenn.
