Produced and directed by star Burt Lancaster, The Kentuckian is a leisurely western occasionally punctuated by spurts of startling brutality. The recently widowed Lancaster heads towards Texas with his son Donald McDonald. Most of the folks he meets, notably winsome schoolmarm Diana Lynn, bondslave Dianne Foster, and Lancaster's down-to-earth brother John McIntyre and sister-in-law Una Merkel, are pretty good souls, despite the raging family feud that motivates the plotline. The same cannot be said of whip-wielding saloonkeeper Walter Matthau (in his film debut), who goads Lancaster into a bloody fight. Matthau wins this round, but he gets his just desserts before the final fadeout. Based on a novel by Felix Holt, The Kentuckian makes excellent use of Technicolor and Cinemascope, as well as the musical expertise of composer Bernard Herrmann.

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

In 1954, Burt Lancaster announced that he was planning to leave acting behind in order to become a full-time director. His first effort would be The Kentuckian (1955). As it turned out, aside from a minor co-directing credit on 1974's The Midnight Man, The Kentuckian would also end up being his only effort.

Based on the novel The Gabriel Horn by Felix Holt, the story was set in Kentucky circa 1820, when that state was on the edge of the frontier. It centered on a backwoodsman eager to pursue a future in Texas with his young son, partly because he is weary of an ongoing local family feud. Briefly tempted by his brother to stay in Kentucky and settle down, he in the end renews his determination to head for Texas with his son, only now they are joined by a woman. Lancaster's character is a Davey Crockett type, good-natured and slow to react in anger or negative emotion. In all, the picture is an amiable, folksy slice of Americana.

Gary Tooze

December 16th, 2017