Nevada Smith is a 1966 American Western film made by Embassy Pictures and Solar Productions, in association with and released by Paramount Pictures. It was produced and directed by Henry Hathaway with Joseph E. Levine as executive producer, from a story and screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on a character from Harold Robbins' 1961 novel The Carpetbaggers. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Lucien Ballard. The movie is a prequel to The Carpetbaggers.
The film stars Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Arthur Kennedy, Suzanne Pleshette, Raf Vallone, Janet Margolin, Pat Hingle, Howard Da Silva, Martin Landau and Paul Fix.
Plot
A gang of outlaws led by Tom Fitch robs and brutally kills the white father and Indian mother of young Max Sand. The other two bandits are Bill Bowdre and Jesse Coe. They first torture Max's mother, who is shown naked to the waist, in front of her husband's pulp-battered face, with Coe running his knife across her back and saying: "Last time I skinned a live squaw, it was during the war, some 15 years ago...".
Max sets out to avenge their death. One of the killers keeps a tobacco pouch containing a bit of deerskin decorated with Indian beads from Sand's mother's shirt, and it's one of the clues he looks for in his search.
. Max can't read or write and is not skilled with a gun, but he gets help from strangers along the way. One of them is a man he tries to rob, Jonas Cord, who is a traveling gunsmith. Cord takes a liking to Max.
Max hunts the killers, who have since separated. With the help of Neesa, an Indian woman from the same tribe as his mother, he tracks down Jesse Coe in an Abilene, Texas saloon, defeating him in a knife fight inside a corral. A wounded Max is taken to the reservation by Neesa, who helps his wounds mend while becoming his lover.
After healing, Max leaves Neesa to continue his pursuit of the killers. He pulls a robbery and deliberately gets caught, just so he can be sent to a prison in a Louisiana swamp where Bowdre is now serving time. Pilar, a Cajun girl working in the rice fields near the convicts’ camp, gives Max comfort and finds a craft to help him escape through the swamps. He takes Bowdre with him and murders him along the way. The boat tips in the swamp and Pilar dies from a snake bite.
Still blinded by revenge, Max goes after Fitch, the last of the murderers. He infiltrates Fitch's gang, calling himself "Nevada Smith," but the outlaw is aware that Max Sand is out there somewhere, trying to ambush him.
Fitch has a robbery planned, and as the gang pulls off the job, Fitch realizes that Nevada Smith is really Max Sand. Fitch runs for his life, but Max tracks him down near a creek and begins to torture him slowly, shooting him in the arms and legs.
As the outlaw begs to be finished off, Max cannot bring himself to do it and rides away.
Film qualities
The beauty of the landscape is to be noted: snowy mountains overlooking badlands where the young Max tries to survive alone; sweltering Louisiana swamps and huge bald cypresses unaware of toiling human wretches in their shade; wide plains, like the one where stand the wigwams of the Indian tribe to whose half of Max's blood belongs; pine-covered hillocks, like the one Fitch chooses to spring an ambush against a gold-laden wagon; crystalline streams, either the bubbling natural swimming-pool in which Max and his Indian girlfriend romp, or the one in which Max lets Fitch lie, sparing his life after shotting him in a hand and both knees.
Cast
Steve McQueen ... Nevada Smith / Max Sand
Karl Malden ... Tom Fitch
Brian Keith ... Jonas Cord
Martin Landau ... Jesse Coe
Arthur Kennedy ... Bill Bowdre
Suzanne Pleshette ... Pilar
Raf Vallone ... Father Zaccardi
Janet Margolin ... Neesa
Pat Hingle ... Big Foot (work camp trustee)
Howard Da Silva ... Warden of work camp
Paul Fix ... Sheriff Bonnell
Iron Eyes Cody ... (uncredited) Taka-Ta
Notes
The character of Nevada Smith originally appeared in Harold Robbins' novel The Carpetbaggers, which was also filmed by Paramount Pictures in 1964 (this particular film serves as its prequel). The role was played by Alan Ladd as a mature man, an aging cowboy turned cowboy film star.
"Nevada Smith" was shot by Lucien Ballard's photography on approximately 46 different locations in the Inyo National Forest and the Owens Valley in the Eastern Sierra.
Hathaway's direction emphasizes violence, with the three supporting actors Landau, Kennedy, and Malden reaching high registers of emotion and reaction as they mete it out, and vengeance is exacted from them. But some kind and human characters are nicely enhanced. So Suzanne Pleshette gives a very touching performance as Pilar, a Cajun girl out of the rice fields, who helps McQueen escape from a swamp prison and during their escape dies from snakebite. Brian Keith as Jonas Cord, Sr., father of the main character of The Carpetbaggers and the gunsmith who teaches Max the fundaments of gunplay; and Raf Vallone as the priest who guides Max out of his quest for vengeance are both impressive. The bucolic scenes of Max and Neesa, an Indian bar-girl who brings him back to her camp when he is badly wounded, are also very touching, especially when they bathe in a hot springs bubbling pool and discover love.
The plotline of the movie resembles that of the origin issues of the comic book series The Rawhide Kid, drawn by Jack Kirby.
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