I've got a real affection for this film, as a fan of Yul Brynner and off-kilter Westerns – that wonderful American art form, a mould into which absolutely any story at all can be poured. Into this mould are poured a tired, hurting, dusty town, morally bankrupt, cowardly, racist. Add a rebellious 'reb' in a town full of sanctimonious 'unionists', a miserable marriage, an old, soured love story, and, of course, the unfathomable, memorable Jules Gaspard D'Estaing, played by Brynner with his usual class and intensity.

But every appearance of good or prosperity or right in this town is a lie; the grieving widow's husband brought on his own death; the Mexicans living across the wash work for the whites "if they want to eat"; the town's "rooster", Mr Brewster, got rich by taking advantage of the Civil War, and everyone's deep in debt. Ruth's marriage to Crane Adams is a sham, and everything serves to illustrate that no one wins, except perhaps the rooster. Into this poisoned air stalks Brynner, his dancer's walk and dandyish clothing of less concern to white townsfolk than his rich skin tone. Considerable time is spent by those around him, trying to work out who he is. The cold-blooded killer – he seems to be trying to convince himself that this is what he is – becomes the moral centre of the storm, and his steadily building rage spills over in a powerful scene in which he literally lays waste the town. But as Shakespeare most memorably put it, "all are punished".

It is a trifle heavy on the morality; and I'm guessing a vehicle dreamt up for Brynner. But I still stand by this film as an all time favourite. I really like the interaction between Brynner and Janet Rule, whose low voice and gentle persuasion chip away at the gunfighter's hard edges. For all its imperfections it has some of those ingredients I always want to see in a film: flawed but compelling characters, a troubled romance, a different world peopled by humans, not heroes.

A gunslinger with a compelling and unique brand of personal honor arrives in the town of Pecos, New Mexico Territory, apparently in advance of a citizen who was sent on a mission to find one. I'm not quite sure what the film makers were trying to achieve with the appearance of the Dancer (Dal Jenkins) arriving by stagecoach, but the town folk certainly wouldn't have got their money's worth out of that Don Knotts-like character. The guy was afraid of his own shadow.

Jules Gaspard d'Estaing (Yul Brynner) maintains that he's 'not human' while relying on a fast gun and an unusual insight into the human condition as he sizes up the residents of the small Western town. Hired to kill a returning Confederate soldier (George Segal) who threatens to shake up the existing order in the pro-Union town, 'Jewel' begins to realize that his intended victim has more integrity and courage than the folks who hired him. A not so subtle backdrop of racism against Mexicans in the divided town also works it's affect upon the Creole born gunman.

Personally, if I were handling the script I wouldn't have had d'Estaing resort to a drunken rampage to bring the town to it's knees. I feel he would have had a more forceful impact if he'd taken on the town head on. However I found the exchange between Jewel and the citizens kind of interesting. When the sheriff (Bert Freed) drew down on him, Jewel shot the gun out of his hand, but when Crane Adams (Clifford David) did the same, he was shot dead for his trouble. It made me wonder if Crane's shooting was fatal because of Jewel's professed love for Ruth Adams (Janice Rule), or whether the shooting angle provided no other way to defend himself.

I'm a little conflicted on Brynner's performance here. Perhaps because Jules d'Estaing was a conflicted individual himself trying to find his way in an unsettled West with a history of personal abuse and racism himself. I thought his characterization would have been helped if he took his own advice as given to Ruth Adams, and that was to smile once in a while.

George Segal returns to his town to find his girl, Janice Rule, the widow of a Yankee, and his family home in the possession of local banker Pat Hingle. He squats on the land, so Hingle persuades the town that this Johnny Reb needs killing, and they hire gunfighter Yul Brynner. Brynner is a New Orleans Creole, and he goes through a lot of philosophizing about freedom and suchlike stuff while the town -- and Hingle in particular -- waits for him to kill Segal; he doesn't seem to be in any rush.

Given the post-Civil-War setting, you'd think they could leave the moralizing about race relations to a very loud subtextual reading. This, however, is a Stanley Kramer production, which means that it's all on the surface, with Brynner wearing just enough makeup so that everyone will know he's Black. Whereupon, it's never mentioned again, and most of the people don't even seem to notice it when Brynner doesn't bring it up himself.

All of which. makes it clear that this isn't about subtext, but about current events of the 1960s, and it annoys me. First, I'm a great believer in telling a story and letting the subtext remain down below the surface. Second, it's an egregious case of Blackface from a producer who was quite willing to take on the subject of race relations. Was Sidney Poitier unwilling to take the role? Whatever the reason, it's rather clumsy.