Destry Rides Again (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Destry Rides Again (1939) – G. Marshall

Jimmy Stewart seems an odd match for Marlene Dietrich (although apparently they had an affair in real life); the two stars bring their well-known personas to the American West, contrasting comically with the usual genre trappings.  He’s the new deputy sheriff, full of droll winking stories about people he knows and their experiences that taught him lessons.  She’s the tough saloon singer who is also involved in a poker game swindle organized by town “boss” Brian Donlevy (who would play similar roles in the noir context later).  The film, under George Marshall’s even-handed direction, bookends the action with both prologue and coda, showing the town of Bottleneck before Stewart arrived and then after he’s cleaned it up (with his pacifist law-abiding ways).  Despite all of its eccentricities (Mischa Auer as a Russian cowboy, Charles Winninger as the bumbling banjo-playing sheriff) – or perhaps because of them –- the film works.  If you close one eye, it’s a Dietrich picture; close the other and it’s Stewart’s.