Grade: D+
Synopsis: An Austrian refugee doctor (Charles Coburn) and his daughter travel to dust bowl Oklahoma and stay with a farmer (John Wayne).
Three Faces West is a poorly conceived melodrama likely rushed through production to capitalize on the success of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, released earlier that year.
Much of the film’s 79-minute running time is set in dust bowl Oklahoma, and concerns a group of farmers desperately trying to hold onto their land as the wind blows it away. These scenes have a very stagy, melodramatic feel, and tend to drag as neither the script, nor the cinematography, are very inspiring. Coburn and Wayne do what they can for about an hour until, in the last 20 minutes, the script veers in several different directions including an action sequence involving a wide-angle car chase, and an ill-conceived sub-plot involving a Nazi sympathizer. Then, almost as abruptly, the movie is over.
While Coburn and Wayne are fine, Sigrid Gurie tanks horribly as Coburn’s character’s daughter. Not only is she instantly dislikable, but she has no chemistry with Wayne, thus making their entire relationship something of a stretch, a fact that hurts the film’s first hour all the more.
Bottom Line: While Three Faces West is a step up from Wayne’s earlier Lone Star westerns, it’s not a big step.
