Run for Cover

Nicholas Ray – 1955 – USA

One of Ray’s lesser-known films, released the same year as his iconic Rebel Without a Cause.  James Cagney plays drifter Matt Dow who meanders into town on horseback one day only be taken for a bank-robber and nearly lynched even before getting a chance to say 'howdy.'  Cagney accepts the towns-peoples’ apology and takes a job as sheriff, but his young companion, Davey (John Derek), is unforgiving and descends into a cycle of self-pity and misanthropy, symbolized by a psychosomatic paralysis that it takes Matt's encouragement to overcome.  For unknown personal reasons, Matt repeatedly insists on giving Davey opportunities to get on his feet, regain his self-esteem and ultimately redeem himself in his own and his neighbors' eyes; opportunities that Davey squanders without fail.  This issue of strained male bonding crossed with the so-called "crisis of masculinity" - (the core theme of nearly all of the great westerns of the 50s) - has special relevance in terms of Nicholas Ray's filmography.  So often, emotionally crippled young men - (i.e. Arthur Kennedy in The Lusty Men, Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause) - suffer in the shadow of morally stronger comrades, resulting in hostile resentment or borderline sexual infatuation.  In Run for Cover, Matt's blind-spot when it comes to Davey's lack of character is also another kind of psychosis that consumes Ray in his films, the weakness of men seeing what they want to see in others regardless of the facts.