The reaction of most critics to the film was harshly negative.
The “New York Times” critic Bosley Crowther wrote that it was hard to tell whether the film is supposed to be taken “seriously as a documentation,” of the work of the HUAAC, “or whether it is merely intended to arouse and entertain.” In its “direct, uncomplicated raid,” on the Communists, Crowther wrote, Wayne demonstrated that “the best medicine for a cowardly Communist is a sock in the nose,” based on his character’s attitude that “it is painful to think too deeply, and the fist is mightier than the brain.” Crowther concluded his review, noting: “The overall mixing of cheap fiction with a contemporary crisis in American life is irresponsible and unforgivable.” (New York Times, September 18, 1952).
Otis Guernsey of the “Herald Tribune” was even more condemning, depicting Big Jim McLain as “part travelogue, part documentary-type melodrama, and part love story, but pedestrian in all of these phases.” “A minor thriller,” he summed up the end result as “padding out with some rather poor commercials for our most excellent product of American democracy.” (New York Herald Tribune,” September 15, 1952).
The movie received, comparatively speaking, better notices in the West Coast (California) than on the East in New York. “Commendable as it is in purpose, and presenting as it does a new slant on the Red Menace,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, “this feature is unfortunately too sketchy in its dealing with its plot.” (Edwin Schallert, Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1952).
“For all its authentic backgrounds, timeliness of its topic, and the extremely good work from the actors involved,” noted the Hollywood Citizen News, “Big Jim McLain” is not much more than standard melodrama.” (Margaret Harford, Hollywood Citizen News, August 30, 1952).
The L.A. Examiner thought that Wayne brings to his role “an added potency, a sort of ‘I mean every word of this’ quality, which comes through like a beacon light.” (Kay Practor, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, August 30, 1952).
Most praising of all was the Hollywood Reporter, stating that “the testimony of its success is the thoughtful anger it arouses in audiences,” and that it is “a successful motion picture from any angle.” (Hollywood Reporter, August 25, 1952).
The movie was much more commercial that most anti-Communist films of the 1950s, grossing close to $3 million in the U.S. alone.
The other trade paper, Variety, praised Big Jim McLain’s “timely subject and excellent dialogue,” which was ludicrous since the script’s vulgar simplicity was the film’s major shortcoming.
To appeal to mass audiences, the producers conceived of Big Jim McLain as “a gangster-action” film, but by equating Communism with terrorism, it “could have only reinforced the feelings of the very simple-minded,” as critic Allen Eyles wrote.
Perhaps the British critic Alexander Walker said it best when he noted: “As filmmaking, it was unconvincing; as propaganda, it was hysterical. By implication, it gave its nod of approval to informers and offered its pardon to Communists who confessed their errors.”
Cast
Big Jim McLain (John Wayne)
Nancy Vallon (Nancy Olson)
Mal Baxter (James Arness)
Sturak (Alan Napier)
Madge (Veda Ann Borg)
Dr. Gelster (Gayne Whitman)
Robert Henreid (Hans Conreid)
Credits:
Released by Warner
Running time: 90 Minutes
Production company: Wayne-Fellows
Produced by Robert Fellows
Directed by Edward Ludwig
Screenplay: James Edward Grant, Richard English, Eric Taylor from a story by English
Camera: Archie Stout
