Union Pacific (1939) review

With the blessings of the late Abraham Lincoln, construction begins on the (quite expensive) first transcontinental railroad but not everyone is happy with it - shifty financier Asa Barrows (Henry Kolker) hires nefarious Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy) and his crew to interfere with it being built, but Captain Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) hops on board to try to preserve "law and order" and winds up in the middle of a love triangle with engineer's daughter Mollie (Barbara Stanwyck) and former war pal Dick Allen (Robert Preston).  To go along with its "Rah-Rah, Hooray America" tone it does have the slightest sense of ethics - a passenger who shoots a Native American "for sport" is beaten up by Butler and chucked into the dirt - but DeMille is considerably more enthralled with staging set pieces (the train gets attacked and later on goes off the rails) than human interaction, since the plot is ditzy (and could have come from a B-movie) and the dialogue is mostly underwhelming ... although Butler's sidekicks Fiesta (Akim Tamiroff) and Leach Overmile (Lynne Overman) are armed with pistols, a whip and some smart one-liners.  Despite my quibbles, it's fairly entertaining, and makes good use of the cramped interiors for tension.  Fun fact: this was "technically" awarded the "first" Palme d'Or during a retrospective at Cannes in 2022 because there was no festival in 1939 - the world was dealing with a larger problem - but it needs to be mentioned that two of the other nominees were The Wizard of Oz and The Four Feathers.  Talk about having a contrarian jury....