Larry Johnson

Night passage is an unusual film as it is the only time that Audie Murphy plays a "bad guy". The cast has so many great actors, James Stewart and Dan Duryea as well as a number of very convincing "bad guys" who always played their parts so convincingly that one tends to "hate them".This is a trait that takes a great deal of talent when the person playing the role makes this role believable is really in real life a great person. The action was intense throughout the movie with rarely a pause in the action. It was great to see and hear Jimmy Stewart play the accordion as he actually did play the instrument as a kid..the real player was a professional but Stewart did his own singing. The female characters in the movie were very convincing in their roles and when beauty and grace were needed their performances were quite well played. Night Passage ranks very high on my list of great westerns as the action, emotion, and originality were great. The score by Dmitri Tiompkin was outstanding as his genius in musical scores has always been perfect for the movie for which it was written. As a musician and teacher of music, the scores in western movies is always an important part of the entirety of the movie. Without a great score it's impossible to make a great movie. There are few movies in this genre that I would rate as five stars movies; Night Passage definitely earned that rating!