One of the most beautifully photographed films made in the classic 3-strip Technicolor process, Henry King's Jesse James will be shown in a new 35mm color print that hopefully approximates the original look of this carefully produced Western. In his book on Henry King, Clive Denton asserts that Jesse James “is one of King's finest films.... It possesses a magnificent forward-pressing attack, a surge of images, not always present in his work, together with those moments of calm and reflection that are native to him.
“As the film's credits suggest, much historical research was conducted for Nunnally Johnson's screenplay. One may assume that, however greatly this contributed to the film's unusually strong sense of time and place, it did not inhibit a fairly free interpretation of the James Brothers' motives and methods....
“Whatever distortions of history it contains, Jesse James manages to be both a stirring adventure (in its earlier stages), and, finally, a moving study of notoriety unable to turn peaceable and live unmolested....”