James Cagney attempted to revive his waning career in Run for Cover, and Ray elicited from him a hitherto hidden serenity and solitude to balance the actor's trademark brashness and intensity. Ray's VistaVision Western explores the relationship between aging drifter Matt Dow (Cagney), fresh out of prison and determined to go straight, and his “surrogate son,” orphan Davey Bishop. The gun wound and subsequent impairment Davey suffers early in the film become a mark both of Matt's guilt and of Davey's moral flaw. When the two men accidentally become embroiled in a train robbery, their Oedipal struggle turns deadly. Ray's sense of locale is typically vivid, from the world of Swedish immigrant farmers to the actual native ruins (in Aztec, New Mexico) which give the final confrontation its fateful geometry. Much prized by French critics, including Jacques Rivette, Run for Cover ends with a classic Ray utterance, three words that come as a kind of bitter benediction.
—James Quandt

Print note: This rare print retains great color but is very worn.