Increasingly among Ray's most admired films, The True Story of Jesse James opens with the James Gang's famous botched bank raid in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1876. As a posse tracks down the James brothers, the film sets out to tell their “true story,” which, in classic Ray fashion, shows Jesse turning outlaw as a reaction to the humiliation of Southern farmers in the aftermath of the Civil War. A romantic and rebel, leading a double life, Jesse is another of Ray's hurt heroes—confused, conflicted, contradictory. Echoing Rebel Without a Cause, Ray called this “a film about displaced youth.” (He originally wanted Elvis Presley to play Jesse.) Superbly shot in CinemaScope with a sweeping, dynamic sense of space and enclosure, and punctuated by sad ballads delivered by a blind wandering minstrel, Jesse James remakes a myth in very personal terms.
—James Quandt