A timeless '3:10 to Yuma'

Like much else in popular culture, westerns changed radically after World War II. The sagebrush sagas became darker and grittier, and the days of the hero in the white hat and the villain in black gave way to various shades of gray. Heroes were so troubled they often seemed more like the bad guy while the bad guys were often charming, cunning, emotionally complex and even sympathetic.

John Ford delved into the darker side of the Wild West in such classics as 1946's "My Darling Clementine," 1948's "Fort Apache" and, most notably, his 1956 masterwork, "The Searchers." Anthony Mann, who cut his directorial teeth with several terrifically taut film noirs in the late 1940s, paired up with James Stewart for a series of hard-nosed westerns including "Winchester 73" and "The Naked Spur." And then there were the psychologically daunting westerns Budd Boetitcher made with aging action star Randolph Scott, including his landmark "Seven Men From Now."

Into that stable rides 1957's "3:10 to Yuma." This tense drama of redemption and self-worth arrives Tuesday on DVD, less than two weeks before the much ballyhooed remake with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe.

A young Elmore Leonard wrote the short story "3:10 to Yuma," which was published in the March 1953 edition of the Dime Western pulp magazine -- he later said he was paid $90. Columbia quickly snapped up the rights to the tale, but it took four years to bring it to the screen.

The film was directed by Delmar Daves, who began his movie career as an 11-year-old actor in a 1915 version of "A Christmas Carol." Though he made every type of film imaginable, from war thrillers such as "Destination Tokyo" to tawdry soap operas ("A Summer Place"), Daves did his best work on westerns: "Yuma," 1950's "Broken Arrow" and 1959's "The Hanging Tree."

Daves, working with a script by Halsted Welles, who also penned "Hanging Tree," shows in "3:10 to Yuma" why he was a master craftsman. Though most westerns of the era were being shot in color, Daves opts for black and white, which emphasizes the desolation and isolation of the area and the lives of its inhabitants.

The film was beautifully shot in Arizona and at the old Warner Bros/Columbia Ranch in Burbank by Charles "Bud" Lawton, a veteran of the genre, having helmed "Jubal," "The Tall T," "Cowboy" and two of Boetticher's classics, "Ride Lonesome" and "Comanche Station."