Tony Valero, a lusty young vaquero, is enamored of Clarita Montes, whose father is fairly well off, as the middle class Mexicans figure. Clarita prefers Tony to her numerous admirers, but the father has selected, for his future son-in-law, a young dandy called Jose Rodreguis, who has a certain amount of money which allows him more ease than his neighbors. Jose trades upon this fact and presses his attentions upon Clarita. He bitterly resents her preference for Tony and does all in his power to belittle his rival.
A cowboy strands in a small bar after a fight with his ex. In the search for oneself, he is soon immersed in the jungle of drunkenness, loneliness and sadness.
In the dusty town of Mazarrón, 'El Rubio' is an enigma. He arrived almost a year ago, and no one knows why. Every sunrise, he faces the same existential question that haunts him beyond the dunes. 'El cowboy sin montura' is an introspective western about the search for purpose and the echo of the past in a silent present.
Concerned about the failing health of Rhoda Tuttle, his fiancée, John DeWitt takes her to the lavish Arizona home of his friends, Jack and Katherine Newman. Although the Newmans try to cheer Rhoda, who has lost her parents in a train wreck, she remains listless and melancholy. While walking in the desert, Rhoda is bitten by a tarantula but is saved by Kut-le, a Yale-educated Indian employed as a superintendent on Newman's irrigation project. Because of his strong belief in the curative effects of life in the desert, Kut-le kidnaps Rhoda and forces her to live in a manner far removed from the comforts and confinements of civilization.
Black Sparr, a hard-fighting, hard-drinking rancher, puts his son, Rance, through rigorous experiences to learn the ways of men. Rance thinks himself in love with Vivian Morrow. Vivian, an ambitious girl, longs for a life of finery away from the ranch and succumbs to the proposal of Braden, who offers her luxury.
An epic story set in the early western 1860s involving a working cowboy and a young Indian boy. As a child, Sandy Steele witnesses the death of his family at the hands of a brutal raiding Indian Party. Growing to manhood and working as a ranch foreman, Steele encounters the hand of fate when he is thrown together with Little Hawk, an Indian child whose family has just been killed by white men.
A mountaineer, who has been shot by a pursuing sheriff, is concealed by a mountain girl in her cabin. When the sheriff arrives, she gives him whiskey, while secretly removing the bullets from his gun.
The First Story is the first film in a trilogy of "westerns." Here the central idea is Power in its various forms, especially as seen overland in the quintessential American West: the big rigs on I 90 and the freight trains crossing Wyoming. It is the contrast of these machines to the broad landscape and animal life that digs at this mythological space and questions what other meanings might be created.
"Saturday Night Square Dance" was released in 1949 as a Soundie. Featured here are Jim Boyd and His Men of the West. Jim Boyd was the brother of Bill Boyd, well known for western swing music, and this film combines some western swing music with calls. The footage shows some fine examples, like the styling sometimes called the Abilene Lift.
Ace Remsen and Deuce Remsen are twin brothers. Deuce is a bandit and he is slain by Ace. The good Ace goes undercover as Deuce in order to solve the murder of the rancher Seth Waverly. During his investigation Ace falls in love with Seth's attractive daughter Merrill.
A rancher helps a pretty young girl and her brother fight off their stepfather, who is trying to take over their ranch, and in addition helps his father battle a gang of rustlers stealing cattle from his ranch.