The Outrage (1964)

Purely Joyful Movie!

just watch it!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I am no actor, and I realize scenes are frequently shot out of sequence. But don't the actors have some sort of inkling as to how poor a picture is while they are making it?I've never been one for "flashback" movies, but this one with several different versions of the flashback is just too much.There were a couple good pieces of acting, such as when Bloom accused her husband of cowardice, but they were too few to carry the movie. The last 8 to 10 minutes were more like 3 Stooges/Laurel & Hardy slapstick comedy sliding down a waterfall into a pond and spitting water...c'mon!I did enjoy the scenery around Tucson, and the music was pretty good, also. The rest of it left me scratching my head. This is a movie I had timer-recorded to DVD and did not watch for quite a while since recording it, so it is in my collection. I have real doubts it will ever get another watch by me.And what's up with the baby? Did the writers just say "Hey, this ought to work for something?"It's a pity, too, because with de Silva, Newman, Bloom, Robinson...these are actors I really like. They could have made a much better movie.I rarely give less than 5 stars, but this one only rates 4 from me.jonesey65244

If this film was made today it would most likely be released in "art" film theaters. A vanity film for the director and the stars, the movie sort of plods along, trying to make points about important things in life without coming to any final absolute conclusion.The story is concerned about a rape that took place and is told in flashbacks thru four different viewpoints of the ones that were present (the bandit, the wife, a passerby, and we even get the testimony from the dead husband!) Each one, of course, puts their own spin on the story. What is the truth?...Hmmmm.Paul Newman, in what might appear as a bit of apparent miscasting, does a superb job as the Mexican bandit---to the inattentive eye, he is unrecognizable as Paul Newman for the first few minutes of the film. William Shatner plays a preacher and once again appears to "overact" in a role that should have been played more subtly. Edward G. Robinson plays his role with gusto and is always interesting to watch. Laurence Harvey has a part that required the least amount of acting in any of his films---much of the time he is tied to a tree!

Newman's fifth film for Martin Ritt, "The Outrage" was based on the classic Japanese film "Rashômon," but Ritt transplanted the tale to the South Western U.S. following the Civil War… Carrasco has been convicted of raping a woman (Claire Bloom) and murdering her husband (Laurence Harvey), but four eye-witness accounts conflict… All agree that the bandit raped the woman, but only one asserts that he committed the killing… Sadistic, defiant, and challenging, Carrasco snarls, sneers, and walks with macho arrogance, to hide the fact that he can only be strong by tying a man to a tree and raping his wife… The role allowed Newman to give a bravura performance, not unlike Toshiro Mifune's in the Kurosawa film, and the stylization would fit the story if everybody else weren't playing it so straight… As it is, the performance seems too showy, easily understandable, exaggerated

If John Sturges made "Seven Samurai" as an A western, and Sergio Leone "Yojimbo" as a spaghetti western, Martin Ritt chose the B western for "Rashomon", in "The Outrage". It follows the path set by "The Ox-Bow Incident", "The Gunfighter", "The Showdown" and "High Noon", the "intellectual" western in black and white. The story is excellent and adapts well for the genre, with four people telling different versions of the same murder. Claire Bloom and Lawrence Harvey are the married couple who get assaulted by Carrasco (Newman). Paul Newman is a great actor, his performance in Martin Ritt's "Hombre" is a proof of that, but there is a limit on how far you can go acting against your type. Newman set an impossible task for himself playing Carrasco, that part should go for actors like Eli Wallach or Anthony Quinn. I would not say his performance is a total failure, but the problem is that it is very important to understand Carrasco's character and that is not achieved by Newman visually, only when he verbalizes it in a Spanish that does not sound right. The irony is that Newman is such a charismatic actor that you actually enjoy his presence in the film. Edward G Robinson is the Con Man, what a performance! "The Outrage" is a very good film, it deserved better reviews than it got from the critics.