Daves, Delmer (1904 - 77)

Director. Daves' Westerns have never received their proper due in America, and even his considerable Gallic reputation has never been unanimous. Best known for Broken Arrow (originally a Losey project and one of the first anti-racist Westerns) and the psycho?logical drama 3:10 to Yuma, Daves is in fact the author of an amazingly diverse oeuvre. It is as if he intended to create a vast tableau chronicling the evolution of the West, focusing not on glamorous, legendary-figures and events but, rather, on more humble, modest and particularized dramas. His mise en scene is similarly varied, though its modest self-effacement has led to ill-considered charges of aesthetic paucity. Daves' very considerable strengths and vir?tues are best summed up by one French critic's description of him as 'the honest man of the Western'.