Perhaps the most unlikely movie on my list of favorites is Duel at Diablo (1966), a Western from Ralph Nelson that stars James Garner and Sidney Poitier.  I would venture to say that it is the least known title on my list, and when I have mentioned it to friends, they seem unimpressed.  Even so, I love this movie.  More than twenty viewings have failed to dissipate my feelings for it.

The story’s conflict centers around a cavalry transport of ammunition through Apache country.  A rugged scout (James Garner) and a horse dealer (Sidney Poitier) are pressured into the journey, while a selfish businessman (Dennis Weaver) and his wife (Bibi Andersson), who has been captured and kept more than once by an Apache chief, tag along.  It is her rescue, by Garner, that opens the movie.

Unlike a lot of Hollywood versions of the old West, this one is stark and brutal; from the treacherous landscape filled with marauding Indians to the violent and abusive actions of the townsfolk in Creel in regard to Andersson, this is one Western that is unflinchingly rough.

Yet from its opening shot of a map being sliced by a knife, it’s also artistic.  Neal Hefti’s music score may be anachronistic but I think it’s brilliant.  Garner is just about perfect as the bitter scout with a personal score to settle.  Poitier is elegant and completely convincing in a part that, to the film’s credit, elicits no comment whatsoever about his skin color — even though the color conflict between red man and white man is at the center of the story.  As Hefti’s remarkably poignant main counterpoint theme indicates so effectively, sentimentality is absent here; surviving with integrity is a life well lived.  My rating:  ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.  (10:4).