AWARDS & HONORS

3:10 to Yuma was nominated for a British Academy Award as Best Film from Any Source.

It also received the second place ranking in the Golden Laurel Award for Top Action Drama and Van Heflin as Top Male Action Star.

Critics Corner: 3:10 TO YUMA

"Director Delmer Daves continues to justify his reputation as a rising talent in that department. That the climax fizzles must be laid on the doorstep of Halsted Welles, who had adapted Elmore Leonard's story quite well up to that point."
– Variety, August 14, 1957

"3:10 to Yuma is a good Western film, loaded with suspenseful situations and dusty atmosphere. The opening scene of a stage-coach holdup is crisply and ruggedly staged, and all the incidents of lawmen versus bandits are developed nicely from there. A good, lively script has been written by Halsted Welles, and sharp, business-like direction has been contributed by Delmer Daves. What's more, the whole thing is neatly acted. Van Heflin as the hero sweats and strains and brings himself up to the crisis like a man truly frightened and torn. Glenn Ford is insultingly casual as the bandit leader who trades on his charm. Richard Jaeckel is harsh as his top henchman, and Henry Jones is droll and deft as a brave drunk. Another good performance is turned in by Robert Emhardt as the proprietor of the stage line who is brave up to a point and then goes cold. As the inevitable females, Leora Dana is austere as the hero's wife, and Felicia Farr is amusingly off-beat and even poignant as a passing saloon girl. Except that the ending is romantic and incongruous, in the face of what goes on, this is a first-rate action picture-a respectable second section to High Noon [1952]."
– Bosley Crowther, New York Times, August 29, 1957

"It is a strong, taut drama which builds to a climax almost painfully tense."
– Paul V. Beckley, New York Herald-Tribune, August 1957.

"Decidedly Daves's best film. ... All the captivating power of 3:10 to Yuma relies on isolating the factors which develop honesty, inner discipline and strength of character. Apart from the economy of means, high tension, and precise description, the film can claim no formal qualities––there are no imposing landscapes, and the struggle of wits and characters in the hotel room takes up a considerable part of the running time of the picture. Only the finale (though not the culmination) is dynamic and traditionally 'western.'"
– Adam Garbicz and Jacek Klinowski, Cinema, the Magic Vehicle (Scarecrow Press, 1979).

"3:10 to Yuma is affecting and exciting because its director, Delmer Daves, and his screenwriter, Halsted Welles, have imbued it with a deep respect for the implicit promise of its story, and with a skill for invention at once simple and daring."
– Blake Lucas, Magill's Survey of Cinema, Second Series, Volume 6 (Salem Press, 1981).

"Tense, well-directed but rather talky low-budget Western: excellent performances and atmosphere flesh out an unconvincing physical situation."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide

"A vivid, tense and intelligent story about probable people, enhanced by economical writing and supremely efficient direction and playing."
- The Guardian

"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's very considerable strengths and virtues are best summed up by one French critic's description of him as 'the honest man of the Western.'"
– Brian Garfield, Western Films: A Complete Guide (Rawson Associates, 1981).

"Delmer Daves resourcefully recycled some of the genre's most durable themes, and coaxed out of Heflin his finest screen performance to date. Ford also managed to turn the bad-guy into more than just a conventional Western villain, and it wasn't his fault that Welles's script let him down in the final moments of the film."
– Clive Hirschhorn, The Columbia Story (Pyramid Books, 1989).

"Felicia Farr's brief role as the barmaid who causes Ford's guard to be dropped lights up the screen with an ole-time sensuality, yet also appears delicate and touchingly poignant. 3:10 to Yuma remains a much overlooked film in the genre, produced in a period when the time of the Great Westerns was coming to an end. As a precursor to the superior Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone or the post-modern antics of Clint Eastwood, it remains an important turning point in the history of the Western."
– Neil Chue Hong, Edinburgh University Film Society Programme, 1997-98.

"3:10 to Yuma does not deserve its high reputation, largely because of its contrived situation and Glenn Ford's inability to be nasty."
– David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)

"It's of necessity a talkative film, with Ford working on Heflin's nerves in a stream of Machiavellian banter, but one held in perfect balance by Daves, who keeps the tension strung taut (especially in the gauntlet-running final walk to the station) while at the same time elaborating a subtle psychological conflict. ... The conflict, ultimately, stems from each man's envy of what the other has."
– Tom Milne, TimeOut Film Guide (Penguin, 2007).

"If 3:10 to Yuma lacked High Noon's stripped-down drama, it strove for additional psychological complexity in contrasting two American types: the stolid working-stiff everyman and the charming hipster sociopath. In one of its most resonant bits, Yuma juxtaposes Heflin's dutiful marriage with Ford's passionate seduction of a lonely barmaid."
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice, August 28, 2007

"A classically schematic Western...Glenn Ford's muted performance takes full advantage of the humour inherent in the confrontation."
- The Oxford Companion to Film

by Rob Nixon