The Kentuckian is a 1955 Technicolor and CinemaScope adventure film
directed by Burt Lancaster, who also starred.
This was one of only two films Lancaster directed (the other was The Midnight Man),
and the only one for which he has sole credit.
It also marked the feature film debut of Walter Matthau.
The picture is an adaptation of the novel The Gabriel Horn by Felix Holt.
The picture was shot on location in Kentucky in the Cumberland Falls area,
the Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park near London, Owensboro and Green River,
and at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Village near Rockport, Indiana
User Review
the showdown: one with a whip, the other unarmed.
8 June 2006 | by alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) (S. Paulo, Brazil)
This film is unusual and interesting, it shows the life in a small town before the time of the westerns we are used to see, when you still had to sock powder into the rifle before shooting. When Lancaster and his son which are used to live in the woods come to town, people make fun of them, it is surprising how cruel they are. During the film both are going to change, the son will grow up and Lancaster will become a wiser man. There are two women, Diane Foster and Diana Lynn, both are charming and it is going to be a hard choice for Lancaster. Walther Matthau is an expert with the whip and his fight with Lancaster is the high point of the film. "The Kentuckian" did not age and Lancaster came out very well as a director. To see the people, their habits,
their way of talking, their music, combined with a good story makes this film worth seeing.