Who would have thought it possible? Fritz Lang Lite. In other Westerns that he made in the US — say, Rancho Notorious, or The Return of Frank James — the cynical-to-the-core German filmmaker (Metropolis, M) imbued his stories with paranoid, fatalist, noir touches. Western Union, a big-budget Fox Western based loosely on a Zane Grey novel, is gung-ho Manifest Destiny American myth, cheering on the white guys as they foil the Indians and build the Western Union through the Nebraska Territory. Yep, the Indians here say "How!" in greeting, and the palefaces, perceiving an Indian attack, mutter, "Looks like we got company!" For a time, the Sioux cause trouble, especially after they’ve been duped by renegade whites into drinking firewater. But in the end, convinced of the noble intentions of the Great White Father in Washington, they let the Western Union build away.

For students of the Western, there’s the germ of John Ford’s 1962 masterpiece The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (which will screen at the Harvard Film Archive on March 28) in the way Eastern tenderfoot Richard (Robert Young) and grizzled, girl-shy cowpoke Vance (Randolph Scott) vie for the same girl (Virginia Gilmore). And there’s a fine Liberty Valance–like gunfight at the end involving a salty villain (Barton MacLane). Although all the adventures were concocted, Lang did claim an affection for this film. His take on the actual events? "In reality, nothing happened during the whole building of the line except they ran out of wood for the telephone poles." Wednesday at the Harvard Film Archive.