Two things a true movie lover should never say are: "They should re-make that (classic) movie" and "This would have been better in color"
Call me a sinner, but Only The Valiant would have looked and atmospherically felt better if it would have been shot in color.
This was a William Cagney Production released through Warner Brothers.
shareThanks, I applied an edit to my mistake, but I'm standing by my comment on the color issue.
shareIt's not blasphemous to say a film should have been shot in color. Such a comment has been made even by professional film critics and historians about a few b&w films, such as Prince of Foxes (1949) with Tyrone Power.
The "blasphemy" is wanting a b&w movie colorized. Adding fake, inaccurate, invented and inadequate computer-generated "colors" to a movie not filmed in, designed or intended for color is what's blasphemous.
In this case, especially given the many fake studio sets, I don't think filming in color would have helped at all. Black & white is a more intimate medium and given the movie's limitations probably worked better here anyway.
Only the presence of Gregory Peck kept this picture from being anything more than a sub-par western. It's especially regrettable he made Only the Valiant since he subsequently declined the lead in High Noon (a role written for him) on the grounds he had just made this film and didn't want to do another western right away.