Simply A Masterpiece

Powerful

Nice effects though.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This disappointing movie is a film noir version of "Duel in the Sun". It's much more intelligent and better acted than "Duel", but just like "Duel", it stretches the limits of the Western genre by introducing too much romance and soap opera. I only gave this 4 out of 10 stars in IMDb. It only accumulated 8 points in my ranking system, well below average score of 12. Despite its poor overall ranking, there were quite a few things to like about the movie: Barbara Stanwyck may have played a lot of strong women in her career, but her character is quite unusual for a Western. She does a great job, but unfortunately her role is too hammy. There's a very unusual plot element revolving around the issuance of a private currency and bank loans. The economics in the movie are sophisticated and realistic. Reminded me a lot of the accuracy of 1980's "Trading Places". Barbara Stanwyck has a great line late in the movie, when a town dance hall girl introduces herself, saying, "Hi, My name's Dallas Hart, I'm new here". Stanwyck looks her up and down and says, "Honey, you wouldn't be new anywhere." Wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't an old Mae West line. Nice authentic Arizona locations. Pretty realistic interiors. i.e. when the scene shifts to a soundstage, the rooms feel small and have low ceilings. Ford was good at this also. On the negative side: As I mentioned, it's a pot boiling "Peyton Place with spurs" more than a real Western. This is a common problem in "Land Baron" dramas like "The Big Country". Wendell Corey is very poorly cast as the central romantic lead. This movie desperately needed some charisma in this role. It was obvious they were trying to fit a 1,000 page novel into a two hour movie, which is very hard to do. In this way, it resembles Mann's "Cimarron", which he made a complete mess of ten years later. This movie is much better crafted than "Cimarron", but the extensive summarizing of characters and time passage is obvious. They handle it pretty well overall, but can't keep up. For example, Stanwyck's brother simply disappears from the movie half way through with no explanation. I won't give it away, but expect more of Anthony Mann's obligatory gore and sadism. I could do without all the shootings through the hand, draggings through the fire, spurs in the neck etc.

Vance (Barbara Stanwyck) is a firebrand, and that's the way her equally iron-willed father, T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston), likes her. Certainly the tyrannical cattle rancher cares more for his daughter than his seemingly weak-willed son (John Bromfield), whose wedding is only the ostensible reason for him to end his San Francisco trip earlier than expected and return to The Furies. T.C. needs money, and being something like a feudal lord of the 1870s, all he has to do is print some up: his own money, paper bills called TCs. He also has enough power to drive off the Mexican squatters from his land, but Vance insists he leave the Herrera family alone. She is close friends with the family's eldest son, Juan (John Bromfield), who is in love with her. Vance is in love with nobody until she meets Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), a flinty gambler who wants back the piece of land he believes rightfully belongs to him. Predictably, father and daughter clash over Rip, but their lively relationship doesn't turn ugly until T.C., who hasn't been serious about a woman since his wife had the effrontery to die, meets an attractive widow (Judith Anderson) who schemes to take control of The Furies herself.Anthony Mann directed this gorgeously photographed black-and-white western with his usual skill at bringing out the psychological complexities of a story and its characters. The big, bold, brash characters zestfully played by Stanwyck and Huston (in his last role) are handled deftly enough to be fascinating without being campy, despite the roiling undercurrent of an incestuous attraction between them. The screenplay is based on a novel by Niven Busch who also wrote the book that became "Duel in the Sun": to see how silly this movie could have been, watch that one.My only complaint is with Franz Waxman, whose score reveals that he either didn't understand the material or was deliberately trying to undermine it. When Vance gives her father a back rub, we're not having the whimsical thoughts Waxman tries to put in our heads.

There's a lot of Freudian subtext in this unusual 1950 Western, but what resonates most is how director Anthony Mann so smoothly transcends the testosterone-driven genre to come up with an entertaining hybrid of a woman's picture and a Greek tragedy. At the dynamic core of this film is the masterstroke of casting Walter Huston (in his last screen role) and Barbara Stanwyck as a spendthrift father and his headstrong daughter at odds over running the expansive ranch that gives the movie its name. In Roman mythology, the Furies were supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. As females, they represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. It is this single-minded sense of empowerment that drives Vance Jeffords to usurp her wily father T.C. while seeking his approval at the same time.Set in 1870's New Mexico, the story written by Charles Schnee ("The Bad and the Beautiful") is steeped in not-so-indiscreet psychological baggage. T.C. lives by his own rules by borrowing liberally from banks, paying hired hands with his own script, and allowing Mexican settlers to live off his land. Unlike her weak-willed brother, Vance enjoys provoking her father but to what end is never clear as an unacknowledged cloud of incest hangs over their strange relationship. At the same time, T.C. has a sworn enemy in gambler Rip Darrow who is looking to avenge his father's death at T.C.'s hands. Vance falls for Darrow, but she's also drawn to Juan Herrera, a childhood friend and one of the Mexicans now considered squatters. Complicating matters even more is the arrival of T.C.'s pretentious fiancée Flo Burnett, a devious socialite out to rid the ranch of the Mexicans and push Vance aside as the female head of the beleaguered family. This ploy leads to a most shocking scene that fits well within the story's noirish shadings.As T.C., Huston gives a grand performance evoking both as the old prospector in his son John's "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" and the conflicted industrialist in William Wyler's "Dodsworth". Although a bit old for her role at 43, Stanwyck combines her no-nonsense manner with a childlike vulnerability in illuminating Vance's most complex psyche. This is excellent work from an actress who always seemed home on the range. Generally a pliable third lead in films ("Rear Window"), Wendell Corey doesn't lend charisma or a convincing edge to his swagger as Darrow, but Gilbert Roland shines in the smallish role of Juan and strikes sparks with Stanwyck that should have happened with Corey. However, it is Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca") who steals her brief scenes as Flo bringing out a palpable tension with Stanwyck in their almost-comically cutting scenes together (pardon the pun!). Veteran character actress Beulah Bondi also has a nice near-cameo as a banker's wife fully aware of her husband's prideful shortcomings.The intensely passionate movie swirls in all its psycho-sexual emotionalism and Shakespearean-level acts of murder, revenge and greed, but oddly (and perhaps due to the edicts of studio censors), Mann applies the brakes in the disappointing final portion of the film. Still, it's well worth viewing in the new Criterion Collection's 2008 release chock-full of extras. First, there is the meticulously academic commentary track by Western author Jim Kitses ("Horizons West"). Then there is an interesting 17-minute interview with Mann ("Actions Speak Louder Than Words") conducted just prior to his death in 1967. Another interview is offered with Mann's daughter Nina specifically for this release as she recalls her father's often underrated body of work. More of a curio is a silly, obviously scripted 1931 interview with Huston where he evasively responds to the vacuous questions of a pretty reporter. The original theatrical trailer and a stills gallery round out the extras.

This Antony Mann Western is little-known compared to his collaborations with James Stewart or Man of the West or a good number of other Mann films, but it's an equal to his best work. Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston (in his final performance) star as a daughter and her father, powerful ranchers who own the titular land. Their relationship, much as the title suggests, has a psycho-sexual tinge. When men call on Stanwyck, her father balks. And when hoochies cling to Huston, well, then things get real ugly! The Furies shows Mann bringing a lot of his noir skills to the Western genre. One can easily see how that genre influenced Mann's characterizations, but, in terms of film-making, he had largely moved on. The Furies is just dark and often nasty. I have to wonder why the film is so little known. My thought is that almost all Westerns feature male protagonists, with the most notably exception being Johnny Guitar. I'm not going to rag too much on that film, because I do like it, but The Furies is far superior. Stanwyck was rarely better. I might actually rate this as her best. Huston went out on one of his best performances. It's hard to believe he died before the film was even released with as much energy as he shows. My only real complaint with the movie is that it peaks too early. The standoff at the Herrera's fort is one of the greatest sequences in the history of the genre, and it's so good that the remainder of the film drags a bit. Still, a masterpiece. Thanks again, Criterion!