Very disappointing...

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This film boasts a great Burt Lancaster performance, ably seconded by Lilian Gish and the beautiful Audrey Hepburn, who found that she was pregnant and actually had an accident with a horse during filming that nearly rendered her paralyzed, and caused her to lose her baby.According to his autobiography, Hepburn's situation caused much of the film to be shot around and without her, with inevitable disruption to all manner of details and plans. Perhaps that helps explain why there are so many sudden cuts, both in terms of scenes and music - very jarring. Huston has some fine directorial moments, but the film is as uneven as his direction. Photography is astounding at times, especially with the unforgettable cattle stampede over the house, but it can also be pedestrian, with some rather poor "day for night" shots, among other weaknesses. Still, THE UNFORGIVEN is interesting to watch, with racism as one of the main items on the menu, the other being family ties superseding all else. I have always liked this film, and rewatched it with pleasure, but it is nowhere near masterpiece status. 7/10

It's certainly a high-powered cast and director, and some fine performances ensue. Lovely, genteel Audrey gives it her best, but she makes such an implausible Indian that 'willing suspension of disbelief' has a hard time keeping suspended... and the whole story hinges upon her Indian-ness. From her first appearance, folksily shooing cows off the roof in cultured Old-World tones, she's simply nothing whatever like a Kiowa or even any rural Texan-- not that the other Kiowas really look very Native American either. When her passed-off-as-white secret is threatened and one hears the remark that she's "darker than most" it's hard to buy, since in spite of some ruddy foundation (that comes and goes) she's in fact lighter than most of the cast except the very pale Gish-- and how did either of them stay pale out there in the wide open spaces anyway? Joseph Wiseman delivers a riveting portrayal of crazed old coot Abe Kelsey, but he really looks too young for the part, and in fact was only 42 when this was filmed. Lillian Gish is superb as always, despite Huston's irreverent attitude towards this enduring screen legend. During filming the hapless Gish was forced to repeat her "breasts hurting with all that milk" speech again and again, probably just because the director enjoyed embarrassing her. And the day-for-night scenes detract further from the realism. Well, fuss, fuss fuss, it's still a very impressive picture and a well-intended filmization of the source novel (whatever one's opinion of that). The music is a bit overblown here and there, but that's typical of older movie soundtracks. Well, one simply has to watch this film with an uncritical eye and accept it all at face value.

"The Unforgiven" is based upon a novel by Alan Le May, who also wrote "The Searchers", and in one respect the two films can be seen as mirror- images of one another. "The Searchers" deals with a young white girl who is kidnapped by Comanche Indians and brought up as a member of their tribe. "The Unforgiven" deals with a Native American girl adopted by a white family. Both women have much stronger loyalties and emotional ties to their adoptive kin than they do to their blood relations. Rachel Zachary is a young woman living with her family in Texas. (The film was actually shot in Mexico). Her life is turned upside-down when a half-crazed old man, Abe Kelsey, arrives in the area, claiming that she is an Indian, much to Rachel's dismay; she knows that she is adopted but has always believed herself to be white. Abe is known to have quarrelled with Rachel's late father Will, and has a long-standing grudge against the family, so his allegations are dismissed by Rachel's three adoptive brothers, Ben, Cash and Andy, and their mother Matilda. These allegations, however, are believed by the local Kiowa Indians whose chief, Lost Bird, believes Rachel to be his long-lost sister and, increasingly, by other white people in the area whose bitter racism against Native Americans also extends to anyone they suspect of having Indian blood. Eventually, Matilda is forced to admit that Abe's story is the truth and that Rachel is indeed a Kiowa, saved and adopted by her late husband as a baby after her parents were killed in a massacre. Audrey Hepburn was an unusual choice to play Rachel; she was not an actress associated with Westerns (this was her only one) and she is not convincing as a Native American. The film-makers, however, clearly wanted an established star in the role, which would have ruled out casting any actress of American Indian blood, and as the plot involves a romantic attraction between Rachel and Ben casting a white actress might have eased any possible problems with the Production Code. (The Code still officially banned mixed-race on-screen romances, although this tended to be overlooked if the non-white character was played by a white actress). Audrey herself may have been attracted to the movie by her own experiences of racism (she lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland) and by a desire to expand her range as an actress. Although she is best remembered today for light-hearted romantic comedies she was always anxious not to be typecast and, throughout her career, tended to alternate between this sort of film and more serious fare, appearing in the likes of "War and Peace", "The Nun's Story" and "The Children's Hour". In the event, she did not enjoy making "The Unforgiven", especially after she was injured falling from a horse, which perhaps explains why she never made another Western. She recovered from her injuries, however, and returned to the screen the following year with "Breakfast at Tiffany's", perhaps her greatest performance.Burt Lancaster was another actor who struggled successfully against typecasting, in his case as the hero of films noirs or of swashbuckling action-adventure movies, and by 1960 was starting to appear in the sort of serious, thoughtful roles which were to become his trademark in the latter part of his career. He gives the best performance in this film as Ben Zachary, the eldest of the three brothers, and a man torn between his instinctive honesty and his desire not to believe the unwelcome truth about his adoptive sister which, if generally known, would make the family pariahs in the eyes of their racist neighbours. The director John Huston is said to have described this as his least satisfying film, something which has always surprised me as he made a number of films far worse than this one, such as the tedious "The Bible" or the lame Bond spoof "Casino Royale". (Not everything Huston made was a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" or a "Red Badge of Courage"). Much of his dissatisfaction seems to have stemmed from a dispute between him and the production company. Huston wanted to make a serious statement about racism in the Old West (and, by extension, in modern America), whereas the studio wanted a more conventional action Western, which they felt would be both more commercial and less controversial. The resulting compromise seems to have pleased neither party. That does not mean, however, that it should not please the viewer. "The Unforgiven" is in many ways an exciting film, although not in the conventional action-adventure sense. Some of the action sequences, such as the Indian attack on the Zachary homestead, seem a bit too protracted. (And were the Indians such poor military tacticians as to waste so many lives attacking unimportant objectives? Lost Bird seems to have sacrificed around thirty of his best warriors in this assault). The excitement, rather, derives from the interaction of the various characters, the interaction between Abe, who is about to be hanged for horse-stealing, and Matilda, as she desperately tries to get him to admit that what he has said about her daughter is a lie, is almost unbearably tense. And despite Huston's reservations the film does have something significant to say about race relations; the position of people like Rachel, Indian by blood but white by culture, is something rarely explored in Westerns. This is an unusual Western, but a good one. 7/10

See it - Not to be confused with Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven," this is one of, if not the best, of Burt Lancaster's westerns. Better than "Scalphunters" and "Valdez is Coming," but in my opinion not quite as good as the action-packed "Ulzana's Raid." The plot is very similar to "The Searchers," only it is about an Indian girl raised by whites instead of a white girl raised by Indians. The movie is very well made, the story is heartfelt, and Lancaster and co-stars Audie Murphy and Audrey Hepburn are fantastic. It is pretty slow, but the ending is worth the wait. The 20-minute shootout at the end is one of the greatest finales I've ever seen in a western. 3 action rating.