One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick's artistic follow-up of GONE WITH THE WIND, DUEL IN THE SUN is a lush western drama with King Vidor ostensibly at the helm, alas, in the wake of the creative difference between him and Selznick, the latter had to hire no less than six directors (himself included) to finish the shooting when the former reneged, so it is accountable that the final product is somewhat a curate's egg. After her her Caucasian father Scott Chavez (Marshall) is hung for killing her "trash" two-timing Indian mother (Losch), a beleaguered mestiza Pearl Chavez (Jones) enters the foster family of Laura Belle (Gish), Scott's second cousin and quondam squeeze, who has been married to Senator Jackson McCanles (Barrymore), the landowner of a vast cattle ranch called Spanish Bit, and borne him two sons, the genteel, open-minded Jesse (Cotten) and the younger, louche Lewt (Peck).Beyond any shadow of a doubt, a brotherly rivalry is fomented when there is such a nymphet in the household, to Pearl, although the two candidates' Manichaean disparity is clear as day, it is her own conflict between a tamed good girl (being educated like a lady by Jesse) and a wild bad girl (the trash like her mother, pining for Lewt's obsessive libido) that afflicts her profoundly, like her mixed parentage, these two congenital forces are constantly at loggerheads, and are not helped by Jesse's overtly lofty moral compass and Lewt's toxic masculinity and megalomania (who reckons her as his exclusive property, but cannot marry her due to her dark skin), she seesaws between them, to a point it is too bathetic and abject for one's palate, but when the crunches comes, under that broiling sun against the rugged man-face mountain, she knows the price to pay for being enamored with a hardened rascal, here is the most torrid and sensual love/hate self-destruction that takes two to tango, credits must be given to its morally incorrect dare that circumvents the Hays Code censors of its time. To today's eyes, DUEL IN THE SUN is roundly tarnished by its culturally insensitive casting, the unmasked racism (Barrymore's Senator is too intractable and bombastic to merit a feel-good reconciliation), and some wide inconsistency in the narrative (e.g. a gratuitous train wrecking scene has no import or whatsoever in the context other than to create some action and noise), but as for its visual grandeur and horseback bravado, the film is for shizzle a gas for oater-philes, not to mention a young Peck is furnished with a rare opportunity to play up his villainous side, laced with his drop dead gorgeousness and a mischievous self-consciousness, completely outstrips Joseph Cotten's meek benevolence; Jennifer Jones, under her ethnicity-altering warpaint, emulates a feral posturing to a slightly hokey impression but totally earns her stripes in the coda when all her emotions well up affectingly, mixed with dirt, tears and blood. Among its bankable supporting players, a delicately amiable Lillian Gish is vouchsafed with her one and only Oscar nomination through her extraordinary career; Lionel Barrymore has an overbearing presence too big to ignore but it is Herbert Marshall who bowls audience over with his brief but poignant appearance in the beginning, ire and contrition is alternately checked inside or oozing outside; lastly, Butterfly McQueen evokes sharp compassion as a barmy maid who can never finish her sentence more because her status doesn't deserve no one's time than her apparent prolixity. In toto, this far-off Hollywood epic is passé in its configuration and ideology, but effuses a sizable magnitude of spectacular whether to accommodate one's eyes or stir one's sentiments.

When Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall) kills his wife and her lover, he contacts his cousin and former passion Laura Belle (Lillian Gish) and makes arrangements for his daughter Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) to live with her and her family since he will be executed. On the arrival, Pearl is welcomed by Jesse McCanles (Joseph Cotton), the younger son of Belle that is a lawyer that brings her to the huge ranch Spanish Bit that belongs to his father, the invalid Senator McCanles (Lionel Barrymore) that lives on a wheelchair. Pearl is also welcomed by Laura Belle, but the Senator is cold and ironic with her, calling her half-breed. Soon Pearl meets Belle's older son Lewton 'Lewt' McCanles (Gregory Peck), who is a scoundrel and a wolf, and he tells his intentions to her. One night, Lewt forces Pearl and she submits to him and she becomes ashamed and angry with Lewt. Meanwhile the railroad is ready to trespass the Spanish Bit fence and the Senator organizes a group of men to defend his real estate. However the railroad people has a court order and the army on their side and Jesse tries to explain the Senator that he should let them in. However the Senator expels his son from the ranch and when Jesse is going to say goodbye to Pearl, he finds Lewt in her room. Jesse leaves Pearl behind and Lewt promises to marry her; but when she learns his real intention, she believes she is trash and becomes her lover. "Duel in the Sun" is a melodramatic soap opera in the Old West, with detestable characters. Jennifer Jones does not fit to the role of a naive young woman and the viewer does not feel sorrow for her due to her promiscuous behavior. Gregory Peck has an excellent performance in the role of a scum. David O. Selznick's pretension to make a film comparable with "Gone with the Wind" is quite absurd. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Duelo ao Sol" ("Duel in the Sun")

I would say, bluntly, that this film has aged terribly and had better not to show anymore, such an old Hollywood actress. The ambition of Selznick, his sickly pursuit of Oscars, his "Gone with the Wind 2" fever, forces production to sink in an outdated grandiloquence, which could impress the backward audience at the time but fails to delight cinephiles from today. "Duel in the Sun" offers a clumsy thematic treatment, grotesque characters, and a hell of Tiomkin score worthy of a Max Steiner's brass band. As for the direction, this is a dire rigidity and a drought that casts despair over the aficionado of this highly fertile cinematographic genre. The film is more a piece of crap than a western.

The hero of this glitzy and gigantic Western is not the well-intentioned but ultimately slutty Jennifer Jones, not the dull, morally upright figure of Joseph Cotton, not the roguish but psychopathic Gregory Peck, but rather the composer of the musical score, Dmitri Tiompkin.You never heard such bombast. There's a "prelude" that seems to last half an hour, followed by a scarcely shorter "overture." Tiompkin has used cowbells before. Here, the head honcho of Spanish Bit, Lionel Barrymore, signals his men to mount up by ringing a church bell. The church bell is joined by more church bells, one after another, all in harmony, until the ears ring as well as the bells. I must say, though, that I missed the flatulence of the trombones that appeared in his later work, a kind of punctuation made of loud BLATTS like a dozen elephants farting in tune.And every character and every emotion has its own leitmotif. They're all euphonious, easy to listen to, like Grofé's "Grand Canyon Suite." Poor, sentimental old Lillian Gish, whether defiant or dying, gets only "Beautiful Dreamer." Producer David O. Selznick, high on benzedrine, must have been taking a crack at the epic that made him famous and rich in Hollywood, "Gone With the Wind." You know -- a real BIG one. It's not too hard to spot the isomorphisms. Jennifer Jones, whose heart leads her astray, is Scarlett O'Hara. Joseph Cotton is assigned the role of the weak gentleman. Peck is the feckless cynic who sees through everybody, like Rhett Butler."Gone With the Wind" was so overblown that some of the dramatic incidents were actually funny, easily parodied. It's known as "bathos." This one is even more bloated, only without any good tag lines. Jennifer Jones, who cannot conquer her half-breed nature, is toothsome. She has dark make up and crimson lip stick, so when she gapes or smiles, her blinding white teeth resemble the plastic ones you might buy in a novelty shop to go with your Dracula costume.The whole affair is a Grand Guignol of lust. There's an extra-familial conflict: Barrymore as the owner of a huge ranch on the one hand, and the railroad that needs to cut through his land on the other. Not nearly enough time is given to it. Instead we have Gregory Peck repeated seducing and raping Jennifer Jones, when it's not the other way round.