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 herher Caucasian father Scott Chavez (Marshall) is hung for killing her “trash” two-timing Indian mother (Losch), abeleaguered 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 objective 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 (eg 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,emulatesa 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.
referential films: King Vidor's STELLA DALLAS (1937, 7.2/10); Victor Fleming's GONE WITH THE WIND (1939, 8.4/10)
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