(1947)
4
Bruce Eder
There's enough plot and complexity of character in Raoul Walsh's Pursued to fill two movies, yet between them Walsh and screenwriter Niven Busch make the film flow easily, and even compellingly. One of the strangest and most haunting films ever made by Walsh -- who was usually more highly praised for his ability to handle action than for the mood or tone of his movies -- Pursued inaugurated the "psychological" western. Out of its lead sprung such works as Anthony Mann's Winchester '73 and Henry King's The Bravados. Indeed, Pursued is so focused on the psychology of its characters, that its western setting is almost incidental. Structurally, it's far closer to film noir than to the western as the latter was understood at the time. Ironically, the movie grew out of its screenwriter's frustration over another project -- novelist and scriptwriter Niven Busch had intended to bring his own 1944 bestseller Duel In The Sun to the screen as producer, but after much behind-the-scenes haggling, that project was taken away from him and ended up the property of producer David O. Selznick, who turned Duel In The Sun into such a gargantuan production, and so dramatically over-the-top a film, that it scarcely resembled Busch's story, much less his intended movie version. In response to this set back, and to make his own "answer" to what he perceived as Selznick's making hash of his novel, Busch wrote Pursued and got it produced with his own wife, Teresa Wright, as the female lead and Robert Mitchum (in an acting tour-de-force) as the star. Pursued was everything that Duel In The Sun wasn't: Subtle in its nuances and measured and patient in its plot development, deeply atmsopheric in startlingly rich black-and-white (as opposed to the Selznick movie's garish use of Technicolor), and quietly ominous in its mood. The movie crawled with Freudian and Jungian elements in practically every corner of the screen and plot, and it seemed to offer viewers new angles of approach to understanding its complexities with each new screening. None of this could have been accomplished by Walsh and Busch without a cast and crew that did their work spot-on perfect -- every performance in Pursued is worth savoring; indeed, amid all of the top stars and future stars (including Harry Carey Jr.), one can look at it today and wonder what ever became of Ernest Severn, the young actor who played Mitchum's characted of Jeb at age 10, because even he was brilliant in his performance. Mitchum, Dean Jagger, Judith Anderson, and Teresa Wright were never much better in too much else that they ever did, and this was among the finest films that Walsh ever made, as well as offering 101 minutes of some of James Wong Howe's best photography.
awards for Pursued on AllMovie
Pursued (1947)
Telluride Film Festival
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Nominated |
Film Presented
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1990 |
