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.
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.