OVP: Duel in the Sun (1946)

Film: Duel in the Sun (1946)

Stars: Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, Butterfly McQueen

Director: King Vidor

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jennifer Jones, Supporting Actress-Lillian Gish)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we discussed last week, Gregory Peck's initial career took off like a rocket, with huge hits such as The Yearling, Spellbound, and The Valley of Decision making him a household name pretty much overnight.  The late-1940's, though, were something of a disappointment.  He starred in another Hitchcock film, The Paradine Case, which was a big flop, as well as the western Yellow Sky and the romance The Great Sinner, neither of which set the box office on fire.  While Twelve O'Clock High and The Gunfighter would bring life back to his career, during this time frame he only had two really notable films.  The first was Gentleman's Agreement, which won the Best Picture Oscar (and got Peck his third nomination) and was a massive success, but one that I've seen before so it wasn't eligible for this series.  The second was one I had heard legend of after reading about movies for 25+ years, but somehow had avoided actually watching: David O. Selznick's infamous follow-up to Gone with the Wind, the soap opera western Duel in the Sun, our movie for today.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on the novel by Niven Busch, Duel in the Sun is the story of a young biracial woman named Pearl Chavez (played by the very much not biracial Jennifer Jones), the daughter of a white father and a Mexican mother.  After her father (Marshall) kills her mother for having an affair, she's sent to live with his childhood sweetheart (and second cousin) Laura Belle (Gish) on a giant ranch she lives on with her husband Senator Jackson McCanless (Barrymore) and their two sons the proper Jesse (Cotten) and the lascivious Lewt (Peck).  This sets up an inevitable love triangle between the two men and Pearl, with her drawn to Jesse's decency, but clearly there is a hormonal attraction between she & Lewt that cannot be denied in the Texas heat.  Along the way, she tries to find ways of escaping Lewt, including marrying Sam Pierce (Bickford), but Lewt kills Sam, making him a fugitive from the law, but still Pearl can't stop her desire for him.  When it becomes clear that Jesse can save her, even after he's shot by Lewt trying, Pearl understands that the only way that she'll break free of Lewt is to kill him, which she does...but in the process, she also ends up in his arms, their desire in life to be together impossible to deny, even as they're literally murdering each other.

Duel in the Sun was not, it has to be said, Gone with the Wind.  Selznick's obsession with equalling his previous film's success, particularly with the woman he was obsessed with & having an affair with at the time, Jennifer Jones, is kind of the stuff of Hollywood legend.  This was a deeply troubled shoot, and cost nearly $8 million to make & promote, which was basically unheard of at the time, and so despite a solid box office, it barely broke even.  The problem, of course, was that it wasn't Gone with the Wind (nothing is, quite frankly, though Titanic probably comes close enough to earn comparison)-chasing that dragon is the stuff of heartache, even for the man who initially produced it.  The film is tackier, it's less enthralling, and no aspect of the production quite lives up to that film.

If you get past that comparison, though, it's not a bad movie even if it's clearly a "bad" movie.  The film rarely makes a lot of sense, but it goes off of impulse, all id and no ego.  But it's entertaining throughout.  The score is fun, the cinematography is really horny but it works (the cameramen are obsessed with the gorgeous Jones & Peck in all of their carnal lust).  The acting is bizarre, but not boring.  Jennifer Jones, whom I've seen enough of at this point to be able to say she wasn't a very good actress, makes so many choices, swinging for the fences in every scene, but it kind of works with the unbalanced nature of the script.  Save for Beat the Devil, this is undoubtedly Jones' most intriguing performance (at least of what I've seen), and while she's not Oscar-worthy, she certainly is something.  Lillian Gish is a bit bland in the only film that she'd be nominated for an Oscar for (it's a pity it wasn't for The Wind or The Night of the Hunter instead), likely getting it with one deathbed confessional, but overall playing a kindly matron in one of Oscar's worst Supporting Actress lineups.  Butterfly McQueen is playing basically the exact same character she got in Gone with the Wind, channeling Prissy as if that will get Selznick literally back to his original movie (she's the only principle actor to appear in both films).

And as for Gregory Peck?  His casting is...a choice.  I've talked about this a bit, but it's strange that Peck would become most associated with To Kill a Mockingbird, a film where he exudes absolute no sex appeal, because his exaggerated face (big eyes, pouty lips) and lanky frame were used to make audiences thirsty in the mid-1940's, and that's definitely the case here.  He looks hot in Duel in the Sun.  The only problem here is that Peck is not meant to be playing a "sexy math teacher" vibes like he'd play in most of his films of this era, but instead is supposed to be a dangerous "bad boy you make out with under the bleachers" sort of vibes, a forbidden sexiness that you know is wrong but you can't help it.  Peck, though, is not good at this-he's too inherently decent, and playing a villain here who also has to turn you on...it just doesn't work.

The Wind (1928)

Film: The Wind (1928)
Stars: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle
Director: Victor Sjostrom
Oscar History: Early on with the Oscars, they were quite reluctant to nominate silent films past the first ceremony, and so it wasn't nominated despite it being considered a landmark film today.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

One of the great tragedies of The Jazz Singer coming along when it did was that the Silent Era arguably hit its creative peak around 1927-28.  While there had been classics made before, some of the movies we think of as the best films of the Silent Era (The Crowd, Sunrise, The Passion of Joan of Arc) all were released at the very end of the period, becoming relics but also examples of lost promise-an indication that we might have been in for more sweeping stories during the period.  One of the best examples of this, that I had not seen until Criterion called my cards (by taking it off their platform & making me finally get to the movie) is The Wind, the last major silent film released by MGM, and generally considered to be one of the studio's best.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a poor woman named Letty (Gish), who moves from Virginia to live with her cousin Beverly (Earle) on his ranch in Sweetwater.  While she's going there, she meets a sneaky man named Wirt Roddy (Love), who flirts with her on the train and tells her about how the winds in Texas make women crazy.  When she gets there, Beverly is delighted to see her, but his wife Cora (Cumming) is jealous of their relationship and how Letty is more beloved by her children than Cora is, and she throws her out of the house in a rage.  She then is forced to marry one of her local suitors, and after she finds out Wirt is married, she goes for a sweet-but-simple neighbor, Lige (Hanson), who learns on their wedding night that she doesn't have any desire for him.  As the film progresses, the winds drive Letty more mad, and during one particular wind storm, where she resists Wirt but after she passes out he rapes her (this isn't said explicitly, but it's heavily implied), she kills him when he says they must run away together (insinuating that he thinks it was consensual).  She does kill him, and buries him, and then confesses what happened to Lige when he returns.  Magically the winds have disappeared the body (Lige says that they do this when a death was justified), and Letty realizes that she has loved him the whole time, falling into his arms & no longer fearing the winds.

The plot kind of sounds silly (cause it is a little silly), but it doesn't feel that way in the film.  The Wind is really good, and its best aspects are showing the cruelty of men when it comes to their attitudes toward women.  Letty goes through hell in this film, enduring indifference, cruelty, and ultimately sexual violence, and the film doesn't shy away from that, and neither does Gish's performance.  This is the sort of film that just a few years later would have surely been flagged by the Hays Code for its frank (for the 1920's) take on sexuality.  However, the performances, particularly Gish and Cumming (the sort of supporting role that Oscar might have noticed had the category existed at the 2nd Oscars), are astounding.  This is the best silent work that I've seen from Gish, and maybe her best work period, give-or-take Night of the Hunter.

The other thing I want to call out here is the score.  The film exists in multiple different prints, and I am going to insist if you're seeing this for the first time that you catch the one scored by Carl Davis (this appears to be the one most often shown on TCM).  The score is unreal-it's one of the best scores, possibly the best score, I've ever seen attributed to a silent movie, and it's so effective in the film.  It really captures the passion of the winds, the terror of them, and adds an element to Gish's performance that probably wasn't there initially, but is a sign of a great composer who can see a way to add an element to the movie that is beneficial.  I don't normally get in for a conversation of "you have to see the X cut of a movie" as I think films should stand on their own merits regardless of the cut (and if they can't, that cut shouldn't be available to the film-going public), but I'm making an exception here.

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Film: The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Stars: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthal, Miriam Coper, Mary Alden
Director: DW Griffith
Oscar History: Predated the Oscars
Snap Judmgent Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have dreaded watching The Birth of a Nation for years.  Honestly, AFI, what were you thinking?  I mean, I get the historical nature of the film and it being pretty much the first major feature-length film, but what an arduous movie to put on your greatest films list (thankfully you rectified the situation on your tenth anniversary edition).  And yet, I'm a completist, and I decided to take the three-hour tour through one of the most controversial films of all-time in order to finally, eighteen years later, finish the list (I saved a better film we'll get to later this year for the final checkmark).

(Spoilers Ahead) For those of you who haven't read what is the equivalent of cinematic War and Peace (even though War and Peace is actually a pretty good book from what I can tell), The Birth of a Nation is the story of the American South, told from the perspective of a group of southern soldiers.  As the film was released over 100 years ago, you can tell where we're going with the cringe-worthiness, but first it's worth pointing out that while there is racism in the first half of the film, the movie isn't as bad as I was expecting during the Civil War portion of the movie.  The action scenes during this period of the film were pretty impressive.  In an era well, well before CGI, we see battle sequences with dozens and occasionally hundreds of extras involved in extended marches and combats, and it's sort of staggering considering that film was in its infancy how much of these methods would be copied by pretty much everyone that followed Griffith, including far more impressively by Griffith himself a year later with the superior Intolerance.  The movie's focus on the battle, rather than the silliness of some of the girls and the soldiers that fawn on them (though Lillian Gish, always wonderful, rises above her dutiful and admired Elsie better than almost anyone in the film, where the acting is pretty bad even for the day), is a smart move and I can see why audiences were astounded to such a degree by the movie during these parts.

However, once Lincoln is assassinated and Reconstruction hits, we are left with an appalling display.  Even in 1915 the glorification of the KKK (of which our main character is a leader and member) appears in horribly bad taste, offensively portraying black men as lazy and over-sexualized, particularly in regard to the white female main characters.  The film shows a character based on Sen. Thaddeus Stevens, publicly destroying the now relatively well-received congressman (whose reputation admittedly at the time was still badly-bruised, particularly for Southern sympathizers), and makes him out to be both calculating and imbecilic, allowing his underlings to create an army out to "destroy White America."  The film glorifies lynching in some cases, and makes vigilantism something to celebrate.  The movie's politics are difficult to believe, even if you take yourself out of the artistic aspect and just look at it as an historical document, as the racism feels particularly raw.  It's worth noting, though, from an artistic standpoint the story jumbles when it tries to insert its politics in this portion, frequently creating too many subplots and sort of glossing over portions of the main characters' arches.

In summation, then, I cannot say the film doesn't have some things worth acknowledging.  The effects, the staging of certain scenes is damn impressive both for the time, and quite frankly for all-time considering how much work it is to do what computers make us take for granted crowd shots.  The film, in its first half, while not excellent is at least cogent and is better-plotted than you would expect from such a film.  However, the second half is a travesty, making you want to break the DVD or fast forward to get to the end and cross it off your damn "I saw it" list.  As a result I'm going with a two star rating because it's too impressive in certain sequences to deserve just one, but I can't bring it to three where it seems like I was possibly recommending the movie.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  This is a very famous movie and you've almost certainly seen clips if not the whole thing-how do you stomach the politics of the film while still admitting certain technical aspects are impressive?  Share in the comments!

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 3

I'm on a roll here, so I'm just going to keep this countdown going (we'll possibly have a quick break in-between Parts 3 and 4, but we're only at the halfway point here so lots of great actressing to come).  If you missed Parts 1 or 2, please click here and here so you're all caught up.  And now, onto the last nine actresses from the AFI's 25 Greatest Actress countdown.

17. Lillian Gish (1893-1993)

Oscar Nominations: Gish would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career for the bawdy western Duel in the Sun.  The Academy wisely gave her an Honorary Oscar at the 43rd Academy Awards for an extraordinarily long (it would stretch 75 years) career.
Probably Best Known Today For: Her incredible longevity, and having a name that is synonymous with Silent Era cinema.  She doesn't have a specific film role that people know her from, but the name Lillian Gish conjures a bygone era of Hollywood.
My Favorite Performance: Her career stretched so many decades and so many periods it's difficult to pick a specific favorite, so I'm going with two and I don't care what you think.  If it's Silent Era Gish, it would have to be her mesmerizing work as Eternal Motherhood in Intolerance (a film that has to be seen to be believed), but if it's Sound Era Gish surely I would need to go with her work as Rachel Cooper (forever brandishing that gun) opposite Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: It would probably have to be one of the D.W. Griffith films (she starred in all five of his most acclaimed and successful pictures), and considering it contains one of the most iconic images of her, I'll go with Gish floating on ice in Way Down East.

18. Shirley Temple (1928-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Temple never received a competitive Oscar nomination or win, but she did pick up the first Juvenile Award at the Oscars in 1934.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the quintessential child star.  Like Gish, very few people could name an actual Shirley Temple movie, but everyone knows who she is, thanks to those dimples and her curly hair.  Her moniker is also synonymous with a fruity non-alcoholic cocktail that every little kid has in hopes of emulating the fancy (not so angelic) drinks their parents are imbibing.
My Favorite Performance: All right, the third leg of this competition is when my shame grows exponentially.  I have never seen a single child performance of Shirley Temple's.  That said, I have seen some of her work as an adult, and though it has been many (MANY) years since I last saw it, I actually remember her fondly in John Ford's Fort Apache.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Clearly there's a few that I need to get caught up with, so I don't know if I should cite Temple on the staircase with Bill Robinson in The Little Colonel, her pining for "Animal Crackers in Her Soup" in Curly Top, her iconic work as Johanna Spyri's titular heroine in Heidi, or jumping aboard the good ship lollipop in Bright Eyes.  I probably need a marathon.

19. Rita Hayworth (1918-1987)

Oscar Nominations: Ms. Hayworth is our third performer to never win or be nominated for an Academy Award, proving that clearly the bombshells did not play well with classical AMPAS (the other two so far being Marilyn and Mae West).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her iconic looks and glamour.  Though not as central to pop culture as Marilyn, she was the 1940's equivalent of the actress, and her name conjures sophisticated beauty and a spectacular mane of red hair.  She also has a key role (as a poster) in The Shawshank Redemption, which many modern film stars will recognize her photo from.
My Favorite Performance: This is going to make me hang my head, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don't believe that I have ever seen a Rita Hayworth movie.  I was always entranced by her beauty as a cinema-adoring young man, but without AMPAS to guide me in her direction I never got into one of the movies.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Surely Gilda has to be at the top of the list (I have seen her "put the blame on Mame" in film clips, of course), what with her brilliant hair-tossing.  My adoration of Orson Welles also means that The Lady from Shanghai would also be high on my wish list.

20. Lauren Bacall (1924-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Bacall would receive an Oscar nomination very late in her career for The Mirror Has Two Faces (losing in a major upset to Juliette Binoche).  In 2009 she would receive an Honorary Academy Award "in recognition of her central place in the Golden Age of motion pictures."
Probably Best Known Today For: Her short but memorable marriage to Humphrey Bogart.  Bogie and Baby are one of those couples like Liz and Dick and Paul and Joanne that continue to dominate the public's obsession with Hollywood romance to this day (Brangelina, anyone?).
My Favorite Performance: I mentioned this in my obituary to Bacall, but To Have and Have Not remains my favorite of her work.  I love the sheer confidence that she portrays, never really seeming the nineteen-years-old she is onscreen, and commanding that leading role in a way few other actors could in their debut performances.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have seen half of the Bogie/Bacall filmography, and of the two I have remaining, I think The Big Sleep is probably the more pivotal movie to check out (rather than Dark Passage), though both flicks are in my Netflix queue.

21. Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Loren received two Oscar nominations in her career, winning for Two Women in 1961 (the first person to win for a foreign-language film).  She would go on to win an Honorary Oscar in 1991 for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: For starters, thankfully being alive and still working (the only woman on this list still with us).  Loren recently starred in Rob Marshall's Nine, but is probably best known for her enduring beauty.  Consistently considered one of the most striking and attractive women in the history of cinema, she was a major star at the height of America's fascination with foreign language cinema. (Completely Random Aside-I once had a car that I named after Loren because the car was so pretty).
My Favorite Performance: I am pretty lax in my Loren film-watching, but I can claim that I have seen her Oscar-winning work in Two Women, and for lack of a better choice, I'm going to go with that for my favorite (still have a lot to see here).  I also remember really liking Houseboat as a kid.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I am going to go with Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, which unites Loren with one of her favorite directors (Vittorio de Sica) and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

22. Jean Harlow (1911-1937)

Oscar Nominations: Like our three other major sex symbols on this list, Harlow would never be nominated for or win an Academy Award.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original Marilyn.  Harlow was to the 1930's what Rita was to the 1940's and Marilyn was to the 1950's-a bombshell the public couldn't get enough of, and like Monroe, she is also remembered for her tragic early demise (from kidney disease in 1937 at only 26).
My Favorite Performance: I could totally cheat here and say City Lights, which is indeed one of my favorite silent films and a truly wonderful movie, but Harlow has only a bit part in it.  As a result, Harlow joins Rita Hayworth on the list of actors whom I have seen no major movies of their filmography.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: At this point, everything, clearly.  I'm most looking forward to Red Dust, where she is at her most glamorous, and the critically-acclaimed Dinner at Eight.  Honestly, though, you could easily add Hell's Angels, The Public Enemy, Platinum Blonde, or Libeled Lady to that list and I would have no qualms.

23. Carole Lombard (1908-1942)

Oscar Nominations: Lombard only received one Oscar nomination in her career, for her work in My Man Godfrey in 1936 (she lost to Luise Rainer).
Probably Best Known Today For: If Lombard is known for anything today, it is likely her tragic demise.  Lombard, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and at the peak of her career tragically died in a plane accident when her aircraft crashed into a mountain.  The death was felt all over Hollywood, and the press heavily covered her mourning husband, Clark Gable.
My Favorite Performance: It's hard to really top My Man Godfrey, one of a string of truly brilliant comedies of the 1930's (the dramatic films, in my opinion, didn't hold up to the screwball masterworks of this era), and Lombard had wildly good chemistry with William Powell in the picture (this despite them having been divorced several years earlier-can you even fathom that happening now with someone like Brad and Jen or Tom and Nicole?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not To Be, which has been rescued by cinephiles after a tepid initial reception.

24. Mary Pickford (1892-1979)

Oscar Nominations: Pickford received one Oscar nomination in her career, and thanks to her insane celebrity at the time she won despite its questionable quality (for Coquette).  A more appropriate award came over 45 years later when she picked up an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being the original America's Sweetheart.  Much like Lillian Gish, most people would have difficulty coming up with any of her films, but her name brings to mind the Silent Era and her role as one of the biggest stars of early cinema (likely the biggest female star of the era).
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to balk on this one, as the only Pickford performance that I have seen is Coquette, which is tragically bad (possibly the worst Oscar-winning performance I have ever seen).  I don't think it'd be appropriate to pin one of Hollywood's most significant founders with that as their best work.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Obviously most of her principle work in silent pictures.  I would probably start with Sparrows, which is considered one of her finest and most interesting pictures, and far more in her acting wheelhouse than Coquette.

25. Ava Gardner (1922-1990)

Oscar Nominations: Gardner would receive only one Oscar nomination in her career, for Mogambo in 1953 (she would lose that year to Audrey Hepburn).
Probably Best Known Today For: Her extremely high profile marriages to and relationships with some very famous men.  She was married three times, to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and most notably to Frank Sinatra in one of the most storied Hollywood marries of the 1950's.  She was also in a romantic relationship with Howard Hughes (chronicled in The Aviator, where she was played by Kate Beckinsale), and had a strong (possibly romantic) friendship with Ernest Hemingway.
My Favorite Performance: I haven't seen a lot of Gardner's work, but certainly my favorite of her performances was in Show Boat, partially because of Gardner but mostly because it's one of my mom's favorite films.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Probably the classic 1959 drama On the Beach, where she stars opposite Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire in a movie about the fallout of nuclear war.

And there you have it (fifteen years after the fact)-a look at the 25 greatest actresses from the American Film Institute.  We'll continue our five-part series tomorrow, but in the meantime head to the comments and discuss today's nine actresses-who is your favorite in the bunch?  What are your favorites of all of their films?  And what movies did you just write down as ones you still need to see?