OVP: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

Film: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Stars: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan, Frank Conroy, Harry Davenport, Anthony Quinn, Mary Beth Hughes, Jane Darwell
Director: William A. Wellman
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

In the early years of the Oscars, 16 films received only one nomination, but it was somehow for the big category, Best Picture.  This list is due to a variety of factors (campaigns were different then, studios had more control over who was nominated, for a number of these films there were simply less categories as options).  The final of these 16 films (to date) to only receive a nomination for Best Picture is the small (it's only 75 minutes long) Henry Fonda western The Ox-Bow Incident, which both Fonda and eventually Clint Eastwood would highlight as one of their all-time favorite movies.  Since my dish is out (like a lot of Minnesotans, my house is buried in snow right now and it was too cold to go outside and fix the dish at 9:30), I figured it was a good time to clear a film out of my DVR, so I caught it as my late-night Saturday movie this weekend.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in a small Nevada town in 1885 where Gil (Fonda) and Art (Morgan) are eyed with suspicion by the locals, assuming the two men to be rustlers.  It turns out there are rustlers afoot, as we learn soon that Larry Kincaid, a local ranchman, has been murdered by such men, and suddenly the mob in the bar wants justice.  Only a sole shop owner Davies (Davenport) seems to think this is a bad idea, but he's overruled by the townspeople, and suddenly they are on horseback before they come across a trio of strangers, including a handsome young man named Donald Martin (Andrews) and a quiet Mexican called Juan (Quinn), who turns out to be a famed gambler.  The three men are accused of killing Larry Kincaid, and after a 12 Angry Men-style moment where only a few of the mob decide to wait until the sheriff gets there, the three men are hanged despite there being no tangible evidence that they weren't just associates of Kincaid's.  The mob finally chances upon the sheriff, and proudly tells him that Kincaid's murderers are dead.

The thing is, though, that Kincaid isn't dead-he'd just been shot, and the men who shot him are already in custody.  The mob suddenly realizes that their brutish mentality has cost three innocent men their lives.  In 1943 this might have come as a surprise to the viewer, but for me it was pretty obvious that this was where we were going, as the films of the 1940's frequently echoed what would later feel like a Twilight Zone-style lesson of tolerance told through metaphor.  The film ends with Gil, our hero, having his head held high because he was one of the few to stand for Donald Martin getting justice, but no one feels particularly good, and it's somewhat implied that the whole mob could face criminal repercussions.

The movie itself is nothing more than that metaphor, and as a result it ages kind of badly.  Issue films are generally ones that don't work as well in hindsight, because there's little growth of the characters. What was the story, for example, of Gil's romance with Rose (Hughes, in one of her rare major studio turns), which culminates with an awkward encounter with her new husband...and then suddenly nothing happens with her, as we never see her again and Hank Fonda, who was pining for her earlier never really brings her up again?  The film is good, don't get me wrong (Fonda is his great stoic self, and I liked the supporting turn from Frank Conroy as a bloodthirsty army major), but it's hard to call such a one-dimensional script a classic, even if it might have been ripped off by stronger filmmakers in the years since.  The Ox-Bow Incident is that rare film that probably would have been better had it been longer, and that brevity likely cost it other nominations with the Academy-after all, there's barely enough time for other filmic elements to register.