Unavailable for years (and I’ve been waiting), The Furies has been added to the prestigious Criterion Collection. I gleefully ordered it through Netflix and watched it happily last week.
Directed by Anthony Mann in 1950, our story takes place in the 1870s New Mexico territory where T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston) is a cattle baron who built his ranch, the Furies, from scratch. He borrows from banks, pays hired hands and everyone in town with his own script (“T.C.’s”), and carries on low-level warfare with the Mexican squatters. He has lots of enemies. His headstrong daughter, Vance (Barbara Stanwyk), whom he favors over his son for some unspecified reasons, assumes she’ll run the Furies someday. But, no, you guessed it, that is not how things turn out.
The wonderful Stanwyk is at her stylized best, throwing her shoulders back, arms perpetually akimbo, as the quintessential “firebrand” in her usual heinous hairstyle. Unfortunately there is no one in the film to match her sturm und drang, and the movie largely fails because of her weak co-stars. Only Gilbert Roland stands up with her (as her sexy Hispanic friend Juan Herrera) and he (spoiler alert!) gets bumped off in a terrible plot twist that always leaves me seething.
Gilbert Roland and Stanwyk
I saw this movie one afternoon on TV way back in the day and it always stayed with me. It is one of those 50s westerns with a strong female lead who we know won’t be happy until she is tamed by some dude. She says things like: “I don’t think I like being in love. It puts a bit in my mouth.” Oh well. Such a movie can still be enjoyed on some level. For instance, the cinematographer was Oscar-nominated for this black and white oater and there are sunsets and wide shots galore. But the plot of the movie, based on a novel by Niven Busch (of Duel in the Sun fame), has so much emotional gnashing of teeth and galloping back and forth on horseback that it is difficult to take any of it very seriously. (This also may explain why I liked it so much as a teenager.)
All the way through this time I kept thinking–this could be so much better! First of all, whose stupid idea was it to cast Wendell Corey as Barbara’s love interest? Sort of the poor man’s Joseph Cotton, Corey was always adequate as the 2nd lead or “other guy”, but he just doesn’t cut the mustard as the hero of this piece–especially with Gilbert Roland side-lined as our heroine’s “friend”. Please. In what universe?
Sorry. No way.
Rip Darrow (great name, right?), a saloon-owner who also wants revenge on Barbara’s father because he killed his father and stole his land, should have been played by Gregory Peck or Robert Mitchum or William Holden. C’mon.
Also Walter Huston (in his final role) careens back and forth between evil megalomaniac and good-hearted old man so much, that the viewer is not sure how to feel. I think at the end one is supposed to love the old guy, like his cowhands do. (He wrestles a bull to the ground and the cowboys sing a song about him.) But again, please. No way. I could hardly forgive Barbara for forgiving him! Barbara and her lover Wendell spend a good part of the movie wrecking revenge on her pater, but then the ending is all sugar-coated in the standard 1950s way. (Believe me, I did not forget what he did to Juan Herrera!)
Finally, I think we have to blame the director Anthony Mann, who just did not know how to make sense of all this. Yes, the plot is a bit disturbed, but I still think this could have been a lively, action-packed western. The bits with Barbara and Gilbert have potential and I liked Blanche Yurka as the Herrera mater. She does “crazy mother” very well. The Mexicans are all, of course, (except Gilbert Roland) terrible stereotypes. It is just a bit of a mish-mosh. I mean for heaven’s sake, even Dame Judith Anderson, the great stage actress, is part of the drama–Stanwyck attacks her with scissors!
Oh well–it is still my Friday pick–so much better than any new movie you could rent! I have to admit, one does get caught up in it all. Try to relax and enjoy!
dual personalities 