Duel in the Sun

A half-Indian girl named Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) is torn between the two sons of a wealthy cattle baron. Jesse (Joseph Cotten) is the educated, mannered 'nice' one. Lewt (Gregory Peck) is a ladies' man and a bad boy. We can tell which is which because the good one typically wears lighter colors and the bad one wears darker colors. Helpful. Pearl just can't resist Lewt no matter how bad he treats her. Leave your political correctness at the door, folks. This one's got a little something to offend almost everybody.

Extravagant "epic" western from David O. Selznick was an attempt to achieve the same success of Gone with the Wind. It's pure tawdry hokum. Yet another starring vehicle for Selznick's protégé (and future wife), Jennifer Jones. I've never been a huge fan of hers. She's certainly attractive enough, with her high cheekbones and radiant smile. I even find her lisp endearing. But she was a very limited actress. Usually she was cast in sensitive parts where she spoke most of her lines in a whispery tone while soft music played. Here she plays to the rafters, hamming it up so loudly she makes Hedy Lamarr's performance in White Cargo seem subtle. Starring with Jones are Gregory Peck and her frequent costar, Joseph Cotten, one of the few male leads the jealous Selznick trusted around his lady love. Cotten is perfect (when wasn't he?) but Peck is miscast and overacts even worse than Jones. The absurd ending with those two is justifiably infamous. The rest of the cast is made up of exceptional talents like Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, and Herbert Marshall. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is fantastic. The sets and costumes are lavish, as they should be given the high production values this one had. The Technicolor is gorgeous. The script is laughably awful. Some of the dialogue these poor people have to say is just cringeworthy. Overall, it's a movie low on substance but high on spectacle. It keeps you interested throughout, despite its flaws (and maybe because of them). Definitely warrants a look but not everybody's cup of tea, for sure.

PURE OPERA. From the scenic backdrops seething in passionate colors to Jennifer Jones' over-ripe performance and Dimitri Tiomkin's tempestuous score...'Duel In The Sun' isn't just another soapy oater, it is the ultimate soapy oater. Brimming with more bad taste than any screenwriter could possibly misconceive, this Selznick classic is the penultimate guilty viewing pleasure...if you like you're Westerns on the sleazy side that is!

The performances are all unapologetically over-the-top, with Ms. Jones, in an Oscar winning performance no less, as Pearl Chavez, the 'half-breed' vixen torn between lust for Gregory Peck's Lewt McCanles, the bad-boy brother gone badder, and the 'save-me-from-myself' brand of love for Joseph Cotten's Jesse McCanles, the good brother with not-a-whole-heck-of-alot of sex appeal going for him. In between all this indecision, Ms. Jones sets fire to the scenery with as many sultry leers and poses as, I suppose, the censors of the time would permit her. "I'm TRASH, TRASH, TRASH," Pearl exclaims. And that about sums it all up. In spades! I should also make mention of the other Oscar winning performance, that by the venerable Lillian Gish as Laura Belle McCanles who, in perhaps the most painfully rapturous sequence, resurrects her silent film training in a tour-de-force of physical acting that, in less capable hands, would only be embarrassing. Not that you won't be tempted to laugh mind you, even Grand Opera, at the best of times, isn't this exquisitely sublime. And then there is Butterfly McQueen...as the befuddled maid (what else)...in the only role written for obvious comedic effect, whose long-winded sincerity couldn't be the more perfect foil for a hurried house full of whitees with nothing but sex on the brain...

On the technical side, it is an unquestionably ravishing film to look at. In glorious Technicolor, the 'Old West' never looked more mythic or more prone to tragedy...the 'campy' side that is. And, yet once more, Dimitri Tiomkin finesses our ears with a resounding melody of wide open spaces and of still bigger ambitions and desires, culminating in a symphonic tempest for two ill-fated (or over-sexed) lovers who could only be united in death.

WOW, this picture is right off the Harlequin Romance map! And I enjoyed every minute of it.

No need to recap the plot.

One thing about this overblown fandango— once seeing it, you won't forget it. How could anyone when everything is done to such tasteless excess. Poor Pearl (Jones). Apparently, Jones was told her part was that of a hot-blooded wench, which she unfortunately took to mean parboiled. It's hard not to laugh at the first hour when she acts like a nympho on steroids, tossing hair and leering wildly like pampas grass in a windstorm. Not far behind is that vintage ham Lionel Barrymore doing his usual blustery bit, like we won't get his hard-bitten patriarch unless he takes it into hyper speed. And who could have guessed that the usually constricted and constrained Gregory Peck could actually over-act. I think it was his first and last time—good thing, too.

It's possible to go on about the unrelenting excess— the sunsets that appear to hemorrhage, a musical score that's as necessary as sugar on molasses, and a loony ending that defies parody. But you get the idea. Too bad so much money and effort went into such a generally overheated result. Only Cotten, Gish and the black stallion come through unscathed. I'm thinking RKO could have made a dozen worthwhile programmers on the same budget. As things turned out, Selznick did his beloved Jones no favors with this one. It's hard to believe the man responsible for Gone with the Wind (1939) is also responsible for this swollen mess.

David O. Selznick spent the rest of his life trying to top Gone With the Wind. What other mountains did he have to climb after making the most acclaimed motion picture ever?

In addition he had another obsession, his second wife Jennifer Jones. He was going to make her the greatest leading lady in the history of film.

Well he didn't succeed at either, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Jones herself was in a peculiar position similar to her husband's. She got an Oscar for her first feature film after she changed her name from Phyllis Isley to Jennifer Jones. Selznick knew that she couldn't play saints all her life as she did in The Song of Bernadette. So for this western answer to Gone With the Wind as Pearl Chavez she plays about as opposite a character from Bernadette Soubirous as you can get.

Duel in the Sun got mixed reviews by the critics, but the public ate it up. It's the story of the McCanless family, parents Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish and sons Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck. Cotten is the good son, Peck the bad one. In fact as Lewt McCanless Peck played his worst character until Josef Mengele in Boys from Brazil.

A kissing cousin of their's Jennifer Jones comes to live with them. She's the offspring of an old beau of Lillian's, Herbert Marshall and the Indian wife he ran off with back in the day. Lillian and Herbert were kissing cousins also.

As Pearl Chavez, Jen gets the McCanless boys testosterone going into overdrive. Take one look at her and you can hardly blame them.

One of the not so hidden subtexts of Duel in the Sun is racism. Jennifer's good for a quick roll in the hay, but marriage is out of the question, at least for Gregory Peck. Barrymore's and Peck's racism is overt, the others not quite so, but it's still there.

The negotiations with Louis B. Mayer for Lionel Barrymore must have been interesting. Selznick's former wife was Irene Mayer, Louis's daughter.

One thing with Selznick, he spared no expense. He got the best in talent for this film. Dimitri Tiomkin did the score, King Vidor the direction, Ray Rennahan the color photography which is absolutely stunning.

He even got Bing Crosby to record Gotta Get Me Somebody to Love with Les Paul's guitar. Peck sang it in the film, Crosby's record sold a few platters.

He even got Orson Welles to do the off-screen narration if you don't recognize that voice.

It misses being a classic mainly because Selznick couldn't keep his hands off it. Sometimes the acting is about as subtle as a sledgehammer from all the performers. I'm willing to bet it's Selznick more than Vidor.

Yet it's good entertainment and Duel in the Sun does have its moments.

Well, it's obvious that Selznick was trying his best to recapture that GWTW magic...but this is an unbelievably inept failure. Here's what you can expect from this overblown sex-western:

--Jennifer Jones (in pancake make-up so orange that she put me more in mind of an Oompa-Loompa than the half-breed we're supposed to see) apparently directed to act as though she's Scarlett O'Hara with a lobotomy and bad grammar.

--Gregory Peck as rogue murdering rapist and the apple of his daddy's eye. At one point even doing a pretty decent vocal imitation of Clark Gable -- too bad it's just the voice.

--Lionel Barrymore lazily repeating his "It's a Wonderful Life" role from the same year -- wheelchair & grumpiness standing in for effort.

--Butterfly McQueen as kerchiefed ditzy maid. Hmmm, wonder where they got that idea?

All in all, a miserable movie experience. You'd think that since they cribbed from the best it'd have turned out better! Go figure.