Say you're 44-year-old Hollywood producer David O. Selznick and it's been seven years and a World War since your last Technicolor feature, "Gone with the Wind," which beat out not only "The Wizard of Oz" but "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Stagecoach" and "Wuthering Heights" for the Best Picture Oscar of 1939. How does a nice Jewish boy from Pittsburgh top that? Why, with "Duel in the Sun," so overblown and grandiose that it's acquired the nickname "Lust in the Dust". The screenplay was written by Niven Busch, whose wife was Teresa Wright, for whom the female lead role was intended as a departure from her terminally wholesome image, but in a spectacular piece of bad timing, she became pregnant early in production and had to drop out. Selznick then offered the role to his 27-year-old gorgeous Gentile girlfriend Jennifer Jones (the former Phyllis Walker), whom he later married.
I don't know if the film's historical background is accurate, but the action is set against the coming of the railroad to the Texas ranchlands and the opposition of the ranchers to the government's appropriation of rights-of-way by eminent domain for their cronies, the railroad magnates. Jones plays Pearl Chavez, a "half-breed", whose father kills Pearl's mother and her lover and is sentenced to death. Pearl goes to live with distant relatives on a ranch in Spanish Bit, Texas, and the sultry beauty's arrival immediately stirs up trouble in the already dysfunctional household, aggravating tensions between the brothers Jesse and Lewt (like lewd, get it?) McCanles. Jesse (Joseph Cotten) is the good but "gutless" son and Lewt (a very young Gregory Peck) is handsome and charming but also arrogant, insecure and violent. Intrigue, treachery and murder follow in Pearl's wake, friends and family take sides, and Pearl is torn between the two brothers who are well-defined "good" and "bad" characters. An attempted fratricide ensues, leading up to a climactic confrontation at Squaw's Head Rock in the Mexican desert (the "lust in the dust" part).
This is film-making at its best and worst. The best: The sets, costumes, outdoor locations and cinematography are magnificent, except for one or two inexplicable goofs such as a brief scene where Lionel Barrymore, in the center foreground, is perceptibly out of focus. I've seen this film both in a theater and on TV, and the richness of Technicolor comes through even on a TV screen. Even the computer-enhanced color effects of modern films can't surpass the brilliance and subtlety of the old 3-strip Technicolor process. There has just never been anything like it. The director was that old veteran of both silents and talkies, King Vidor. The location shooting, unusual in those days when productions rarely ventured off the studio backlot, is spectacular. Some scenes, such as the lineup of the U.S. cavalry across from a line of angry ranchers on horseback along a stretch of unfinished railroad track, and the derailing of a train on a hillside, are breathtaking even today. You do notice certain differences in the old technology; for example, there is a tracking shot of Pearl and Lewt on horseback where it may have been impractical to lay track for the camera, which jiggles up and down in a way that you never see in these days of the Steadicam.
The worst: The overheated, baroque, melodramatic plot and the operatic, stylized dialogue that had them on the edge of their seats in the 1940s will have you rolling in the aisles (either with mirth or in severe intestinal distress) in the 2000s. The casting is often equally absurd: The Tulsa-born Jennifer Jones in brown body makeup playing a "half-breed." The London-born Herbert Marshall playing her father, a Texas Creole. The Vienna-born Tilly Losch, also in brown body makeup, playing Pearl's mother, an Indian. Gregory Peck does his best, and maybe it's because of my memory of his later, generally sympathetic roles, but he is only marginally believable as the bad son Lewt.
Lionel Barrymore had for a number of years been confined to a wheelchair because of crippling arthritis, but that didn't stop him from working, and he supplies his usual hammy, melodramatic performance. Joseph Cotten does a serviceable job as Jesse although he seems too old for the part, and in fact he was about the same age as Selznick, so maybe there was symbolism there. Lillian Gish is excellent and the always brilliant Walter Houston chews up the scenery every chance he gets in his small role. No big, splashy Western would be complete without Charles Bickford and Harry Carey, and they look and act their parts perfectly here. The score by the legendary film composer Dmitri Tiomkin resembles the work of John Williams in that it more than makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in subtlety.
I don't know if the film's historical background is accurate, but the action is set against the coming of the railroad to the Texas ranchlands and the opposition of the ranchers to the government's appropriation of rights-of-way by eminent domain for their cronies, the railroad magnates. Jones plays Pearl Chavez, a "half-breed", whose father kills Pearl's mother and her lover and is sentenced to death. Pearl goes to live with distant relatives on a ranch in Spanish Bit, Texas, and the sultry beauty's arrival immediately stirs up trouble in the already dysfunctional household, aggravating tensions between the brothers Jesse and Lewt (like lewd, get it?) McCanles. Jesse (Joseph Cotten) is the good but "gutless" son and Lewt (a very young Gregory Peck) is handsome and charming but also arrogant, insecure and violent. Intrigue, treachery and murder follow in Pearl's wake, friends and family take sides, and Pearl is torn between the two brothers who are well-defined "good" and "bad" characters. An attempted fratricide ensues, leading up to a climactic confrontation at Squaw's Head Rock in the Mexican desert (the "lust in the dust" part).
This is film-making at its best and worst. The best: The sets, costumes, outdoor locations and cinematography are magnificent, except for one or two inexplicable goofs such as a brief scene where Lionel Barrymore, in the center foreground, is perceptibly out of focus. I've seen this film both in a theater and on TV, and the richness of Technicolor comes through even on a TV screen. Even the computer-enhanced color effects of modern films can't surpass the brilliance and subtlety of the old 3-strip Technicolor process. There has just never been anything like it. The director was that old veteran of both silents and talkies, King Vidor. The location shooting, unusual in those days when productions rarely ventured off the studio backlot, is spectacular. Some scenes, such as the lineup of the U.S. cavalry across from a line of angry ranchers on horseback along a stretch of unfinished railroad track, and the derailing of a train on a hillside, are breathtaking even today. You do notice certain differences in the old technology; for example, there is a tracking shot of Pearl and Lewt on horseback where it may have been impractical to lay track for the camera, which jiggles up and down in a way that you never see in these days of the Steadicam.
The worst: The overheated, baroque, melodramatic plot and the operatic, stylized dialogue that had them on the edge of their seats in the 1940s will have you rolling in the aisles (either with mirth or in severe intestinal distress) in the 2000s. The casting is often equally absurd: The Tulsa-born Jennifer Jones in brown body makeup playing a "half-breed." The London-born Herbert Marshall playing her father, a Texas Creole. The Vienna-born Tilly Losch, also in brown body makeup, playing Pearl's mother, an Indian. Gregory Peck does his best, and maybe it's because of my memory of his later, generally sympathetic roles, but he is only marginally believable as the bad son Lewt.
Lionel Barrymore had for a number of years been confined to a wheelchair because of crippling arthritis, but that didn't stop him from working, and he supplies his usual hammy, melodramatic performance. Joseph Cotten does a serviceable job as Jesse although he seems too old for the part, and in fact he was about the same age as Selznick, so maybe there was symbolism there. Lillian Gish is excellent and the always brilliant Walter Houston chews up the scenery every chance he gets in his small role. No big, splashy Western would be complete without Charles Bickford and Harry Carey, and they look and act their parts perfectly here. The score by the legendary film composer Dmitri Tiomkin resembles the work of John Williams in that it more than makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in subtlety.