PodBill Just what I expected

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

weezeralfalfa David O. Selznick's attempt to create an epic western on a scale at least as great as the Civil War epic "Gone With the Wind". He may have failed, but the main characters are larger than life , and promise an exciting viewing experience. There are a variety of conflicts that contribute to the plot. Besides the much emphasized lust-hate relationship between foxy half-breed Pearl(Jennifer Jones ) and persistent stalker Newt McCanles(Gregory Peck), there is the Cain and Abel relationship between Lewt and brother Jesse: the one a poorly literate egomaniac(at least in regard to women), and the other a studious gentleman, soon gone to Austin to seek his fortune as a lawyer.In addition, an antagonism between Jesse and his father, Senator McCanles, develops over the right of a railroad to lay tract over a piece of the Senator's huge Texas spread. This results in a standoff between about 50 of the Senator's hands, and the railroad crew, the latter soon supplemented by a large contingent of US cavalry, who arrive just before hostilities were due to commence. Jesse stepped through the fence that divided the two groups, saying that he wanted to support the victims rather than the side of the murderers. As a result, Jesse was no longer welcome at the McCanles ranch, until near the end of the film, when Lewt was getting into big trouble. Along with wrecking a train load of explosives, Lewt had killed aging Sam Pierce(Charles Bickford) in an informal duel over Sam's announcement that he and Pearl were soon to wed. "Pearl is my woman", growled Lewt, claiming he was doing Pearl a service in preventing her from undertaking a passionless marriage with an old man(probably about 3X her estimated age!). This was Lewt's first known duel.Lewt's second duel was with brother Jesse, who was trying to extricate Pearl from her situation as Lewt's woman, with stated lack of hope to eventually become his wife. He was trying to take her to his city home he shared with his wife, to learn how to be a lady.(Apparently, she had had little schooling.) This duel consisted of Lewt and Jesse standing their ground in the main street of a town, very early in the morning before other folks stirred. Jesse came without a gun, to tell Lewt that Pearl didn't want to go with him. Lewt wasn't intimidated by this news, and threw Jesse a six-shooter, in readiness for a gun duel. Jesse refused to pick it up, so Lewt backed off some and fired one shot, apparently killing Jesse, but later he recovered from a serious wound.Lewt's third and final duel was with Pearl, whom he had instructed via messenger, to come to a distant wild rocky area for a presumed last tryst before he disappeared into Mexico for some time. But, Pearl had another purpose in meeting Lewt. As instructed by Lewt's messenger, she fired 2 shots in the air with her rifle to announce her presence and location. But then she took aim at Lewt from some distance, giving him an ultimately mortal wound. In turn, he was able to shoot her in the left shoulder, again producing a wound that she would soon die from. Pearl crawled agonizingly over rocks and dirt to reach Lewt before he expired.Many reviewers complain about, or, at least, mention the over-the-top characterizations of Lewt and Pearl as being ludicrous and unreal. I enjoyed these characterizations, not minding their excesses. Again, some complain the film was overproduced, and, again, this was not a detracting factor for me. I suspect this adds to its appeal for most. As is usually the case, Peck and Jennifer clearly were playing people 5-10 years younger than themselves. We don't get to see much of what Pearl was like and what her mother was like before her father shot her mother and lover. Apparently, her mother was unfaithful, although we don't know to what extent. Clearly, Pearl was devoted to her father. No idea how she related to her mother. Her father told her he really loved Mrs. McCanles when he was young, and she loved him, but she opted for financial stability rather than love. So, he recommended that Pearl try to move in with the McCanles, as the mother would likely be friendly with her(as she was), although the Senator didn't like having a half breed in the house.Jennifer costarred in the later film "Gone to Earth", where she plays a basically similar character: a foxy woodsy Gypsy girl on the verge of womanhood, living with her father, with no sibs. At a social , she is noticed by a rapacious handsome squire, and by an unaggressive clergyman. She marries the latter, but it's the former who excites her sexually and persists in stalking her after married. Both these films, in glorious Technicolor are currently available at YouTube.

Fred Caccia I would say, bluntly, that this film has aged terribly and had better not to show anymore, such an old Hollywood actress. The ambition of Selznick, his sickly pursuit of Oscars, his "Gone with the Wind 2" fever, forces production to sink in an outdated grandiloquence, which could impress the backward audience at the time but fails to delight cinephiles from today. "Duel in the Sun" offers a clumsy thematic treatment, grotesque characters, and a hell of Tiomkin score worthy of a Max Steiner's brass band. As for the direction, this is a dire rigidity and a drought that casts despair over the aficionado of this highly fertile cinematographic genre. The film is more a piece of crap than a western.

zardoz-13 Producer David O. Selznick sought to surpass his blockbuster epic "Gone with the Wind" with director King Vidor's lavish but tawdry western "Duel in the Sun." This oater takes place on the sprawling Texas ranch known as Spanish Bit and concerns a half-breed Native American damsel, Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones of "Since You Went Away"), who stays in distress throughout the film's drawn out 129 minute running time. No, this sagebrusher is another white man versus the red man saga, but a white versus white with a lot of racism in the boil. Our poor heroine is the product of miscegenation. Inexplicably, her snobbish father Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall) took an Indian squaw as his wife during a moment of weakness and has since regretted the act. Although she is pretty, the wife has an adulterous streak that pervades her personality like a cancer, and Scott refuses to tolerate her indiscretions. At the outset of the action, Scott catches his wife with another man and shoots both of them in cold blood. After he turns himself into the authorities, Scott suggests that not only should they hang him because he has confessed to the crime but also because he would have rather die than live in shame for the remainder of his life. This sets the stage for the rest of the action, and Pearl's journey of hardship that ultimately ends on a rugged stretch of parched desert with her lover and she shooting it out.While he sits in the calaboose awaiting his date with the hangman's noose, Scott learns that his gracious second cousin Laura Belle McCanles (Lillian Gish of "Intolerance") is willing to take Pearl in as one of her own. Pearl is surprisingly beautiful but extremely naïve about the ways of the world and from the moment that we see her first, you know that her life is going to end rather like her doomed mother. When she arrives at the sprawling McCanles ranch, she finds herself caught between Laura Belle's debonair oldest son, Jesse (Joseph Cotton of "Citizen Kane"), and the rowdy youngest son, Lewt (Gregory Peck of "The Yearling") as they compete for her attention. Of course, Lewt takes advantage of Pearl before Jesse can, and their torrid romance plays out to a disastrous conclusion in the desert, hence the title "Duel in the Sun." From the moment that Pearl arrives at Spanish Bit, the name of the McCanles' Ranch, she must contend with Lewt's lusty behavior and Lewt's father's racist comments about her ancestry. Laura Belle dotes on her and Jesse has nothing but kind words for her, but she struggles to fit in as one of the clan. The cinematography, credited to lensers Lee Garmers, Ray Rennahan, and Harold Rossen, is spectacular! The long shots of riding crossing the horizon are breathtaking. The art direction and set design are just as impressive. Selznick literally spared nothing for this production. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin wrote a marvelous orchestral soundtrack the underscores the drama and the tragedy. The cast is great, too, with Lionel Barrymore playing Senator McCanles, Walter Huston as the Sin-Killer, Harry Carey as Lem Smoot, and Charles Bickford as Sam Pierce. "Duel in the Sun" isn't a bad western. Epic moments occur throughout the action. The opening scene in a dance hall where Pearl's mother dances looks like a miniature production itself with loads of atmosphere. The showdown between Senator McCanles army of cattle drovers and the cavalry over the intrusion of the railway into his property is suspenseful as is his later accident. The problem is that none of the character is sympathetic. Pearl is essentially a hopeless victim, while Lewt is a worthless, no-account dastard, particularly after he guns down the one decent man who wants to marry Pearl. Nothing about Lionel Barrymore's patriarchal is sympathetic. He is a thorough-going bastard and a racist, too. Lillian Gish is sweet but she is confined largely to the house. Joseph Cotton's Jesse is admirable, but he never gets to show off his finer qualifies and seems more effete than effective. The finale between Pearl and a desperate Lewt is hardly the stuff of duels. Despite first-rate production values and a top-notch cast, "Duel in the Sun" ranks as an above-average but uneven oater.

timmy_501 This is a rather unusual Western. It has one of the most excruciatingly ignorant main characters I've ever seen in a movie. I know that the idea is that she hasn't had much education but I don't understand how anyone her age could possibly be as stupid as she is, especially given her close relationship with her supposedly well-educated father. The other interesting thing about the film is that it portrays the traditional masculine cowboy in a negative light, instead favoring this character's non-violent intellectual brother.So at first I was annoyed by how stupid Pearl is but eventually I started to understand where they were taking this idea. We're meant to see her develop from a typically weak and powerless female living in a pre-feminist society to an empowered but conflicted heroine. I still think that exaggerating her ignorance to such a degree was a big mistake on the part of the filmmakers and actually even her development feels like what it is, a contrivance of the plot to lead to a climactic showdown.Lewton McCanles fits into the typical hard-riding alpha male archetype that's so familiar from countless other Westerns. Instead of possessing a rough hewn morality, though, he's really a terrible person who seems to delight in causing trouble for others. The real problem with this character is that he has no nuance, he's very predictable and uninspired. His brother also falls into an unsurprising pattern fairly quickly but his role as the one truly admirable character is surprising given his lack of willingness to do whatever it takes to beat the villain. This is where the snubbed heroine's interesting side comes in as she eventually seems to realize that she has to put a stop to the villain's reign of terror before he makes things even worse than they already are.What I really liked about this film was the sense of the inescapability of the past of the characters. Mrs. McCanles's choice of husband pretty much destroys her life and her unresolved feelings for another man sow the destruction of her family both from the conflict within the nuclear family itself and without from her other suitor's daughter. This film is nearly as epic as the oddly long prelude leads you to expect it to be.