Barbara Stanwyck in Anthony Mann’s 1950 The Furies, a top-knotch psychological Western just recently released on disc by The Criterion Collection. It’s very strong stuff but suffers a bit from what I call “Gilda Syndrome:” that is, after serving up a tantalizing nest of vipers for your viewing pleasure over the course of an hour and twenty minutes, the movie kind of takes it back and insists that the vipers were just a couple of crazy American kids trying to make good. Ah, convention. But up to the point when it’s obliged to give us figures to root for, it’s absolutely exemplary in terms of ratcheting up tension after tension.
Oh, this is a good one and for some reason I always forget it’s Anthony Mann. That one moment of extreme violence is still quite shocking (you know the one, it’s even on Youtube!). But yes, it does chicken out in the end and the Gilda comparison is a good one. You’ve spent all this time watching these borderline personalities go way over the edge and then bang, everybody’s sane again.
I haven’t seen “The Furies”, but that is a fair description of “Gilda”. I believed Glenn Ford’s hatred for Rita Hayworth far more than I did his love for her. Although I did also believe his lust.
This movie sounds fantastic and I’m glad that Criterion is around to make films like this available. I’m going to check it out.