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This first-time-ever release of the original Roadshow Version of DUEL IN THE SUN is definitive both as to length and features as well as to its sparkling new look. The Overture and Exit music, by the great Dimitri Tiomkin, prepares the viewer for this overblown, extravagant, and overlength Western. The narration during the Overture places the film in its historical context, and foreshadows the filmmakers' concerns with the Production Code Administration of the day. This film wasn't known as "Lust in the Dust" for nothing.
That this film is overdone in almost every respect shouldn't for one minute discourage the purchase of DUEL. Its tremendous cast--including a surprisingly atypical performance by the great Walter Huston as the "sin killer" preacher--is well worth seeing. While the film is overlong, the costly restoration work that has gone into this edition makes it a visual treat that, for the first time, accurately reveals the high standard of craftsmanship insisted on by its producer David O. Selznick. The colors are so sharp and true that they seem to jump out from the screen. If you are a fan of this film--as something of a "guilty pleasure"--you'll throw away the previous video release of this film with gusto. There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever. The 5-star rating is primarily for how gorgeous it looks than for the story itself. This is what great Technicolor could do during Hollywood's Golden Age. The trailers, also included in this edition, make this a great package.
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Sweeping! Magnificent! Corny! Romantic! A west that never existed is splashed across the screen as only David O. Selznick, the master of such gargantuan Hollywood classics as "Gone With the Wind", "Since You Went Away" and "Rebecca" could give us.This is not the revisionists west of the 1990's, nor that West of the gritty operatic glamour of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West." You will not find the spare clean and lean beauty of John ford's West. What we have here is the epic telling on a screen that screams to be stretched into widescreen and spills out over the audience the lush and romantic horse Opera of Pearl Chavez, the McCanles clan and the coming of the railroads in the 1880's.
From the moment the overture replete with unneeded narration begins you know you are in for a melodrama of purple emotions and blood red vendettas. The opening scene is set in a saloon on a scale of a modern Vegas casino. There amidst the wild gunfire of overheated cowboys and insanely spinning faro wheels we are introduced to the Scarlett O'Hara of the West, half-breed Pearl Chavez. As played by Jennifer Jones she is just about the hottest tamale to ever hit the pages of a screenplay expressly written to drive men mad, turn brother against brother and defy a "Sinkiller". What Jane Russell was supposed to be in "The Outlaw" we get in Technicolor spades in the form of Miss Jones.
She takes huge hefty bites of the massive sets and chews them to a fare thee well and in the process creates a wanton character of such charm, heat and passion that she is truly a motion picture original. This is the best thing Miss Jones ever did because it is so out of control and beyond the pale of her more subdued performances. Of saints, teenage war brides and ghosts of lost love.
As Lewt McCanles we get the hottest, meanest, most excitingly nasty performance Gregory Peck ever was allowed to give. And what an irresistible bad boy he is. He was never sexier or more wonderful than in this departure from the Peck norm.
Even the usually dull Joseph Cotton manages to rise above his typically dry rolls, but not too much, in the thankless roll of the good brother. He seems a little too old for the part and a little too polished. Someone like Charlton Heston might have been more on the spot.
Lillian Gish steals every scene she is in with quite assured screen presence and only finds completion from the ever-prissy Butterfly McQueen. In her final scene with Lionel Barrymore Miss Gish makes off with the scene so quietly that you are hit with it's impact only after the fact. Barrymore creates one of his most beloved curmudgeons as Senator Jackson McCanles full of sound and furry and ultimately signifying less than nothing. His introduction to Pearl topped by a sneeringly shocking racial slur that encapsulates his character and time and place.
Another highlight is the cameo by Walter Huston as "The Sinkiller". What can be said of him is only this, pure cinematic magic.
The film unfold with such a sense of grandeur and awe that it sweeps you along to its incredible ending on the wings of epic pure camp poetry. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is a masterpiece and much famed over the years for the incredible "call of the bells" set piece.
The three cinematographers involved, Hal Rosson, Ray Rennahan, and Lee Garmes paint movie memory after memory with the palate of hot dusty hues that have long been forgotten by audiences of today. To see it now is perhaps more exciting and thrilling than it was in 1947.
All of this mad mixture of melodrama, mush and music was orchestrated by the master showman of his time, the ultimate huckster of smoke and mirrors and consummate barometer for just what we wanted in our early epics of the America that never existed, David O. Selznick, who added the "O" to his name just because it looked better on the marquee. When they say that off heard lament "They don't make'um like they used to." Both Mr. Selznick and "Duel In The Sun" are what they are talking about. If they still made them like this then something would be terribly wrong. Thank god they did make films like this once upon a time and we still have them to lose ourselves in a dream of what never was and what will never be again.
****2012 update*** This review of of the DVD marked Roadshow Edition ~ on this DVD the quality of the picture is excellent the color is brilliant and the sound is very good. So if you want the DVD I bought and viewed type in Duel In The Sun on the search line at the top of the page and look for the DVD that says, Roadshow Edition., Roadshow Edition.
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Duel in the Sun is an epic in both it's themes and production. Although it doesn't hold up nearly as well as other films from the 1940s, it has many things which will please film lovers. When Jennifer Jones, a half-breed Indian Girl named Pearl Chavez, goes to live with her dead father's ex-fiancee and her family, a love triangle develops between Lewt and Jesse McCanles, Gregorgy Peck and Joseph Cotton respectively. Peck is the low down spoiled son of Senator (Lionel Barrymore) and Laura Belle (Lillian Gish) McCanles, whose interest in Jones is purely physical. Cotton's character on the other hand has a genuine affection for Pearl and tries to protect her from his raffish younger brother. The inevitable showdown between brothers ensues, with Peck appearing the winner for Pearl's affections. Filled with enough sweep and grandeur for twenty films, Duel has some of the most interesting color cinematography ever put on celluloid. The scenes during the building of the railroad and the confrontation that follows are most impressive. Everyone in the cast seems to believe the storyline, which makes for a fun ride in spite of the downright hokiness of the plot. David O. Selznick spent six million dollars on a film that was supposed to be another Gone With the Wind and it shows. Released in 1947, Duel became one of the biggest grossing westerns of all time. It's also a testament to how popular stars can turn a mediocre story into a full blown blockbuster. With all its faults, this is a highly entertaining movie.Honest reviews on Duel in the Sun (1946)
--and a little bit hollow, too, for the filmmakers try to blow up an ordinary love triangle into a social and economic canvas the size of GONE WITH THE WIND, but it's just too small to fill that much space. However on all other fronts the film is magnificent and it is definitely one of the strangest pictures of the entire postwar period. The colors are rich, troubled, seething with pixels, and the musical score shouts and clamors what we all knew at heart, the west is another word for s-e-x. Selznick cleverly cast a number of silent film veterans in the cast, to trace the long history of melodrama in the movies, most notably Lillian Gish but also Lionel Barrymore, Harry Carey Sr and the incomparable Herbert Marshall, who plays Pearl's gambler father "Scott" during the first reel or two.The younger generation, as represented by Cotten, Jones, and Peck, all visibly strain trying to be colorful, and in the case of Jones and Peck, they are rewarded with twin triumphs of overacting and sheer ham. Selznick must have sat Jennifer Jones down and force-fed her the complete filmic works of her predecessor, Maria Montez, to get her to be so over the top. As for Peck, the whole audience explodes with gasps and laughter when we hear him whistling, mournfully, "I've Been Working on the Railroad" after we see him blowing up an entire train just for the hell of it. In contrast, Cotten's a little flimsy and distracted in his part--he doesn't hold up his end of the triangle very well. Maybe Robert Walker would have been better, or Montgomery Clift, one of many to whom Selznick offered the part.
When I first saw DUEL IN THE SUN I was about fifteen and it blew me away. Contemporary films rarely feature the kind of soak-through Technicolor that Rosson and Garmes (and I guess von Sternberg, who worked on the film for many months) were able to produce here. The dancing (by Albertina "Tilly" Losch, the European answer to Martha Graham) is out of this world, and the oracular voice of Orson Welles blows the whole narrative into another dimension the minute his narration begins.
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