The Furies - Criterion Collection (1950)

Furious

In one year, 1950, director Anthony Mann made four films: There was the crisp Farley Granger noir adventure "Side Street" plus three Westerns, including "Devil's Doorway," the rousing classic "Winchester '73" and "The Furies."

That's how you hustle, and for any filmmaker that's a damn good year.

That last title, "The Furies," refers to a sprawling southwestern ranch owned by the proud, controlling blowhard T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston in his last role, one year after winning an Oscar for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre.").

During the course of the film, the main characters refer to the estate often but it is never called "the ranch," "the property" or even "our land."

It's always called "The Furies," and as if to underscore the self-consciousness of the conceit, most of the people who say it seem to be resisting the urge to lick their lips immediately afterward.

But the film's three principal characters tote their own serious grudges, so while it's a clumsy subtext, the title could also refer to these agents of vengeance. Bastards, the set of them, but in the end sympathetic as well.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as Jeffords' daughter Vance, whose devotion to her father is second only to her fondness for standing in boots and jeans with her gloved fists pressed defiantly into her hips. That stance is basically how she lives and she lives to work the ranch (er ... I mean, The Furies). Surely that's not too much to ask, is it?

My facetiousness aside, this is a wonderful and frequently astonishing film. I kid because the movie is a breathless mix of influences and high emotions -- there's Sophocles here, and a lot of King Lear and sundry other Shakespeare. It's also Wellesian -- the Jeffords could be southwestern cousins to the Ambersons. But there are also hints of "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest," as well as other more serious but still-soapy fare in which doomed offspring stand beneath towering portraits of their parents.

Despite Mann's eventual seminal Westerns, however, "The Furies" seems more like Sam Fuller than, say, "The Naked Spur" or even "Man of the West" -- it has Fuller's grit and shrewdness and his tendency toward the baroque. That is, in part, because producer Hal Wallis didn't want to pay for Technicolor so -- highly unusual for a Western of this time -- he ordered the movie shot in black-and-white.

That decision absolutely sealed the film's greatness because Mann, with cinematographer Victor Milner, created a nightmarishly beautiful landscape as a backdrop. With some exceptions, the exteriors are largely shot day-for-night, even in cases where it's supposed to be daytime -- most of the scenes seem to exist in that alien space where the cattle drive began in "Red River." The sky is almost always stark and bleak and strewn with beautiful clouds and the desert is always somewhat shadowy and peopled with the silhouettes of riders. This lends the melodrama the air of isolation and purgatory; it transforms The Furies everyone wants so badly into a wasteland and makes "The Furies" something of a ghost story that is all the more unsettling because it's so lovely to look at. November 2, 2008

Mann's Compelling Prairie Psychodrama Given the Deluxe Criterion Collection Treatment

There's a lot of Freudian subtext in this unusual 1950 Western, but what resonates most is how director Anthony Mann so smoothly transcends the testosterone-driven genre to come up with an entertaining hybrid of a woman's picture and a Greek tragedy. At the dynamic core of this film is the masterstroke of casting Walter Huston (in his last screen role) and Barbara Stanwyck as a spendthrift father and his headstrong daughter at odds over running the expansive ranch that gives the movie its name. In Roman mythology, the Furies were supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. As females, they represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. It is this single-minded sense of empowerment that drives Vance Jeffords to usurp her wily father T.C. while seeking his approval at the same time.

Set in 1870's New Mexico, the story written by Charles Schnee (The Bad and the Beautiful) is steeped in not-so-indiscreet psychological baggage. T.C. lives by his own rules by borrowing liberally from banks, paying hired hands with his own script, and allowing Mexican settlers to live off his land. Unlike her weak-willed brother, Vance enjoys provoking her father but to what end is never clear as an unacknowledged cloud of incest hangs over their strange relationship. At the same time, T.C. has a sworn enemy in gambler Rip Darrow who is looking to avenge his father's death at T.C.'s hands. Vance falls for Darrow, but she's also drawn to Juan Herrera, a childhood friend and one of the Mexicans now considered squatters. Complicating matters even more is the arrival of T.C.'s pretentious fiancée Flo Burnett, a devious socialite out to rid the ranch of the Mexicans and push Vance aside as the female head of the beleaguered family. This ploy leads to a most shocking scene that fits well within the story's noirish shadings.

As T.C., Huston gives a grand performance evoking both the old prospector in his son John's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the conflicted industrialist in William Wyler's Dodsworth. Although a bit old for her role at 43, Stanwyck combines her no-nonsense manner with a childlike vulnerability in illuminating Vance's most complex psyche. This is excellent work from an actress who always seemed home on the range. Generally a pliable third lead in films (Rear Window), Wendell Corey doesn't lend charisma or a convincing edge to his swagger as Darrow, but Gilbert Roland shines in the smallish role of Juan and strikes sparks with Stanwyck that should have happened with Corey. However, it is Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca) who steals her brief scenes as Flo bringing out a palpable tension with Stanwyck in their almost-comically cutting scenes together (pardon the pun!). Veteran character actress Beulah Bondi also has a nice near-cameo as a banker's wife fully aware of her husband's prideful shortcomings.

The intensely passionate movie swirls in all its psycho-sexual emotionalism and Shakespearean-level acts of murder, revenge and greed, but oddly (and perhaps due to the edicts of studio censors), Mann applies the brakes in the disappointing final portion of the film. Still, it's well worth viewing in the new Criterion Collection's 2008 release chock-full of extras. First, there is the meticulously academic commentary track by Western scholar Jim Kitses (Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood). Then there is an interesting 17-minute interview with Mann ("Actions Speak Louder Than Words") conducted just prior to his death in 1967. Another interview is offered with Mann's daughter Nina specifically for this release as she recalls her father's often underrated body of work. More of a curio is a silly, obviously scripted 1931 interview with Huston where he evasively responds to the vacuous questions of a pretty reporter. The original theatrical trailer and a stills gallery round out the extras. October 26, 2008

Eugene O'Neill Goes West

Cheyenne Warrior: The Original Screenplay with Author Commentary
Shadow Watcher
Nobody Drowns in Mineral Lake

If Eugene O'Neill had ever written a western, it might very well have played like this 1950 release, a beautifully photographed black-and-white drama that has all the elements of a Greek tragedy.

Like so many of O'Neill's works (e.g. MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA), the Anthony Mann-directed film, from a novel by Niven Busch, is overly talky. It doesn't really get interesting until the 2nd half when the action moves out of the drawing room onto the New Mexico plains.

Walter Huston, in his final film role, plays the megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner who seems to have a very "close" relationship with his firebrand daughter (Barbara Stanwyck). They are always butting heads over her dowry, choice of a husband and the ownership of the vast ranch itself, which is in major debt.

Matters come to a head when Huston brings Judith Anderson to the ranch, planning to marry her, which pushes Stanwyck into a violent, jealous rage.

Stanwyck delivers one of her finest performances in this atypical western. The superb supporting cast includes Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland and Wallace Ford.

© Michael B. Druxman, author of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (available December 2008) September 30, 2008

A classic film with an excellent story.

This film is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Furies, directed by Anthony Mann and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Wakter Huston, is one of the best films I have seen for a while.

It is about a greedy widower and his daughter who live on a ranch called "The Furies" in New Mexico in the 19th century. The daughter is in love with a squatter on the ranch and when the father kills him, she exacts revenge.

I really liked the film and thought it was very well made.

It includes some fine special features including the complete novel the film is based on. Also included is a theatrical trailer, audio commentary by historian Jim Kitses, a 1967 interview with Anthony Mann, a 1931 interview with Walter Huston, a new interview with Anthony Mann's daughter, Nina Mann, and a slide show of behind the scenes photos.

This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it. August 23, 2008

Good but far from the best by either Mann, Stanwyck, or Huston

This is an entertaining film and definitely contains some find elements, but it is far from the best work of any of the major participants and in the end isn't completely satisfying. The movie is most famous for being the great Walter Huston's final film. He in fact died very shortly after finishing work on the film and before its release. Though not among his best films, it does feature many moments where he is able to chew up one scene after another. And near the end of the film there is a steer-wrestling scene on which he appears to have done much of the stunt work, an astonishing feat for a man of 65.

I'm a huge fan of Barbara Stanwyck. She is, in fact, my favorite actor, but I was very uncomfortable watching her in this one. Much of my enjoyment of her in other films comes from the fact that she is by any standard a strong female at a time when women weren't always allowed to be so. In this one, however, she not only has a bizarre attraction for a physically unattractive and personally unappealing gambler, she puts up with being slapped around and otherwise abused. She is, however, even in this film remarkable. Playing a character much younger than Stanwyck was at the time (she was 42 at the time of filming), her girlish build did not at all belie her age. And this despite being in real life a heavy smoker. Still, this is very far from being one of her best films or one of her more memorable performances. Part of that, however, is a reflection on just how many superb performances she gave over the years.

This is also not one of director Anthony Mann's best films. 1950 saw the release of the first of his significant Westerns, WINCHESTER 73. Over the next decade he would establish himself, along with John Ford, as the premiere maker of classic Westerns, directing such films as BEND IN THE RIVER, THE NAKED SPUR, THE FAR COUNTRY, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, and THE TIN STAR, most of these starring his WINCHESTER 73 star Jimmy Stewart. THE FURIES fall far below any of those movies, or even lesser Westerns like MAN OF THE WEST. Still, the movie is interesting as an early effort by one of the masters of the Western genre.

The title of the film refers on one level to the ranch that Huston's character owns, but also the Greek myths concerning the three goddesses of vengeance. They were especially concerned with avenging injustice. Going into the film I assumed that three women would play some role in wrecking vengeance on T. C. Jeffords. Stanwyck's Vance Jeffords was one obvious candidate. Judith Anderson's Flo was the second. Blanche Yurka, as the mother of Juan Herrera, hung by T. C. Jeffords, avenges the death of her son as the third fury.

All in all, I was not impressed with this film. As I stated at the beginning of my review, Mann, Stanwyck, and Huston all did much better work than this. I'll probably never rewatch this movie though I've already seen films like Mann's THE NAKED SPUR and THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, Stanwyck's DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE LADY EVE, and Huston's DODSWORTH and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE multiple times. August 20, 2008

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