The Unforgiven (1960)

Simply A Masterpiece

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is a complicated Western about racism, secrets and a family in denial.. I found it as good as good gets. Burt Lancaster as the big brother and the head of the family is always good. Lilian Gish gives a heart wrenching performance as the mother torn between her need to have a girl baby, and the consequences of a long held secret. Audrey Hepburn is fresh and wonderful as the child who only knows what she has been told about her birth and eventual adoption by a frontier family. However the standout performance here is from Audie Murphy. It is his finest hour as the brother who finds out about his sister being an Indian, calling her a "red nigger". Vile words and he means them when he spoke them. In the end, all the family fights off the Indians who had come to claim the girl. I think that Murphy could have been a very good actor given the right material, and her he had it.

RELEASED IN 1960and directed by John Huston, "The Unforgiven" is a Western starring Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy and Doug McClure as brothers of a fatherless ranch family near the Texas panhandle. Their younger sister was adopted into the family when she was an infant (Audrey Hepburn). Lilian Gish plays the matriarch. The themes involve racism and (to be expected) un-forgiveness. What ruins this movie is the premise that a certain character is a full-blooded Native and everyone has been fooled into believing she's Caucasian for 18-20 years. Why Sure! I get the point that an Indian baby raised in a settler's community would talk & act like European settlers, but that wouldn't change her race and facial features. So how could anyone even THINK she was Caucasian? If the filmmakers would've made her a half-breed it would've worked.The reason old Westerns like "Apache" (1954) got away with having a white guy (Lancaster) play a full-blooded Native is because everyone in the cast knew he was an Indian and treated him accordingly. As such, the viewer could suspend disbelief and pretend that he looked more Native than he appeared. But you can't do this with "Unforgiven" because the entire cast is fooled into believing that a full-blooded Indian girl looks exactly like a woman of decidedly European descent. Unfortunately, I found the movie relatively dull beyond the ludicrous premise. Don't get me wrong, there are some bright spots, like the cast and flashes of artistic merit, but this doesn't change the fact that "Unforgiven" is a pretentious movie that's just dull, although the climatic standoff at the Zachary ranch is well-done and pretty compelling. THE FILM RUNS 125 (or 121) minutes and was shot in Durango, Mexico. WRITERS: Ben Maddow (screenplay) & Alan Le May (novel). GRADE: D+

I just saw, in 2016, the 1960 film, "The Unforgiven" on satellite TV. I watched it because I love Westerns, the classic genre pitting good vs evil. This film should have been made in the '30s, when racism was the accepted social practice. When, worldwide, cultures taught that it was better to be dead than anything other than White. Whiteness was the historical universal preference. Film, more than any other propaganda tool (except religion), dominantly decimated this message. I've read the film's reviews, explaining that Director John Huston and Producer/Star Burt Lancaster were meaning to honestly portray the conflict between Whites and Native Americans. The clash between blood kin and family bonds. The dilemmas posed by Nature vs Nurture. Bovine excrement. The movie's theme is: Whiteness is the supreme value. Whiteness is a value more important than any virtue: loyalty, integrity, honesty, truth. In this realm, Whiteness is a virtue. Being White is the only life worthy of living. Killing any adverse opinion is honorable — sanctioned by government, sanctified by God (an old White man).Hitler would have loved this movie.

Very disappointing 1960 film dealing with racial prejudice.Audrey Hepburn at some turns seemed emotionally detached from her role, as an adopted girl who discovers on the frontier that she was an Indian baby taken by the Zachary family at the time of an Indian massacre.Hepburn shows restraint in some scenes as the nun she showed a year before in "The Nun's Story." Burt Lancaster, as her adopted brother, shows some similarities to his Oscar winning performance that same year in "Elmer Gantry." He is again a stalwart,showing religious convictions and no prejudice whatsoever.Audie Murphy is the real rebel here, as another brother who can't accept the fact that his adopted sister is really an Indian and abandons the family to pursue romance with Kipp Hamilton, late sister-in-law of television's Carol Burnett. For me, Hamilton made her mark as the distraught former student of Jennifer Jones in "Good Morning, Miss Dove," 5 years before this film.Veteran pro Lillian Gish is gutsy in the thankless role of the mother. She will do anything to hide the truth.The movie just tells about a group's prejudice reaction. It doesn't go into the necessary detail.Hepburn's rejection of her real life comes into focus at the end, but by this time the film has degenerated into "A Gunfight at the OK Corral-like atmosphere.