Duel in the Sun (1946)

Good concept, poorly executed.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Seriously, IMDb..? "Half-breed"? Is it a film about a nice mongrel dog, then? ..a splendid horse with some donkey mixed in, perchance? I fully realize this is the original WWII era description talking, but are you similarly keeping all references to Negroes in out-dated descriptions, for example? Maybe Spic, Chink or Gook? Maybe Kike to get off "race" and onto religion? Or what about calling whole peoples Heathens, Barbarians or Savages? Or what about a child without married parents being a Bastard? Should perhaps a Retard reference be kept here and there, I wonder? And the list goes on. Thankfully, the civilized world has moved on and I suggest IMDb does the same.

Watched for first time in 1984 on television now a widescreen DVD. Selznick produced this magnificent western about a love triangle between Jennifer Jones as Bobcat Peck as the bad guy and Cotten the good,settled in 1860 in Texas where the Senator have a large ranch who living in conflict with oldest son Jesse meanwhile prefer the young son Lewt which have your personality and ruthless,When the Wild girl called Pearl arrived in the ranch to live with the cousins after death's father she falling in love for both cousins,but Lewt is more able to get Pearl's heart. This movie is pleasant to watch because all characters are strong enough Gregory Peck in unusual role as bad guy,Jennifer Jones fantastic as wild girl,Cotten quite often as Good Guy and Barrymore as lawless Senator and Lillian Gish as mother who living trying to protect Jesse. The final is marvelous with Lewt and Pearl as the equals!!!Looking forward for DVD restoration!!

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ambition of Selznick, his sickly pursuit of Oscars, his "Gone with the Wind 2" fever, forces production to sink in an outdated grandiloquence, which could impress the backward audience at the time but fails to delight cinephiles from today.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.

The hero of this glitzy and gigantic Western is not the well-intentioned but ultimately slutty Jennifer Jones, not the dull, morally upright figure of Joseph Cotton, not the roguish but psychopathic Gregory Peck, but rather the composer of the musical score, Dmitri Tiompkin.You never heard such bombast. There's a "prelude" that seems to last half an hour, followed by a scarcely shorter "overture." Tiompkin has used cowbells before. Here, the head honcho of Spanish Bit, Lionel Barrymore, signals his men to mount up by ringing a church bell. The church bell is joined by more church bells, one after another, all in harmony, until the ears ring as well as the bells. I must say, though, that I missed the flatulence of the trombones that appeared in his later work, a kind of punctuation made of loud BLATTS like a dozen elephants farting in tune.And every character and every emotion has its own leitmotif. They're all euphonious, easy to listen to, like Grofé's "Grand Canyon Suite." Poor, sentimental old Lillian Gish, whether defiant or dying, gets only "Beautiful Dreamer." Producer David O. Selznick, high on benzedrine, must have been taking a crack at the epic that made him famous and rich in Hollywood, "Gone With the Wind." You know -- a real BIG one. It's not too hard to spot the isomorphisms. Jennifer Jones, whose heart leads her astray, is Scarlett O'Hara. Joseph Cotton is assigned the role of the weak gentleman. Peck is the feckless cynic who sees through everybody, like Rhett Butler."Gone With the Wind" was so overblown that some of the dramatic incidents were actually funny, easily parodied. It's known as "bathos." This one is even more bloated, only without any good tag lines. Jennifer Jones, who cannot conquer her half-breed nature, is toothsome. She has dark make up and crimson lip stick, so when she gapes or smiles, her blinding white teeth resemble the plastic ones you might buy in a novelty shop to go with your Dracula costume.The whole affair is a Grand Guignol of lust. There's an extra-familial conflict: Barrymore as the owner of a huge ranch on the one hand, and the railroad that needs to cut through his land on the other. Not nearly enough time is given to it. Instead we have Gregory Peck repeated seducing and raping Jennifer Jones, when it's not the other way round.