User reviews

This melodramatic film should have been a silent! The sexually excessive acting of Jennifer Jones became very tedious, and her movements should belong in the silent era.Ms Jones was not the only one who was stereotyped in this film, the old man McCanles is a representation of the old attitudes of the pioneers, and is explicitly racist.The landscape shots came straight out of 'Gone With the Wind'( how could Selznick top it?) The film followed obvious Western conventions, including the representation of what it means to be an Indian. This threat however, comes from other Western texts, yet in the opening sequence, Pearl's dancer mother represents the erotic 'other' based on that presumtion, and we know that Pearl will follow suit, when we see her dancing outside the saloon to some children. Above all,the excessive spectacle moments,the over-erotizising of Pearl, and far too many red sunsets had me rolling in the isles!

This movie is based on a novel of the same name. Unfortunately there are too many characters and their stories to pack into one feature film. It would have been better made as a miniseries 40 years later in the 1980s or possibly two feature films so we could learn the characters' back stories and motivations. The only reasons to watch it today are for the performance of very handsome bad-boy Gregory Peck, who turned 30 during production, and some of the elaborate outdoor scenes, particularly one with a HUGE number of horse riders. The ending left me unsatisfied and I felt sad for all the characters.