User reviews

Selznick's attempt to create another "Gone with the Wind" in the form of an epic Western is a complete disaster. The sets are cheesy, the script is uninteresting, and the direction is atrocious. Peck gives the worst performance of his career and is matched on the hamminess scale by Barrymore and Huston. However, Jones takes the cake. Has there ever been a worse performance by a star in a major motion picture? This movie can be viewed as a great comedy except all the laughs are unintentional. It goes on way too long and the score is overdone. The ending has to be one of the worst in all of moviedom. It only gets a rating of 3 because of some decent cinematography and the acting of Cotten and Gish.

I saw this movie on TCM a few months ago, and quite honestly find it very hard to believe that it was made by the same man who did "GWTW."

I guess David O. Selznick had his eye set on topping "GWTW", and thought this film would do it. Well, he failed in a pretty epic way here. Everything in this movie is such an overblown mess, it's hard to even know where to start with this review. First, the opening overture goes on forever, so the movie itself takes forever to start, and it does not get much better from there. (In fact, I think the music is one of the few high points of the film.)

Pearl Chavez is no Scarlett O'Hara, Jennifer Jones was certainly not Vivian Leigh, Lionel Barrymore is such a ham in this film he could have been served at a Christmas dinner, and Gregory Peck (who was so great in other roles) was horribly miscast in this film.

To be perfectly honest, I am not a huge fan of Jennifer Jones in general. Although a pretty woman, the only film of hers that I have ever been able to sit through more than once is "Song of Bernadette." In my opinion that is the only film that worked for her whispering, little girl voice, because she was playing a innocent young saint of a girl. With the exception of that one performance, she was extremely limited as an actress.

Selznick obviously wanted to change her saintly image from "Song of Bernadette" with this film, but in this case, her involvement with the mega-producer did her more harm than good. She overacts in every scene, trying way too hard to act sultry to the point where her performance just comes off as cringe-worthy. To be fair, though, I'm sure Selznick probably instructed her to act that way. I'm sure her Oscar nomination for this film was more based on studio politics and her then-current popularity than the strength of her actual performance.

This film is not supposed to be a comedy, but the acting of Peck, Barrymore and Jones did make me want to laugh. The story itself is also laughable. While GWTW was about the civil war and the struggle to survive in the south, this story of this film really has no purpose other than to have Jones walk around like a sexpot.

In my opinion, only Joseph Cotten, Lillian Gish, Butterfly McQueen (scene stealer every time), and the horse came out of this disaster unscathed. The only reason I gave this more than 1 star is the scenery, music, and the performances of those four actors. Yes, I thought even the horse fared better here than Jones or Peck!

Poor Script Horrible Acting Gawd-awful scoring Something to pretty much offend everyone with the stereotypes Butterfly McQueen to boot.

The premise to the film is great: brother vs. brother over the love of a woman; but getting to all the subplots is tedious. One of them (Lionel Barrymore vs. Pearl doesn't get explained why for 90 min when mom's on her deathbed and you think back and say "who are they talking about?". Maybe I got lost, but Charles Bickford appears out of nowhere only to get shot because he's going to marry Pearl. The first love scene between Pearl and Lewt - you know when he opens the door what's going to happen - she might as well of put a "welcome" mat out. Horribly written - this is a good example of "why a producer should never do screenwriting".

Acting - OMG! Jennifer Jones and Lillian Gish got Oscar nominations for this??? It must have been a poor year for women's roles. Gish sits for the better part of the movie and really just is a milk toast of a mother/wife - she has not "big" scene. Jones - I'm not sure what she's doing - what was that accent?? Where they tried to make her sultry and provocative, all that happened was they made her stupid and stereotypical. I guess you get an Oscar nomination from being married to the producer and starring in his silly movies. Gregory Pecks accent totally silly. Lionel Barrymore (who I always love to watch) even is a stereotype. The only person that I have no complaints with is Joseph Cotton who was just Joseph Cotton (which he plays in all of his films - but that's not necessarily bad). Special kudos to Butterfly McQueen: for her cryogenic freeze from 1939 to 1946. It's like Selznick put her in a time freeze and walked her over from the GWTW sets to these sets: same mannerisms, same voicings, same role, same clothes - the only problem is 25 years later and 1000 miles more west.

But while all of the bad stuff is there to see, there are a couple of good things: The cinematography is amazing with the western frontier especially the sunset scenes that are absolutely breathtaking. King Vidor's direction - which just goes to show you that a great chef can take a lot of junk and make a halfway edible product.

FINALLY > The last 10 minutes of this movie are CLASSIC. You have to watch it! A beautiful homage to over-acting at it's finest. Maybe this is why Jennifer Jones got her Oscar nomination; maybe Peck should have gotten one also. I can't tell you anymore without spoiling it for you.

Strange to think that less than five years before, Gregory Peck was Oscar nominated for playing a priest and Jennifer Jones was winning hers for acting the part of a latter-day-saint. Here they get to exploit their darker sides, he as the reckless, feckless fortunate son of wealthy rancher Lionel Barrymore and she the mixed-race orphan taken in by Barrymore's kind-hearted wife Lillian Gish, herself, the second cousin and ex-belle of Jones's father, Herbert Marshall. In what is effectively a prologue to the main action, we see Marshall, a decent but timid man cuckolded by his wanton Native American wife one last time, driven to murder and from there, the hangman's noose. But before he expires, he sends his adored daughter Pearl to Gish. Barrymore and Gish have two adult sons of their own, Peck, the bad egg and Joseph Cotten his straight-arrow sibling, who look as much like brothers as Laurel and Hardy.

There's all sorts of family stuff percolating away in the background even before Pearl arrives. The now-crippled Barrymore dotes on Peck's free-spirited Luke, Gish is favoured towards Cotten and the two chalk and cheese brothers don't like each other either, Peck a gun-happy wastrel and Cotten the studious family diplomat. Introducing the arousing, exotic charms of Jones into this dysfunctional family is rather like throwing a lit match into an already smouldering fire so that it's no surprise when the whole thing blows up in all their faces.

Now regarded as a further step in producer David O Selznick's grand plan to elevate Jones, his then mistress and later wife, to superstardom, I have to say that I found it an absolute load of hogwash from start to finish. From the questionable if not downright objectionable darkening of Jones's skin, to Barrymore's thinly-veiled racism and the stereotypical casting of Butterfly McQueen, seven years after "Gone With The Wind" still playing an idiot black maid in the service of rich white folks, I found myself unconsciously shaking my head at the screen as I watched. Then there's Peck's loutish Lewt, forcing himself on Jones the first chance he gets and Jones submitting to him only later berating herself as "trash" in what looks very like victim-shame.

Veteran director King Vidor presides over this overacting circus like a ringmaster who's lost his whip. Despite occasionally producing some lurid landscapes and impressive tracking shots, he inserts soaring, distracting background music into almost every dramatic scene and allows the likes of Peck, Barrymore, Gish and Jones to take so many chews out of the scenery, it's a wonder they didn't all need dentures by the end. As for the excruciating, drawn-out final scene where Peck and Jones do their mutually assured destruction dance, the least said the better.

All movie long I waited for the film to live up to its title with some epic duel to be played out between Peck and Cotten or even Peck and Jones but was sorely disappointed.

Overblown, over-acted and over-the-top, it's the definition of an epic-fail.

Remarkable Western clearly aimed from the outset at women 'Duel in the Sun' suffers from a painfully slow story and obvious and uninteresting characters. It is vibrantly colourful in every sense and has a rollicking scope and scale in its production.

I think that a film requires a decent story with a purposeful narrative, or interesting characters and scenarios, preferably both, 'Duel in the Sun' offers me neither.

Jennifer Jones was clearly directed to behave like a cat in heat in her characters every moment. Gregory Peck to be a brute in his characters every moment. Joseph Cotton to be a gentleman in his characters every moment. Lionel Barrymore a bore in his characters every moment. Etc etc etc.

Talkative and demonstrative acting results from all players, sadly this contrasts with largely static camera and blocking direction, unconcerned editing and a leaden narrative to produce an at times unintentionally funny mixture.

There is a lot of bother about sexual politics and a hint of racial attitudes, also there are several aspects which would be filmmaking taboo today in the 2020's, including a depiction of black domestic servants as being 'childlike', "dark face" makeup and physically aggressive male sexual approaches receiving belated female consent/consummation.

Such things don't concern me for the purposes of a film review but others would certainly feel differently I'm sure.

I can summarise by observing that 'Duel in the Sun' can be hammy, blunt, broad, boring but it is memorable and sometimes hilarious. I'm glad that I've seen it at least once.

If I were to categorise it further, I'd say it's a "womans picture" romantic melodrama of tragedy, and emotional impossibility and inconsistency, and doomed, desperate, deplorable, despicable love in a Western guise.

I rate 3.5/10 and I deem 'Duel in the Sun' to have some of the most eye opening dying off moments that I've seen in a professional film. The climax is, however, a worthwhile piece of utter cinematic froth and worth waiting to see. Or just fast forward once you know the character names and relationships and watch that. The 3 stars that 'Duel in the Sun' accrues are for the vibrant photography of colour, the location scenery, and the production scale in cast, extras, sets and costumes. The half star is for Walter Houston's bit part.

Basically, this film aspired to be Gone with the Wind in the wild west. It flopped on several fronts.

First of all, the film takes an eternity just to start. Sitting through the opening overture, I was already losing patience. It just went on and on...

Unfortunately, it didn't get much better from there. Gregory Peck seems to relish playing a more villainous role, but he seems miscast here to me. Kind of just phoning in his overall performance. "To Kill a Mockingbird" this certainly is not. Playing the good brother to Peck's bad brother, Joseph Cotten's character seems to get lost halfway through the film and the writers seem to have forgotten to give him any kind of a character to play.

I've honestly always thought Jennifer Jones was kind of overrated as an actress, and wondered if she only got roles and Oscar nominations because of who her husband was (she was at her worst in "Love is a many splendorous thing", but that movie is another brand of bad.) She was fine in "Song of Bernadette", where she played an innocent saintly girl, but I think her brand of acting only worked for certain roles- she was fine when she just has to look at the camera innocently and say a few nice lines, but she is just is not believable to me as a femme fatale. Though she was quite a beautiful woman, this is a dark film in a lot of ways, and I just don't think she had the acting chops to play a more complex, tortured character like she's assigned here. She was better at playing the girl next door. She definitely did not deserve a best actress nomination for this train wreck.

Even film veterans like Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish don't escape unscathed here. Barrymore overacts and is such a ham he could have just climbed in between two slices of rye bread. Gish has a totally thankless role as Barrymore's long suffering wife, and the mother of Peck and Cotten.

Really the only two that come out of this film looking great are the horse and Butterfly McQueen, who was a scene stealer here just like in Gone with the Wind. While the music is good, this film is overall very unimpressive.