A boy haunted by nightmares about the night his entire family was murdered is brought up by a neighboring family in the 1880s. He falls for his lovely adoptive sister but his nasty adoptive brother and mysterious uncle want him dead.
Teresa Wright Robert Mitchum Judith Anderson Dean Jagger Alan Hale John Rodney Harry Carey, Jr. Clifton Young Ernest Severn Charles Bates Peggy Miller Norman Jolley Lane Chandler Elmer Ellingwood Jack Montgomery Erville Alderson Walter Bacon Rudy Bowman Virginia Brissac Russ Clark Ben Corbett Jack Davis Lester Dorr Tom Fadden Carl Harbaugh Al Kunde Harry Lamont Mickey Little Ian MacDonald Show All…
Späte Rache, Blutrache, La vallée de la peur, La Vallée de la peur, Verfolgt, Notte senza fine, Perseguido, 绝处逢生, Sua Única Saída, تحت تعقیب, 추적, 追跡, Ścigany, Förföljd
CanadaPG
MexicoB
USANR
Canada
Mexico
USA
“Pursued” is a noir-drenched Western melodrama from one of the rare masters of all three genres.
Director Raoul Walsh brings his command of frontier expanses -and his practice in the field of inter-familial gang wars - to “Pursued.” Far from being a lesser entry for its straddling of three realms, the film imbues each with Walsh’s own shadowy proficiency.
And I’m not just throwing praises towards “Pursued” because it has peak-era Robert Mitchum running around with his shirt half unbuttoned for the majority of its runtime.
But lord I am tempted...
Mitchum first appears in “Pursued” in a state of sweaty disarray. ((Take a break to catch your breath here))
Collapsed against a crumbling wall with a lacy white button-down…
(...) Seu respeito pela realidade, o cineasta o definiu colocando o princípio de que há apenas uma forma de pôr em cena um dado personagem em uma dada situação. Isso equivale a dizer que a organização ideal da matéria visível e sonora em função das premissas livremente estabelecidas pelo roteiro possuiria um caráter de necessidade incontornável análogo à ebulição da água a cem graus. Compreendemos que o reconhecimento, a descoberta dessa solidez dos fenômenos no seio de sua própria criação, exige do artista a liberdade e a clareza de espírito totais: as chances de erro, em vista da única verdade, são infinitas. - Michel Mourlet, "Uma Lucidez Viril"
Ou: 8-4-2.
Fantastic western from Raoul Walsh that just misses classic status from a fudged final five minutes. Until that point it is utterly gripping and looks and sounds outstanding, the dark hues of James Wong Howe's photography matching the deep tones of Max Steiner's score.
The psychology of the characters is compelling and complicated, second guessing attempts at analysis by the audience. Top-billed Teresa Wright is in love with her adoptive brother Robert Mitchum, while mother Judith Anderson frets about his past and brother John Rodney nurses jealousy, with the malign presence of Dean Jagger simmering in the background all the while. All are excellent, with Dame Judith being the standout for me, particularly when a tragic event causes her character…
Raoul Walsh's filmography has thrilled me over the years, and although the majority of the 18 films of his I've seen have primarily been Westerns, I'm eager to see the rest of his output. From Errol Flynn to James Cagney, Joel McCrea to Humphrey Bogart, Walsh collaborated with the era's most prominent stars, and in 1947, he directed the film Pursued for Warner Bros, featuring a young Robert Mitchum in a Western Film Noir that holds a distinguished reputation among my circle here on LB. Mitchum has frequently appeared in my recent viewings, as I've been checking off classic films featuring the renowned actor from Bridgeport, Connecticut, and although I have many more to see, he is steadily becoming a…
A noirish Western given high ratings by many LB friends. But I’m afraid this didn’t work for me. If it were based solely on the cinematography by James Wong Howe, the score by Max Steiner, and Judith Anderson playing a bad ass frontier mom with a dark secret, it’d be at least 4 stars. But the convoluted multi-genre plot – revenge film, film noir and one of those psychoanalytic Freudian Westerns so popular in the 1950s – plus the two miscast leads – frustrated me to no end. I expect I’m an outlier on this and understand I may get a few dissenting comments.
Robert Mitchum plays Jeb Rand, a man suffering from childhood trauma, having been the sole survivor…
Have you ever seen a Gothic, Noir Western?
This one stars Robert Mitchum, Theresa Wright and is Directed by Raoul Walsh. But the real star is James Wong Howe's startling B&W Cinematography. So many powerful hard edged shots. I have never seen better day for night.
i really don't like these 40s hollywood films that deal so explicitly in psychoanalytic tropes, here robert mitchum gets stepped on by the big boots of a traumatic father figure and wants to fuck his ersatz sister, literally says at one point "this burnt down house is myself", whoa dude, ego superego id, psyche, we get it, whatever, all that is vacuous nonsense to me. thankfully it's walsh directing fresh out of his stellar warners era, alongside the GOAT james wong howe on the camera -- they elevate this pedestrian material into something approaching the rare territory of noir-western, but it's still quite heavy-handed and overly mannered/conceptualist for walsh, who excels at making naturalist cinema. feels like this is one…
The eskimos have 1000 words for snow, and Robert Mitchum has more than a 1000 camera angles at which he looks like a chiseled specimen of moral incorruptibility and physical perfection.
The movie is good, btw, if you like those noir-ish westerns where the "noir" is shorthand for everybody but Robert Mitchum is an irrational asshat.
I'm fond of them.
In mixing together Western, film noir, and melodrama into one film, Raoul Walsh does a lot more in Pursued than any movie with just one of those genres and combines all three into one surprisingly smooth final product. The combination of all those aspects is done to a high quality by threading them through a well-told story with heart and stakes. It takes the strengths of all three and puts them into one solid film, while Walsh makes the additional smart move of anchoring it against as fine an actor as Robert Mitchum who can work in so many different genres. Here, he's as good as always and along with the whole cast elevates Pursued into being a fine entry in three different genres.
A thin line between love and hate. Shadows and flashes of light from the past, lurking like a curse, a trauma that makes it impossible for a man to belong, preventing one from finding love, as he must keep fighting hate and destiny. He is so aggressive towards a world that he never quite understood, as everyone around him is as impulsive and unstable as he is. Somewhere between a film noir and a western, between contrasting shadows and nature’s vast landscapes, Walsh films everything with an economic objectivity very rarely seen while still polishing the film's matter in such a subtle and sophisticated manner - how could we forget Mitchum's face after shooting and carrying to his office Wright's pretender unwillingly, and as he hears him say that he did it for her he answers 'sorry, friend', while the man just falls out of the screen and Jeb is once again confronted by death. Masterful.
East of Eden if it was a noir western.
Raoul Walsh, el Oeste torrencial
Los cinco westerns —aunque uno, Río de sangre, sea un eastern— y dos mitades (The Outlaw, Come and Get It) de Howard Hawks han alcanzado tal grado de prominencia que se le considera como un director de películas del Oeste más a menudo que a Raoul Walsh, quien no sólo hizo más en cifras absolutas, sino que dedicó al género un porcentaje superior de su filmografía, igualmente variada pero mucho más vasta.
Quizá sea porque ninguna de sus incursiones en el género haya alcanzado una celebridad unánimemente reconocida, y puede que se adelantara tanto a las modas que cuando rodó Pursued (1947) ningún crítico estuviese en condiciones de darse cuenta de que inauguraba, con Pasión…
