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Duel in the Sun (1946)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 1/22

DuelSun
1/22: Trash, stupid, long, juvenile, boring, overblown, nonsensical, excessive, and plain silly, Duel in the Sun is nothing like the movie poster.

The word "half-breed" was thrown around so much that I had to look up the meaning of it. Webster's Dictionary said: "Offensive: the offspring of parents of different races, especially the offspring of an American Indian and a white person." So...which one is the offensive half? I'm only asking this because the American Indians first settled in North America and remained there for hundreds of years before the white people came over and stole their land.

Gregory Peck hated his performance in Moby Dick when I thought he did a good job. He should've reserved the same judgment for Duel in the Sun. The only thing on his character's mind is rape. What Lewt wants, he takes...it's like watching a 5-year-old child. Lee Marvin and Jack Palance are the better choices. Marlon Brando won't be out of the question in order to make the sex appeal believable. To be fair, they hadn't yet come to existence as actors. At least, Gregory Peck can ride a horse.

Jennifer Jones. Well, well, well...where to begin? Let's get one positive thing out of the way first: she's gorgeous, no matter what. Sexy yes, but not in a good way. Jennifer Jones did it much better in Ruby Gentry. Both are exactly the same kind of film, but the latter was much shorter by an hour and had a plot.

On to the negatives, and there are plenty of them. They sure spray-tanned Jennifer Jones' face three layers too many. Her behavior is so ridiculous that it can only be found in silent pictures. There's a lot of back-and-forth between "I love you" and "no, I don't love you." Pearl is so goddamn stupid that she gives half-breeds a bad name. At one point, she was going marry Sam Pierce who looked 70 years too old for her. Lewt won't be excused for his vacillation, either.

Much of the fault lies with David O. Selznick, the ultimate puppet master. He was trying to top the success of Gone with the Wind which would never happen. Then, he was trying to make Jennifer Jones the greatest leading lady of all time when she had no acting chops to begin with. The ending is laughable although Jennifer Jones' physical pain wasn't faked.

The truth is that Selznick had the most rubbish script imaginable that's replete with a heavy-handed opening narration from Orson Welles. I didn't know what the plot was for the longest time and still don't. The production was plagued with many problems, thanks to the speed-addled Selznick's meddlesome interferences that kept delaying the film release while tripling the budget because he wanted to change a minor line here and there or reshoot a scene completely.

Back to the Gone with the Wind reference, there are lots of similarities which are all poorly done in Duel in the Sun. Substituting Spanish Bit for Tara, the cinematography is ugly although there are several good-looking shots. I'm aware that Butterfly McQueen is black, but for her to be typecast and continue to carry on the same idiotic thinking is to set her race back by a hundred of years. To her credit, Butterfly retired afterwards because she got tired of playing stupid characters.

Pearl is Scarlett O'Hara, Lewt is Rhett Butler, and Jesse is Ashley Wilkes. They're badly sketched, character-wise, with unclear goals. At the end, Jesse is shot and disappears for good like he has done throughout the picture. Well, what's so damned important about him? Another problem is Joseph Cotten who's an all-time weak, ordinary actor who might be a closeted homosexual for all I know. He always provides nothing...absolutely nothing whatsoever!

What else? I didn't realize that Laura Belle was Jackson McCanles' wife when I thought the whole time they were brother and sister or something to that effect. Regardless, they're poorly played by Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore who's cantankerous beyond belief. She climbing out of the bed to reach for Jackson before dropping dead while he's rambling on is pure comedy.

All in all, Duel in the Sun is a famous bad film for a litany of reasons.