Branded

A man who lives by his gun joins a scheme to swindle half a million dollars out of a wealthy cattle family. The plan is simple: he will claim to be the son they lost to a kidnapping years ago. A few memorised details and a past nobody can disprove are enough. But once he is inside the house, things do not go the way he expected. Directed by Rudolph Maté, this western is about a family built on a lie turning into a real one. The man Alan Ladd plays puts himself into a role and then has trouble getting out of it. It is a fast-moving production with wide landscapes. Among the westerns of 1950 its subject is unusual: not a gun, but a lie about identity.