Duel in the Sun

After her father kills her mother, Pearl Chavez is sent to distant relatives on a ranch in Texas. There are two brothers in the house: the steady, decent Jesse and the reckless Lewt. Pearl is caught between them, and her choice destroys her too. King Vidor directs. Jennifer Jones plays Pearl, Gregory Peck plays Lewt, Joseph Cotten plays Jesse, Lionel Barrymore plays the Senator who owns the ranch. The film belongs not to its director but to its producer. David O. Selznick wanted to surpass Gone with the Wind and intervened constantly; he wrote the screenplay himself, shot some of it himself, and King Vidor walked off the production during filming. A number of uncredited directors contributed. Selznick's relationship with Jennifer Jones is also central to the project; he built the film largely around her and the two later married. Its erotic content was strong by the measure of the time and it was condemned by the Catholic decency board in America; the nickname the press attached to it was not forgotten for a long time. The distribution was an innovation too. Selznick opened it in a large number of cinemas at once with heavy advertising, an early instance of the wide release model used now. Who it is for: viewers curious about classical Hollywood melodrama and large scale westerns. Who it is not for: the film is excessive, the performances are pitched very high, and Pearl's mixed heritage is drawn with the clichés of the period.