The Ox-Bow Incident

A film about a lynching that turns the western template over. Word spreads in a town in Nevada: a rancher has been killed and his cattle stolen. The townspeople form a party and set out. There is no sheriff, the judge cannot stop them, and the crowd convenes its own court. Three men are caught in the hills. They have stolen cattle with them and no bill of sale. All three say they are innocent. The crowd takes a vote. The whole tension is in that night: not whether the men are innocent but how the crowd decides. None of them would have made that decision alone; together they make it and the responsibility rests with nobody. The narrative runs seventy-five minutes and takes place almost entirely in one night. There is no action; no chase and no duel. It was shot in the studio and the artificiality of the sets was not concealed; the choice suits the abstract register of the story. Henry Fonda leads. William A. Wellman directed. It failed at the box office and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. One of the hardest examples of its kind for anyone who likes the western and films of social criticism. For a viewer expecting a classic western, there is no hero here and the ending contains no consolation.