The Unforgiven

A man arrives at the home of the Zachary family, cattle raisers on the Texas frontier, and says their adopted daughter Rachel is in fact Kiowa. The tribe wants her back and the town turns on the family. When the siege comes, everyone has to choose a side. John Huston directed. Audrey Hepburn plays Rachel, Burt Lancaster her brother Ben, Lillian Gish the mother, with Audie Murphy and Charles Bickford in the cast. Hepburn fell from a horse during filming and broke vertebrae, halting production for weeks; she returned once she had recovered, but the accident shook the whole shoot. Huston later distanced himself from the film openly, saying he had wanted to build it as a criticism of racism and that what emerged was an ordinary western. That is exactly its problem today: the Kiowa characters barely speak and the story stays inside the white family's view to the end. The cinematography and the siege are its strongest elements. Who it is for: viewers who like late-fifties westerns and star casts. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the subject to be addressed; the film leaves its own question unanswered.