directed by King Vidor
I have an unreasonable fondness for the cheesy, dramatic, politically incorrect technicolor epic Western madness of this movie, produced by the same studio and in a similar style as Gone With The Wind. I first caught it maybe ten years ago and I've been somewhat obsessed with it, perhaps because I'm always fascinated by white narratives about "half-caste"s and "tragic mulatto"s that frame the story as one of overcoming the "taint" of their heritage (to see white actors struggle with the tropes of non-white parentage, check out Yvonne de Carlo in the seldom-seen New Orleans potboiler Band Of Angels or Ava Gardner in Showboat, or Jeanne Crain in Pinky, or more recently, Anthony Hopkins in The Human Stain to name just a few).
It's also a movie made in the 1940s that has all the then-current scandal buttons pushed: Miscegenation! Rape! Adultery! Murder! Sex! Racism! Not to mention a land war, dancing, runaway horses, a gun battle, a train explosion, and a deathbed confession! The only things missing are drugs, incest, pedophilia and mental illness. Yes, Duel In The Sun is a crazy cocktail of overheated storytelling, vivid Technicolor cinematography, and haunting music that has to be seen to be believed. Hollywood denigrated it as "Lust In The Dust" upon its release, but it is the guiltiest of guilty movie pleasures.
Best about it is Jennifer Jones' over-the-top performance (as flouncy and huffy as Vivien Leigh's in GWTW) as a headstrong half-native American filly, and a juicy young Gregory Peck having a ball playing the slickest, wickedest outlaw in all of Texas -- a break from his standard roles as an upstanding do-gooder. The supporting cast is notable: a daffy stereotyped Butterfly McQueen, scenery-chewing Lionel Barrymore, paragon of goodness Lillian Gish, voice-of-reason Joseph Cotten, Walter Huston as a local preacher, and the hardy Charles Bickford again. Hollywood lore has it that producer David O. Selznick, Jones' soon-to-be husband -- seeking to outdo the success of Gone With The Wind -- couldn't stop tinkering with it, turning it into the maelstrom of excess it became.
Unlike GWTW though, it doesn't end in triumph for the female character, who overcomes adversity through sheer will. Duel In The Sun is a classic tragedy where the main character's fatal flaw leads to disaster. This is another reason the film did not fare well upon release.
SYNOPSIS
The setting is somewhere in the late 1800s in a Texas border town. Pearl Chavez is the wild teen daughter of a ne'er-do-well Creole father and a native American (Comanche?) mother who dances in the local Western saloon. When her father sees his wife kiss another man, he takes up a gun, and summarily dispatches them both. With philosophical calm he turns himself in to the sheriff for execution, but not before arranging to have Pearl cared for by a second cousin and onetime love LauraBelle (Gish), who is married to the rich Senator McCanles (Barrymore), owner of the vast Spanish Bit ranch.
The Senator is an old-fashioned bigot, further embittered by being confined to a wheelchair, the result of being thrown from his horse during a jealous gallop after LauraBelle some two decades earlier. The Senator is keeping up a kind of hatred for his wife over the incident, believing that she had tried to run away from him with first love Scott Chavez. This further hardens him against Chavez's daughter. He jokes that anyone who named her Pearl "couldn't have had much of an eye for color," says she should be called "Hiawatha" or "Minnehaha," and later refers to her as a "squaw" and "Indian baggage."
It doesn't help that Pearl shows up at Spanish Bit in huaraches, serape, beads, braids and sombrero. In fact, much is constantly made of Pearl's heritage. Jennifer Jones goes all out to portray Pearl as an untamed naive girl who is a "natural" temptress due to her Indian blood. She appears in brown-face makeup, fluffed out hair, low-cut peasant blouses and bare feet -- a stark contrast to the lily-white "ladies" of the times in their corsets, bustles, petticoats, coiffed-up hair, and high-button shoes. Arriving on Spanish Bit, she promises the sweet LauraBelle to be a "good girl" who will learn to be a "lady." Her desire to better herself is further piqued by attraction to the senator's two sons: kind-hearted gentleman Jessie (Cotten) and sexy trouble-maker Lewton (Peck).
While the Senator is proud of Jesse, a lawyer, he gets more of a tickle from his rambunctious second son, even encouraging him to sow his oats with the little "tamale." And Lewt wastes no time. After Pearl has a touching encounter with Jesse, who tenderly promises to educate her, she goes to her room only to have Lewt bust in and plant a big wet one on her while she struggles. "Don't tell me no one ever did that to you before," he smirks. "Not ever!" she protests.
From there the collision course is set. Pearl is more fond of "civilized" Jesse, who treats her fairly and respectfully, but neediness and ignorance keep her sidetracked by the wily machinations of Lewt, who just wants to get into her pants. It isn't long before she's compromised by Lewt, who first steals her clothes and keeps her naked in the swimming hole for hours but eventually breaks into her room again and forces himself on her. Lewt isn't shy about letting everyone know he's put his brand on Pearl, sparking LauraBelle to call a preacher to try to purify the girl, and causing a disappointed Jesse to back off, thinking Pearl prefers his brother. "I'm trash!" weeps Pearl when she finds out that Jesse had been in love with her and was waiting for her to grow up to do something about it. But dirty Lewt got to her first. "Can't you forget it?" begs Pearl. "No, I can't," sniffs Jesse.
Politics enter the story as a railroad gang arrives in town to build tracks across Spanish Bit, sparking a territory war. The Senator rails against the "coolies" spoiling pasture for his cattle, while Jesse, the lawyer for the railroad, tries to reason with his father. But the Senator gathers a posse of armed men to attack the railway workers and the U.S. Calvary in an epic battle scene. The Senator disowns Jesse in the process. Now Pearl has no one nearby to intervene for her and falls completely under Lewt's spell. During one of their trysts at the swimming hole, Lewt snatches off the religious medal she wears to keep her "fresh as milk" and mollifies her by agreeing to marriage. The Senator even has to check his son's intentions, noting, "I worked thirty years on this place and I don't plan on turning it into an Injun reservation!" "You know me better than that, Pa," winks Evil Lewt. At the big ranch BBQ, Lewt blows off his promise to announce that he and Pearl are "bespoken," scoffing at the very idea that he tell anyone that he'd marry the "bobtail little half-breed like you" he's already defiled.
Hurt and angry, Pearl's revenge is to accept a proposal from the kindly new ranch boss, Sam Pierce, a man old enough to be her father, if not her grandfather (Bickford). But the night before the wedding Lewt rides into the bar where the groom-to-be is celebrating, announces that Pearl is forever his girl, and guns the man down. Lewt's fate is now cast as a murdering outlaw; further, he sees a speeding train and thinking he's helping his father's cause, blows up the engine and derails it. Against all reason the Senator aids Lewt in evading the law.
Pearl continues to struggle with her feelings for the scoundrel. She loves him, but now she fully sees him for the dirty, no 'count dog that he is. "I'm gonna kill you, Lewton McCanless," she tells him, brandishing a pistol during one of his undercover visits to her room. But he manages to love her up anyway, and we see that despite all the bravado and denial, his feelings for her run pretty deep as well. Still, he's too mean and proud to give in to her. When he shares plans to run away to Mexico, she begs to come along, but he tells her he won't be "hog-tied" and tosses her away before galloping off into the night.
LauraBelle falls ill and in a deathbed scene, she and the Senator clear the air about what really happened that fateful night, and the elderly pair pledge their love with LauraBelle crawling from her bed to the foot of his wheelchair for a final embrace before she gasps her last. Oh the melodrama! Jesse arrives to see his ailing mother, but he's too late. With LauraBelle dead, Sam murdered, and Lewt on the run, Pearl is taken under the wing of Jesse and his new girlfriend Helen, who promise to take her away, educate her and care for her. "Oh Jesse," says Pearl, overcome with gratitude, "I wish I could die for ya." "Let's hope you never have to do that," Jesse says. It's a vain hope, as it turns out.
Because here comes Lewt, again, sneaking into town and accusing his brother of trying to appropriate Pearl for himself. Jesse recounts the murderous deeds his brother must pay for with a hanging while Lewt laughs. Now it's a gun battle at high noon! "I hope Pearl gives you a pretty funeral, Jesse!" sneers Lewt before plugging Jesse with a bullet. (When I first saw this, I was like, Daggone -- shot his own brother in the street like a dog!) But thankfully it's just a flesh wound. And now Lewt's sent for Pearl to meet him at a remote spot to say goodbye before he hightails it across the border. Surprised that Jesse survived, Lewt's minion Sid assures Pearl, "Don't worry about Jesse -- Lewt says he'll get him next time." Her face is a dark cloud as she muses, "Next time...." Pearl tells Sid that she'll meet Lewt at Squaw Head Rock after a two-day ride.
And now she's no half-caste -- she's in full-on Injun On The Warpath Mode. The soundtrack tom-toms swell. The girl has finally reached her limit. Raped, used, deceived, and humiliated, with one former suitor shot and driven off and the other murdered, Little Orphan Pearl finally faces facts. It was one thing for Lewton to keep hurting her ("I'm trash! Just like my mother!"), but she can't let him threaten Jesse and Helen, who have become her family. There's no peace of mind or a future to be had while Lewton McCanles is around. Pearl wraps her head in a red cloth, Comanche style, dons her peasant garb, grabs a rifle and goes bareback on her Appaloosa pony to meet her lothario. Her makeup gets darker and she squints with concentration as she rides through the sun-drenched West to find the man who ruined her life.
When she arrives, Lewt hails her and as she moves closer she aims and answers with a bullet. And now the duel is on. The two exchange gunfire, winging each other and crawling closer over the rocks. In the final moments, the bloodied lovers crawl into each other's arms, pledging their eternal love one last time before finally giving up the ghost.
THOUGHTS
Now all of this is completely engrossing, and somehow ridiculous and profound at the same time. You admire Pearl's gumption and self-sacrifice. But two thoughts occur to me.
First, my logical mind has to look at this as yet another example of a "know nothing" plot where if only the characters would just speak the truth at the right time to the right person, the whole tragedy/comedy of errors would be avoided. There would have been a totally different story if Pearl Chavez had had the good sense to go to LauraBelle and say, "Miss McCanles, ma'am, your son is harassing me. As a young lady of impressionable years, do you think I could sleep in the house instead of out by the barn like an animal, where any passerby can bust in on me and have his way with me?" Far be it from me to engage in a blame-the-victim scenario. But really, what the hell kind of guardian was LauraBelle? The story indicates that she was frail and sickly, but she was still the mistress of the place with some authority. Apparently Pearl had as much oversight on the ranch as a goat.
And second, why are "half-breed" characters always willing to throw themselves under the bus? In this case Pearl sacrifices herself to save the white characters she loves, but in many narratives the "half-breeds" are driven mad by having to cope with the duality of their identity and engage in self-sabotage or suicide. Pearl's actions are just more Hollywood stereotyping of the "tragic mulatto" type. She deserved her end, according to the storytellers, because of "weakness of the flesh" due to her Indian blood. Indians and people of color are somehow more hot-blooded than whites in this racist mindset. She also fits the stereotype of the fallen woman. In this way the character of Pearl follows in the footsteps of her Indian mother, shot for having an affair. The story seems to say that as an Indian, she cannot escape this fate.
There is no redemption or happy ending for women of easy virtue in 1940s Hollywood. Death in the arms of a cowboy against a pretty sunset is about as good as it gets.
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