Barbara Stanwyck has some serious daddy issues in this weird cross between a women's picture, western and film noir from 1950.
Walter Huston plays the daddy, and he steals the show in a vibrant performance. He owns a ranch called The Furies, which he hands over to his daughter when he tires of the daily management. But things go awry when he brings home a new wife from the city (Judith Anderson, excellent) and she has some ideas of her own about how things should be run. Tensions boil over to the point where father and daughter hate each other, and Stanwyck hatches a scheme to bankrupt her father and take the ranch away from him.
It's an uneven movie at best. Characters seem to turn on a dime -- Huston and Stanwyck go from idolizing one another to hating each other back to idolizing each other -- but maybe that's the point. They're both ruled by their passions, and those passions extend to the father/daughter relationship, and sometimes confuse it, as much as to their business practices.
Anthony Mann provided the noirish direction, and Franz Waxman delivers a frenzied, out-there score.
Grade: B+
Walter Huston plays the daddy, and he steals the show in a vibrant performance. He owns a ranch called The Furies, which he hands over to his daughter when he tires of the daily management. But things go awry when he brings home a new wife from the city (Judith Anderson, excellent) and she has some ideas of her own about how things should be run. Tensions boil over to the point where father and daughter hate each other, and Stanwyck hatches a scheme to bankrupt her father and take the ranch away from him.
It's an uneven movie at best. Characters seem to turn on a dime -- Huston and Stanwyck go from idolizing one another to hating each other back to idolizing each other -- but maybe that's the point. They're both ruled by their passions, and those passions extend to the father/daughter relationship, and sometimes confuse it, as much as to their business practices.
Anthony Mann provided the noirish direction, and Franz Waxman delivers a frenzied, out-there score.
Grade: B+