King Vidor's "Duel in the Sun" is arguably a great western and perhaps the most entertaining westerns I have ever seen before, as well as one of the best David O. Selznick productions I have seen since Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind (1939). The movie stars Jennifer Jones (in an Oscar nominated performance) as Pearl Chavez a young woman from Mexico whose mother dies and her father (played by Herbert Marshall) ends up getting hanged for the murder of her mother, and Pearl feels bad about the whole thing and has to live at a relative's house in Texas where she is welcomed into her new home by an older woman named Laura Belle McCanles (played by Lillian Gish in an Oscar nominated performance) and her husband Jackson (played by Lionel Barrymore) and their two sons one who is the oldest brother and happens to be a lawyer named Jesse (played by Joseph Cotten), and the younger immature Lewton (or Lewt, who was played by Gregory Peck) which at first Pearl was in love with Jesse and then after he left she started to have a complicated relationship with Lewton. The movie also has an excellent supporting cast let alone Gish and Barrymore but it also includes Walter Huston as the local priest, and Charles Bickford as a middle aged man who wants to marry Pearl but the marriage ends before it could possibly begin. The movie has a lot of good technical aspects to it as well for example all the costumes are perfect, the cinematography by Harold Rosson, Lee Garmes, and Ray Rennahan is shot brilliantly. as well as the music by Dimitri Tiomkin is just beautiful to listen to. Another good thing about the movie was David O. Selznick's screenplay is has nothing short of great dialogue throughout the entire film, as well as the production. This movie was a western film experience that I will treasure and never forget this is one of 1946's best films.

I would say, bluntly, that this film has aged terribly and had better not to show anymore, such an old Hollywood actress. The ambition of Selznick, his sickly pursuit of Oscars, his "Gone with the Wind 2" fever, forces production to sink in an outdated grandiloquence, which could impress the backward audience at the time but fails to delight cinephiles from today. "Duel in the Sun" offers a clumsy thematic treatment, grotesque characters, and a hell of Tiomkin score worthy of a Max Steiner's brass band. As for the direction, this is a dire rigidity and a drought that casts despair over the aficionado of this highly fertile cinematographic genre. The film is more a piece of crap than a western.

A truly spectacular motion picture the likes of which simply aren't made today. Selznick produced an unforgettable cinema experience with a vision so majestic it is almost too much to endure. Starting with a script that smolders with raw passion, King Vidor gets ultimate credit for directing what is simply a masterpiece after other directors proved to be overwhelmed by the scope of this project. The cast is uniformly superb and a group of finer actors, giving performances as grand as the movie itself, could never be imagined. Tiomkin's score is masterful in conveying the savage emotions that run wild across the screen and the cinematography is incredibly beautiful, with burning sunsets and stunning prairies, purple rocks bursting with color, and fiery, flashing gunplay. This is cinema as it was meant to be, alive and flaming, depicting the adventure and violence of the Old West in a way no other motion picture has ever equaled. The characters are simmering with emotion until the untamed hearts of the era finally explode, no longer contained by the flimsy restraints of civilization that are not yet strong enough for the wild wilderness. This is man at his most primitive, clashing with a law that is meaningless to him. Thundering posses of thousands are merciless as they try to bring order to chaotic vistas against which showdowns are illuminated. The mighty magnificence of Duel In the Sun is everything the West was and what we want it to be. This is a place where gunfire is the only language spoken by both men and women, the only words listened to coming from the barrel of a gun, with epitaphs written on the head of a bullet. Passions are laid bare in the dunes of sunbaked sand and love and hate blur into one. This is Duel In the Sun! It stands as an everlasting monument to a Hollywood that was once populated by producers and directors both bold and unafraid to make big motion pictures with huge themes and giant stars.

No need to recap the plot.One thing about this overblown fandango— once seeing it, you won't forget it. How could anyone when everything is done to such tasteless excess. Poor Pearl (Jones). Apparently, Jones was told her part was that of a hot-blooded wench, which she unfortunately took to mean parboiled. It's hard not to laugh at the first hour when she acts like a nympho on steroids, tossing hair and leering wildly like pampas grass in a windstorm. Not far behind is that vintage ham Lionel Barrymore doing his usual blustery bit, like we won't get his hard-bitten patriarch unless he takes it into hyper speed. And who could have guessed that the usually constricted and constrained Gregory Peck could actually over-act. I think it was his first and last time—good thing, too.It's possible to go on about the unrelenting excess— the sunsets that appear to hemorrhage, a musical score that's as necessary as sugar on molasses, and a loony ending that defies parody. But you get the idea. Too bad so much money and effort went into such a generally overheated result. Only Cotten, Gish and the black stallion come through unscathed. I'm thinking RKO could have made a dozen worthwhile programmers on the same budget. As things turned out, Selznick did his beloved Jones no favors with this one. It's hard to believe the man responsible for Gone with the Wind (1939) is also responsible for this swollen mess.