Pursued (1947)

Director

• Raoul Walsh

Starring

• Robert Mitchum
• Teresa Wright
• Judith Anderson
• Dean Jagger
• Alan Hale

Last On

11:00-13:05 Thu 17th Dec 2020 120m
Film4

Synopsis

Not as well known as High Noon, The Searchers or Red River, this was one of the first "psychological westerns" and has the same sort of story, theme and flashback structure usually found in the urban film noir. Robert Mitchum plays a tortured soul who was adopted as a child, murders his half-brother and then marries his brother's wife. Set against the stark buttes of the American southwest, it has the feel of a classical tragedy, with Mitchum superb as the brooding hero who journeys back into his past. Critics have laid all the praise at the door of the director, Raoul Walsh, but it's largely the creation of screenwriter Niven Busch. He was married to Mitchum's co-star, the delightful Teresa Wright, and also wrote the novel Duel in the Sun, another Freud-on-horseback saga.