The Unforgiven (1960)

Directed by John Huston. Starring Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy, Audrey Hepburn, Charles Bickford, Albert Salmi, Lillian Gish, John Saxon, Joseph Wiseman, Doug McClure, Carlos Rivas, June Walker, Kipp Hamilton.

Among his own works, one of Huston’s least favored, and it’s not hard to see why. Labored Western depicts conflict among frontier families and Kiowa Indians over the claim that Gish’s adopted daughter (Hepburn) is a Native by birth. The plot moving forward is presented in a far-fetched fashion while the telling of back stories is too convoluted. There’s also confusion over whether the movie wants to be serious about its racial animosity or disposable in its hard-hitting Western action, and instead of intertwining these temperaments, they separate scene by scene and assume a whiplash effect akin to bathos. The heart of darkness is welcome in a genre too often accustomed to treating stories as “noble white hero” escapism, but it’s psychologically shallow, and too timid to take the story threads to their logical (and bleak) conclusions. This division even applies to the cast, most of whom tend to either overact or underplay without continuity to character, although Hollywood veterans Gish and Bickford turn in solid work. Climactic Indian attack could have been an exciting episode if not for the melodramatic distractions and an unconvincing choice made by one key participant. Based on a novel by Alan Le May, who also wrote the novel that was turned into John Ford’s The Searchers (not surprising, considering how many traits the two stories share).

45/100