Rating: 
Summary: Don't know why this movie has such a bad rap.....
Review: It is WONDERFUL!!! What more could one ask for from the Golden Age of Hollywood: Producer David O. Selznick(he did a little something called "Gone With the Wind" - you may not remember that one....), beautiful Jennifer Jones, a young Gregory Peck, stalwart support from Joseph Cotten, a crotchtedy Lionel Barrymore, a luminious Lillian Gish, supendous 3-strip Technicolor, a decent story for a western(my least favorite movie genre), and a history that would equal Selznick's other "little movie" - GWTW. The DVD of this does the film justice, although some commentary or other supporting features would have been fantastic. I have the Anchor Bay releases of this film and just got this MGM release-they seem to be taken from the same source material, which is very, very good. This film's reputation needs to be defended - sure it was shocking in 1947, but in 2004, they could probably touch on these topics in an "Waltons" or "Litte House" episode. Judge for yourself - get this movie - you won't be disappointed!!
Rating: 
Summary: ONE of the WORST WESTERNS EVER MADE.....
Review: No! This is one of the worst MOVIES ever made! Of course, political correctness did not exist in 1946, but some responsible person should have been considerate to the feelings of Hispanics, cowboys, Native Americans, women, and old people. All are horribly stereotyped in this obvious big-budgeted epic.Jennifer Jones is good on the eye but her believability as a half-breed is too much to take. Thankfully, Joseph Cotten had earlier scored with Orson Welles in "The Magnificent Ambersons" and "Citizen Kane," as well as with Hitchcock in "Shadow of a Doubt." He would have a long character-acting career, even with this turkey under his belt. The same for co-star Gregory Peck. Acting in "Duel" has to be an embarrassment for the Oscar winner. "Atticus Finch" couldn't even defend his performance. Lionel Barrymore is AWFUL as the family's overbearing and racist patriarch! Only Lillian Gish as his long-suffering wife succeeds despite such ear-shattering dialogue. One can't believe that the man responsible for bringing "Gone with the Wind" to the screen produced this!
Rating:
Summary: POINTLESS REISSUE OF ALREADY AVAILABLE DVD
Review: Producer David O. Selznick never thought small. Dreaming of a magnum opus on the same grand scale as "Gone with the Wind" and, perhaps a little bit self-conscious of the fact that his recent affair with Jennifer Jones had yielded only one stellar performance from the starlet - and not even in a film he had produced - Selznick's driving ambition to make Jones a star on par with the likes of Vivien Leigh, led him to handcraft "Duel in the Sun." This was to be an extravagant Technicolor epic about a doomed mulatto (Jones) and her rabid love affair with the ruthless son (Gregory Peck, in an uncharacteristic part of the villain) of a bigoted rancher (Lionel Barrymore). Buttressed by a fiery backdrop about the colliding sensibilities of old West and the true Northern ambitions to tame it, the film ultimately became an overblown melodrama that seemed almost a garish lampoon of "Gone With The Wind" rather than its successor. It did respectable box office but little to advance Jennifer Jones into the echelons of super stardom. The elephantine cast also included Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Herbert Marshall, Charles Bickford and Butterfly McQueen - replaying her dimwitted maid role: "Fiddle-dee-dee!").
TRANSFER: This film has previously been made available through Anchor Bay in a stunning road show edition. MGM's reissue is the truncated theatrical version. Colors are well balanced though more dated than the rich and vibrant colors on the Anchor Bay version. Black levels are good but fine detail is lost in many darkly lit scenes. There's also more noticeable film grain on this version than the Anchor Bay edition. The audio is remixed to stereo but only marginally appealing, sounding rather forced and re-channeled.
EXTRAS: None.
BOTTOM LINE: There's nothing to stand up and cheer about here. If you are a die hard fan of the film, or westerns, then you will definitely want to look up the out of print copy from Anchor Bay over this reissue. Aside from being longer, the Anchor Bay version also tends to be a better visual presentation overall.
Rating: 
Summary: Technicolor Triumphs!
Review: Producer David O. Selznick's "Duel in the Sun" (1946) remains a classic among bad movies. Bathed in Glorious Technicolor, Selznick's attempt to outdo "Gone With the Wind" (1939) is evident in each frame of this psychosexual Western epic. Despite a ludicrous script, the film has a spellbinding visual power, a truly memorable cast and some bravura action sequences. "Duel in the Sun" represents the best and worst of Selznick in equal measure.
Rating: 
Summary: JONES VS PECK
Review: Ranchomolina's review dated 11th July 1999 is naive.How can social values of the 21st century be retrospectively applied to a film made in 1946 with all the attendant censorship, taboos and Hollywood racial stereotypes then prevailing.It would be more relevant if this critique had been applied to a film like this made today.I think people should enjoy a film in the social context of when it was made.Why does this person watch it if it so offends, with all the many other channels available? I enjoy watching old movies, especially Ms Jones.Many films from that era were so more literate than the grunting new age actors of the method school today.I have read a great deal about the making of this film.The Brean (U.S. Fim Censors) office requested several scenes to be cut and although modifications were done Selznick resisted total scene cuts except one which involved JJ dancing seductively around a tree at "the Sump" with just Gregory Peck to enjoy her performance.Apparently the scene just did not work and Tilly Losch offered to do it as she was a professional dancer.You see her as the native American Indian mother of Pearl Chavez, dancing in the saloon at the beginning of the film.Pity!I for one would love to have seen it but the film editors had to destroy all these risky out-takes! If you want spectacle, colour, a big canvas,melodrama,Westerns,actors such as Gregg Peck/JJ/Lillian Gish/John Barrymore/Jo Cotton, this is the film for you.
Rating:
Summary: Peck as a rapist? Lemme see that!
Review: Since I can't address the claims that the film is racist-- hey, they got away with a lot in 1946-- I'll plug this film if for no other reason than that it shows a side of Gregory Peck that fans could scarcely imagine possible. Jones had just come from playing Saint Bernadette and Peck had come off the success (and an Oscar nomination) of "Keys of the Kingdom" when they were cast in this one. The Catholic church was appalled by it (all the more reason for me to like it!). Peck is marvelous as the almost-lovable criminal Lewt, outshining Cotten, who got the role you'd expect Peck to have been given-- the straight man. Watch "To Kill a Mockingbird," then watch this, just to get the sweet taste out of your mouth.
Rating:
Summary: Epic, Sprawling Horse Opera (Roadshow Edition Review)
Review: Sweeping! Magnificent! Corny! Romantic! A west that never existed is splashed across the screen as only David O. Selznick, the master of such gargantuan Hollywood classics as "Gone With the Wind", "Since You Went Away" and "Rebecca" could give us.
This is not the revisionists west of the 1990's, nor that West of the gritty operatic glamour of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West." You will not find the spare clean and lean beauty of John ford's West. What we have here is the epic telling on a screen that screams to be stretched into widescreen and spills out over the audenience the lush and romantic horse Opera of Pearl Chavez, the McCanles clan and the coming of the railroads in the 1880's.
From the moment the overture replete with unneeded narration begins you know you are in for a melodrama of purple emotions and blood red vendettas. The opening scene is set in a saloon on a scale of a modern Vegas casino. There amidst the wild gunfire of overheated cowboys and insanely spinning faro wheels we are introduced to the Scarlett O'Hara of the West, half-breed Pearl Chavez. As played by Jennifer Jones she is just about the hottest tamale to ever hit the pages of a screenplay expressly written to drive men mad, turn brother against brother and defy a "Sinkiller". What Jane Russell was supposed to be in "The Outlaw" we get in Technicolor spades in the form of Miss Jones.
She takes huge hefty bites of the massive sets and chews them to a fare thee well and in the process creates a wanton nymphomaniacal character of such charm, heat and passion that she is truly a motion picture original. This is the best thing Miss Jones ever did because it is so out of control and beyond the pale of her more subdued performances. Of saints, teenage war brides and ghosts of lost love.
As Lewt McCanles we get the hottest, meanest, most excitingly nasty performance Gregory Peck ever was allowed to give. And what an irresistible bad boy he is. He was never sexier or more wonderful than in this departure from the Peck norm.
Even the usually dull Joseph Cotton manages to rise above his typically dry rolls, but not too much, in the thankless roll of the good brother. He seems a little too old for the part and a little too polished. Someone like Charlton Heston might have been more on the spot.
Lillian Gish steals every scene she is in with quite assuredness and only finds completion from the ever-prissy Butterfly McQueen. In her final scene with Lionel Barrymore Miss Gish makes off with the scene so quitly that you are hit with it's impact only after the fact. Barrymore creates one of his most beloved curmudgeons as Senator Jackson McCanles full of sound and furry and ultimately signifying less than nothing. His introduction to Pearl topped by a sneeringly shocking racial slur that encapsulates his character and time and place.
Another highlight is the cameo by Walter Huston as "The Sinkiller". What can be said of him is only this, pure cinematic magic.
The film unfold with such a sense of grandeur and awe that it sweeps you along to its incredible ending on the wings of epic pure camp poetry. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is a masterpiece and much famed over the years for the incredible call of the bells set piece.
The three cinematographers involved, Hal Rosson, Ray Rennahan, and Lee Garmes paint movie memory after memory with the palate of hot dusty hues that have long been forgotten by audiences of today. To see it now is perhaps more exciting and thrilling than it was in 1947.
All of this mad mixture of melodrama, mush and music was orchestrated by the master showman of his time, the ultimate huckster of smoke and mirrors and consummate barometer for just what we wanted in our early epics of the America that never existed, David O. Selznick, who added the "O" to his name just because it looked better on the marquee. When they say that off heard lament "They don't make'um like they used to." Both Mr. Selznick and "Duel In The Sun" are what they are talking about. If they still made them like this then something would be terribly wrong. Thank god they did make films like this once upon a time and we still have them to lose ourselves in a dream of what never was and what will never be again.
Rating:
Summary: Epic, Sprawling Horse Opera (Roadshow Edition Review)
Review: Sweeping! Magnificent! Corny! Romantic! A west that never existed is splashed across the screen as only David O. Selznick, the master of such gargantuan Hollywood classics as "Gone With the Wind", "Since You Went Away" and "Rebecca" could give us.
This is not the revisionists west of the 1990's, nor that West of the gritty operatic glamour of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West." You will not find the spare clean and lean beauty of John ford's West. What we have here is the epic telling on a screen that screams to be stretched into widescreen and spills out over the audenience the lush and romantic horse Opera of Pearl Chavez, the McCanles clan and the coming of the railroads in the 1880's.
From the moment the overture replete with unneeded narration begins you know you are in for a melodrama of purple emotions and blood red vendettas. The opening scene is set in a saloon on a scale of a modern Vegas casino. There amidst the wild gunfire of overheated cowboys and insanely spinning faro wheels we are introduced to the Scarlett O'Hara of the West, half-breed Pearl Chavez. As played by Jennifer Jones she is just about the hottest tamale to ever hit the pages of a screenplay expressly written to drive men mad, turn brother against brother and defy a "Sinkiller". What Jane Russell was supposed to be in "The Outlaw" we get in Technicolor spades in the form of Miss Jones.
She takes huge hefty bites of the massive sets and chews them to a fare thee well and in the process creates a wanton nymphomaniacal character of such charm, heat and passion that she is truly a motion picture original. This is the best thing Miss Jones ever did because it is so out of control and beyond the pale of her more subdued performances. Of saints, teenage war brides and ghosts of lost love.
As Lewt McCanles we get the hottest, meanest, most excitingly nasty performance Gregory Peck ever was allowed to give. And what an irresistible bad boy he is. He was never sexier or more wonderful than in this departure from the Peck norm.
Even the usually dull Joseph Cotton manages to rise above his typically dry rolls, but not too much, in the thankless roll of the good brother. He seems a little too old for the part and a little too polished. Someone like Charlton Heston might have been more on the spot.
Lillian Gish steals every scene she is in with quite assuredness and only finds completion from the ever-prissy Butterfly McQueen. In her final scene with Lionel Barrymore Miss Gish makes off with the scene so quitly that you are hit with it's impact only after the fact. Barrymore creates one of his most beloved curmudgeons as Senator Jackson McCanles full of sound and furry and ultimately signifying less than nothing. His introduction to Pearl topped by a sneeringly shocking racial slur that encapsulates his character and time and place.
Another highlight is the cameo by Walter Huston as "The Sinkiller". What can be said of him is only this, pure cinematic magic.
The film unfold with such a sense of grandeur and awe that it sweeps you along to its incredible ending on the wings of epic pure camp poetry. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is a masterpiece and much famed over the years for the incredible call of the bells set piece.
The three cinematographers involved, Hal Rosson, Ray Rennahan, and Lee Garmes paint movie memory after memory with the palate of hot dusty hues that have long been forgotten by audiences of today. To see it now is perhaps more exciting and thrilling than it was in 1947.
All of this mad mixture of melodrama, mush and music was orchestrated by the master showman of his time, the ultimate huckster of smoke and mirrors and consummate barometer for just what we wanted in our early epics of the America that never existed, David O. Selznick, who added the "O" to his name just because it looked better on the marquee. When they say that off heard lament "They don't make'um like they used to." Both Mr. Selznick and "Duel In The Sun" are what they are talking about. If they still made them like this then something would be terribly wrong. Thank god they did make films like this once upon a time and we still have them to lose ourselves in a dream of what never was and what will never be again.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreadful sound transfer
Review: The dvd image is great, the soundtrack transfer is horrible: drops in volume and the dialogue is often distorted.
Rating:
Summary: LAUGHABLE YET CURIOUSLY ENJOYABLE...
Review: This 1946 western boasts spectacular, technicolor cinematography and a script that is sometimes laughable. Directed by Hollywood notable, King Vidor, one wonders whether he was under pressure by the producer, David O. Selznick, and was more of a puppet rather than a director. That can be the only explanation for this directorial faux pas. It is so over the top in its excesses that in the first five minutes one sees some wild, almost hysterical dancing, the cuckolding of a husband, and two murders arising out of that nasty domestic situation. The storyline is simple. A Spanish Grandee, Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall), married the wrong woman, a wild and passionate Indian, instead of his true love, Laura Belle. Together they have a child whom they named Pearl. Known as a half breed, Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones), wants to be a lady, a "good girl". Given who her mother was, however, no one wants to give her a chance to prove herself. When her father knows he is to die, he packs her off to his first love, Laura Belle (Lillian Gish), who lives in Texas and is married to Senator McCanles (Lionel Barrymore). They have two sons, Jesse (Joseph Cotten) and Lewt (Gregory Peck). Jesse is the good son and his mother's favorite, while Lewt is a spoiled rake and his father's favorite. When Pearl arrives at the McCanles ranch, Lillian greets her warmly, as does Jesse. Senator McCanles, her overbearing husband, however, treats Pearl to some racist, politically incorrect invective, while Lewt eyes her lasciviously. Needless to say, a love triangle of sorts develops. Ultimately, both sons want her, but they both can't have her. Jesse treats Pearl like a lady, while Lewt treats her like a wanton. When a breach with his father arises, Jesse leaves the ranch, leaving Pearl to the mercy of Lewt who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to ensure his claim over Pearl. In the end, Lewt appears to be the one to get Pearl, but what he gets may be more than that for which bargained. Moreover, Pearl may also be prone to self-sacrifice. Herbert Marshall, as the Spanish Grandee with regrets, gives an effective performance, although he is somewhat miscast. Lillian Gish gives an excellent portrayal of the put upon Laura Belle, though her death scene is so melodramatic that it is hard to keep a straight face. Lionel Barrymore is also excellent, though a little over the top in his performance. I have to say, I loved Gregory Peck as the bad guy. He gives a truly terrific performance. The viewer gets a sense that Peck really seemed to be enjoying himself. Joseph Cotten oozes integrity in the role of the saintly Jesse. Butterfly McQueen, as Vashti the maid, is, well, Butterfly McQueen, with her distinctive, high pitched voice, holding sway over the viewer. Charles Bickford, as the ranch straw boss, Sam Pierce, gives a restrained and moving performance as the man who truly loves and wants to marry Pearl, a desire that Lewt will do everything to thwart. Jennifer Jones, quite frankly, is utterly laughable as Pearl. If she had not been the producer's main squeeze at the time, I doubt that she would ever have been cast for the part of Pearl. So over the top is her performance, so filled with pouty grimaces, histrionics, and sultry poses, that her portrayal of Pearl rises to the level of high camp. The scene where she grabs Lewt's leg in a histrionic fit, declaring her undying love as he walks away, dragging her across the floor, is a bit much. I suspect that the director's handling of Ms. Jones' portrayal of Pearl was the director's way of getting back at the producer. If so, the director succeeded in giving it to the producer in spades. Notwithstanding this, the film is still a moderately enjoyable western. For those who object to its political incorrectness, remember to keep in mind the social context out of which it arose. The times, they are a changing.
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