The Furies 04/13/21

When not making tons of money collaborating with James Stewart, Anthony Mann directed some really grim westerns. This mini-epic spells out the ugly real-life Code of The West: seizing land and establishing private empires. Walter Huston’s T.C. Jeffords maintains his sprawling fiefdom through economic tyranny (he prints his own money and expects banks to accept it) — and by simple violence, murdering the people that have lived on ‘his’ land for generations. Barbara Stanwyck is the feisty heir who wages generational war on her piratical father. It’s the darkest and most subversive of HUAC-era ‘noir’ westerns. With Wendell Corey, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland and Thomas Gomez. On Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
04/13/21