The Furies - Criterion Collection
by Anthony Mann
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DVD details
Actor: Barbara Stanwyck, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson, Walter Huston, Wendell CoreyDirector: Anthony Mann
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 109 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-24
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of The Furies - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: Mann's Compelling Prairie Psychodrama Given the Deluxe Criterion Collection Treatment
Summary: 4 Stars
There's a lot of Freudian subtext in this unusual 1950 Western, but what resonates most is how director Anthony Mann so smoothly transcends the testosterone-driven genre to come up with an entertaining hybrid of a woman's picture and a Greek tragedy. At the dynamic core of this film is the masterstroke of casting Walter Huston (in his last screen role) and Barbara Stanwyck as a spendthrift father and his headstrong daughter at odds over running the expansive ranch that gives the movie its name. In Roman mythology, the Furies were supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. As females, they represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. It is this single-minded sense of empowerment that drives Vance Jeffords to usurp her wily father T.C. while seeking his approval at the same time.
Set in 1870's New Mexico, the story written by Charles Schnee (The Bad and the Beautiful) is steeped in not-so-indiscreet psychological baggage. T.C. lives by his own rules by borrowing liberally from banks, paying hired hands with his own script, and allowing Mexican settlers to live off his land. Unlike her weak-willed brother, Vance enjoys provoking her father but to what end is never clear as an unacknowledged cloud of incest hangs over their strange relationship. At the same time, T.C. has a sworn enemy in gambler Rip Darrow who is looking to avenge his father's death at T.C.'s hands. Vance falls for Darrow, but she's also drawn to Juan Herrera, a childhood friend and one of the Mexicans now considered squatters. Complicating matters even more is the arrival of T.C.'s pretentious fianc?e Flo Burnett, a devious socialite out to rid the ranch of the Mexicans and push Vance aside as the female head of the beleaguered family. This ploy leads to a most shocking scene that fits well within the story's noirish shadings.
As T.C., Huston gives a grand performance evoking both the old prospector in his son John's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the conflicted industrialist in William Wyler's Dodsworth. Although a bit old for her role at 43, Stanwyck combines her no-nonsense manner with a childlike vulnerability in illuminating Vance's most complex psyche. This is excellent work from an actress who always seemed home on the range. Generally a pliable third lead in films (Rear Window), Wendell Corey doesn't lend charisma or a convincing edge to his swagger as Darrow, but Gilbert Roland shines in the smallish role of Juan and strikes sparks with Stanwyck that should have happened with Corey. However, it is Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca) who steals her brief scenes as Flo bringing out a palpable tension with Stanwyck in their almost-comically cutting scenes together (pardon the pun!). Veteran character actress Beulah Bondi also has a nice near-cameo as a banker's wife fully aware of her husband's prideful shortcomings.
The intensely passionate movie swirls in all its psycho-sexual emotionalism and Shakespearean-level acts of murder, revenge and greed, but oddly (and perhaps due to the edicts of studio censors), Mann applies the brakes in the disappointing final portion of the film. Still, it's well worth viewing in the new Criterion Collection's 2008 release chock-full of extras. First, there is the meticulously academic commentary track by Western scholar Jim Kitses (Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood). Then there is an interesting 17-minute interview with Mann ("Actions Speak Louder Than Words") conducted just prior to his death in 1967. Another interview is offered with Mann's daughter Nina specifically for this release as she recalls her father's often underrated body of work. More of a curio is a silly, obviously scripted 1931 interview with Huston where he evasively responds to the vacuous questions of a pretty reporter. The original theatrical trailer and a stills gallery round out the extras.
DVD Review: Eugene O'Neill Goes West
Summary: 5 Stars
Cheyenne Warrior: The Original Screenplay with Author Commentary
Shadow Watcher
Nobody Drowns in Mineral Lake
If Eugene O'Neill had ever written a western, it might very well have played like this 1950 release, a beautifully photographed black-and-white drama that has all the elements of a Greek tragedy.
Like so many of O'Neill's works (e.g. MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA), the Anthony Mann-directed film, from a novel by Niven Busch, is overly talky. It doesn't really get interesting until the 2nd half when the action moves out of the drawing room onto the New Mexico plains.
Walter Huston, in his final film role, plays the megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner who seems to have a very "close" relationship with his firebrand daughter (Barbara Stanwyck). They are always butting heads over her dowry, choice of a husband and the ownership of the vast ranch itself, which is in major debt.
Matters come to a head when Huston brings Judith Anderson to the ranch, planning to marry her, which pushes Stanwyck into a violent, jealous rage.
Stanwyck delivers one of her finest performances in this atypical western. The superb supporting cast includes Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland and Wallace Ford.
? Michael B. Druxman, author of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (available December 2008)
DVD Review: A classic film with an excellent story.
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
The Furies, directed by Anthony Mann and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Wakter Huston, is one of the best films I have seen for a while.
It is about a greedy widower and his daughter who live on a ranch called "The Furies" in New Mexico in the 19th century. The daughter is in love with a squatter on the ranch and when the father kills him, she exacts revenge.
I really liked the film and thought it was very well made.
It includes some fine special features including the complete novel the film is based on. Also included is a theatrical trailer, audio commentary by historian Jim Kitses, a 1967 interview with Anthony Mann, a 1931 interview with Walter Huston, a new interview with Anthony Mann's daughter, Nina Mann, and a slide show of behind the scenes photos.
This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it.
DVD Review: Good but far from the best by either Mann, Stanwyck, or Huston
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an entertaining film and definitely contains some find elements, but it is far from the best work of any of the major participants and in the end isn't completely satisfying. The movie is most famous for being the great Walter Huston's final film. He in fact died very shortly after finishing work on the film and before its release. Though not among his best films, it does feature many moments where he is able to chew up one scene after another. And near the end of the film there is a steer-wrestling scene on which he appears to have done much of the stunt work, an astonishing feat for a man of 65.
I'm a huge fan of Barbara Stanwyck. She is, in fact, my favorite actor, but I was very uncomfortable watching her in this one. Much of my enjoyment of her in other films comes from the fact that she is by any standard a strong female at a time when women weren't always allowed to be so. In this one, however, she not only has a bizarre attraction for a physically unattractive and personally unappealing gambler, she puts up with being slapped around and otherwise abused. She is, however, even in this film remarkable. Playing a character much younger than Stanwyck was at the time (she was 42 at the time of filming), her girlish build did not at all belie her age. And this despite being in real life a heavy smoker. Still, this is very far from being one of her best films or one of her more memorable performances. Part of that, however, is a reflection on just how many superb performances she gave over the years.
This is also not one of director Anthony Mann's best films. 1950 saw the release of the first of his significant Westerns, WINCHESTER 73. Over the next decade he would establish himself, along with John Ford, as the premiere maker of classic Westerns, directing such films as BEND IN THE RIVER, THE NAKED SPUR, THE FAR COUNTRY, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, and THE TIN STAR, most of these starring his WINCHESTER 73 star Jimmy Stewart. THE FURIES fall far below any of those movies, or even lesser Westerns like MAN OF THE WEST. Still, the movie is interesting as an early effort by one of the masters of the Western genre.
The title of the film refers on one level to the ranch that Huston's character owns, but also the Greek myths concerning the three goddesses of vengeance. They were especially concerned with avenging injustice. Going into the film I assumed that three women would play some role in wrecking vengeance on T. C. Jeffords. Stanwyck's Vance Jeffords was one obvious candidate. Judith Anderson's Flo was the second. Blanche Yurka, as the mother of Juan Herrera, hung by T. C. Jeffords, avenges the death of her son as the third fury.
All in all, I was not impressed with this film. As I stated at the beginning of my review, Mann, Stanwyck, and Huston all did much better work than this. I'll probably never rewatch this movie though I've already seen films like Mann's THE NAKED SPUR and THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, Stanwyck's DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE LADY EVE, and Huston's DODSWORTH and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE multiple times.
DVD Review: If you're a man, don't mess with Miss Vance Jeffords unless you want to sing soprano. If you're a woman, buy an eye patch
Summary: 4 Stars
"Do you mind if I take the reins? I like to know where I'm going." Vance Jeffords, played by Barbara Stanwyck, not only likes to take the reins, she's also capable of turning most men into counter tenors just by staring at them. And don't mention sewing shears...those are reserved for the eyes of other women.
The Furies is a well-crafted, enjoyably mean-spirited western with an unpleasantly conventional moral ending. What makes it memorable is the first two-thirds, which features an arrogant, man-eating performance by Stanwyck and an equally arrogant, blasting performance by Walter Huston as Vance's father, old T. C. Jeffords. Close behind is the butter-melting (and ultimately touching) performance of Judith Anderson as Flo Burnett, a woman as determined to protect her interests as Vance is.
Old T. C. owns The Furies, a vast spread in New Mexico he put together by sweat, cheating, hard work and ruthlessness. His son is a nonentity we quickly forget. His daughter, Vance, loves and wants The Furies as much as she loves...and apparently wants...her old man. There is a not-so-subtle undercurrent of mutual need between the two that adds a nice touch of interest to their full-out greetings and good-byes to each other. "I like being T. C.'s daughter," Vance says, and even when they're at each other's throats we know the attraction is mutual. But Vance Jeffords is not about to come in second to anyone, not to a gambler who she may or may not love, not to a childhood friend she shares a gnaw of bread with whenever they meet. Not to her brother. And not to her father when it looks as if his attention, and the control of The Furies, may be transferred to the gracious widow, Flo Burnett. How this all plays out has, for some critics, overtones of King Lear. Not quite, in my view. The movie is a tangy, well-salted, par-boiled western with great performances by Stanwyck, Huston and Anderson. It may be over-wrought melodrama, but it's entertaining as all get out. That's probably what those flea-scratching groundlings standing in the Globe Theater really thought of King Lear. It also is beautifully framed and photographed, and moves along as quickly as the men and horses Vance applies the whip to. There's a poignant hanging photographed against the dawn sky and a moment of startling violence. If you're interested in finance, there are several lessons about the dangers of issuing your own IOUs as currency (which T. C. has a habit of doing when cash runs short) and the technique of financial leverage (which Vance masters with a cool smile.) Unfortunately, The Furies also has a conventional ending, which is a disappointing development for an unconventional western.
The Furies often is over-wrought, but that's what makes grand melodrama grand. The time flies by while these self-centered people have dangerous fun tearing at each other.
Description of The Furies - Criterion Collection
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 06/24/2008 Run time: 109 minutesSeconds into Anthony Mann's hardboiled horse opera, Barbara Stanwyck absent-mindedly plays with a pair of scissors. Not to worry: she'll put them to use soon enough. Until that time, Stanwyck's volatile heiress, Vance, alternately flatters and manipulates her egotistical father, T.C. Jeffords (a feisty Walter Huston in his final performance). It's the 1870s and T.C.'s ranch, the Furies, inspires envy throughout the New Mexico territory. If Vance picks a suitable husband, T.C. promises her a handsome dowry. Unfortunately, she chooses brutal gambler Rip Darrow (Rear Window's Wendell Corey). If it wasn't for Vance's friendship with Mexican-American squatter Juan (Gilbert Roland), she wouldn't inspire much sympathy, but Vance stands up for the Herreras when financiers pressure the Jeffords to throw them off their land. Then, T.C. takes up with scheming socialite Flo (Rebecca's Dame Judith Anderson), and the tense relations between father and daughter explode into all-out war. By the end, those scissors end up in someone's face, leading to a cycle of revenge-oriented violence. Adapted from Niven Busch's novel by Red River's Charles Schnee, The Furies isn't as deliriously over-the-top as Busch's Duel in the Sun, but it plays more like Shakespearean tragedy than Technicolor camp, and Stanwyck owns the screen from start to finish. The excellent extras include erudite commentary from film historian Jim Kitses, a terrific 1967 interview with Mann for British TV, a playful 1931 chat with Huston, remembrances from Mann's daughter Nina, an essay from critic Robin Wood, and a new printing of Busch's original novel. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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