PURSUED (1947)

Warner Bros., 101m 20s

By the year 1947, the film noir was in full stride. Some of the most important and technically accomplished expressions of the genre were released that year, including BODY AND SOUL, BRUTE FORCE, CROSSFIRE, KISS OF DEATH, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, OUT OF THE PAST, RIDE THE PINK HORSE and T-MEN. The genre certainly includes enough quality films to continue the list further. So entrenched was the noir film by the late 1940s, the genre's well-defined elements began to merge with another popular genre:  the Western. Such cross-genre examples of the period include RAMROD (1947), BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948) and STATION WEST (1948). Perhaps the best-known instance of the noir Western is PURSUED, a vengeance story often cited as the first manifestation of this interesting genre hybrid. With its intense psychological drama deeply entrenched in fatalism, PURSUED confirms that film noir conditions need not be limited to modern urban locations.

Set in the territory of New Mexico, the majority of the story is told through flashbacks, a cinematic technique frequently employed to emphasize the dominance of the past over the present in noir narratives. Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) is controlled by a past trauma he cannot comprehend or recollect clearly. As a young boy, Jeb's entire family was slaughtered at home while he hid in the cellar. Now a grown man, the tortured soul Jeb wishes to assemble his origin story, but his head hurts when he thinks about it. The recurring image that impacts him most is that of cowboy boots with spurs in frantic motion. Jeb's repressed memory of his family's violent elimination drives all of the narrative's major conflicts.

The tortured psyche of a young Jeb Rand is emphasized in this dissolve

The toss of a coin determines Jeb Rand's future on multiple occasions

The dark undertones of the film noir family:
sexual tensions complicate the brother/sister
relationship between Jeb Rand and Thor Callum

A familiar film noir trope is the notion that the sanctity of the traditional American family is in jeopardy, and the details that emerge in regard to the massacre of the Rand family are absolutely noir in nature. Jeb is claimed by a new family when Mrs. Callum (Judith Anderson) decides to raise him along with her daughter Thorley "Thor" Callum (Teresa Wright) and son Adam Callum (John Rodney). Jeb's ersatz family comes with its own complexities, not to mention a noir sense of fate well symbolized by two coin tosses, each lost by Jeb. The first causes him to fight in the Spanish–American War, the second prompts him to leave Mrs. Callum's ranch, his home since childhood. Film noir undercurrents take hold of the Callum property in earnest when Jeb and Thor fall in love after having been raised as brother and sister! The noir mood gets darker from there when Jeb kills (in self-defense) the man raised as his brother (Adam). At the narrative's resolution, it is revealed a home-wrecking love affair set about the destruction of the Rand family and the prolonged family feud that followed. In perhaps the most fatalistic of film noir dynamics, Jeb is drawn to the location where tragedy occurred so many years ago, which brings a sense of unshakable destiny to the material. Even in a genre awash with adulterous couples and less-than-ideal marriages that infiltrate benchmark film noirs like DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), MILDRED PIERCE (1945), GILDA (1946), THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946), GUN CRAZY (1950) and ANGEL FACE (1953), the fabric of family life in PURSUED is enough to make one want to take a shower after the credits roll.

The low camera angle associated with the noir style

An arranged confrontation

Shadows that signify an unknown past continue to weigh heavy on Jeb

The alienated main protagonist is something of a given in the typical film noir, especially those titles that are best remembered and commonly referenced. Consider the detached men who inhabit THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), DETOUR (1945), SCARLET STREET (1945), OUT OF THE PAST (1947), D.O.A. (1950), THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950), SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) and KISS ME DEADLY (1955). Much like the major characters of these famous noir stories, Jeb is an outsider. He has no remaining ties to his biological family, nor does he mesh perfectly with his replacement family. Internal conflict has accompanied him since the dramatic childhood event that cruelly altered his life.

A related genre motif often connected to the noir figure's lack of belonging is some form of physical disability. The challenge faced by the veteran in his attempt to re-enter civilian life is given emphasis when Jeb walks with a cane after his heroic return from wartime service. Despite the hero's welcome, Jeb continues to struggle with finding his proper place. An even better instance of the physically wounded noir character is embodied by Grant Callum (Dean Jagger) who loses him arm thanks to his role in the gunfight that wrecks the Rand family. Driven only by vengeance and a family feud that only he seems intent on continuing, Grant is perhaps more out of place in the world than Jeb.

The role of women in PURSUED also draws from recurring film noir sensibilities, not the gender simplicities of the classic Western with its schoolmarms and dancehall girls. Both family matriarch and troublemaking whore, Mrs. Callum stands as the definition of moral ambiguity, though ultimately she proves her worth with timely use of the Western's most iconic weapon. And in an early scene, she upholds the generally Marxist notions of film noir when she explains to her children they should share everything equally. As her children mature to adulthood, Adam rejects that notion. Mrs. Callum's daughter Thor also signifies a duality of woman, both sister and wife of Jeb Rand, potentially a nurturing woman yet just about capable of mariticide.

The noir wedding. Nobody looks happy, and for good reason

The bride in white, surrounded by black

Til death do us part...

With 52 years of experience directing films, storied filmmaker Raoul Walsh is an example of someone who successfully navigated his career from the silent era into sound. After PURSUED, just two years later he put his directorial stamp on another cross-genre classic:  the gangster noir film WHITE HEAT (1949). Director of photography James Wong Howe, another Hollywood legend, enjoyed a career of roughly identical length to that of Walsh. The same year PURSUED was released, Howe also handled the cinematography for NORA PRENTISS and BODY AND SOUL, both immersive film noir productions. Screenwriter Niven Busch was married to lead actress Teresa Wright at the time of production. She remains the only actress in Hollywood history to receive Academy Award nominations for her first three roles:  THE LITTLE FOXES (1941), MRS. MINIVER (1942) and THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942). She won the Best Actress in a Supporting Role Academy Award for MRS. MINIVER.

Right-to-left movement signifies backward momentum,
in this case back to the shot that was taken at Jeb Rand when he was a youth

Now headed to the right, Jeb will finally come to terms with his past

A narrow passage implies oppressive noir forces remain in play...

...but Jeb possesses the capacity to emerge from such forces
(in the form of Mitchum's double in this shot)

Derived from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative via Paramount Pictures, the dual-layered Blu-ray edition of PURSUED released earlier this year by Kino Lorber is framed at 1.37:1 and looks handsome enough. Only a minimum of artifacts caught my notice. The level of film grain is moderate. In a vintage introductory segment by Martin Scorsese (2m 37s), recorded for a prior home video edition of the film that as far as I know never materialized, the auteur considers PURSUED the first film noir Western with its amalgamation of the Western's traditional conflicts and the noir film's more intricate moral ambiguities. The Kino Lorber disc boasts a newly recorded audio commentary track by estimable film scholar Imogen Sara Smith, who always shows up reliably prepared for a commentary assignment. The author of IN LONELY PLACES: FILM NOIR BEYOND THE CITY (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011) is well suited to discuss the "haunted landscape" of the noir West on display in the title under review. A commercially successful film, PURSUED launched the trend of the psychological Western, although Smith considers director André De Toth's RAMROD to be another contender for the distinction of first noir Western (it was screened in the US two weeks prior to PURSUED). Smith spends a fair amount of time on the noir persona of the sleepy-eyed Robert Mitchum, an actor who seems uniquely qualified to portray the passive lead protagonist of PURSUED. Never an actor who was overly impressed with his profession, Mitchum thought of himself as a tradesman going from paycheck to paycheck, no different than an assembly line worker. His fatalistic hero Jeb is not a proactive personality by any means; things happen to him and he either reacts or doesn't react. Jeb's general feeling of displacement is a good match for director Raoul Walsh, whose out-of-place featured protagonists have outlived their time in THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939) and HIGH SIERRA (1940). Smith points out a flaw in the narrative common to films with flashback structures:  there are moments in the flashbacks during which Jeb was not present and thus could have no memory of the event. And thanks to Smith's commentary track, I am now aware Mitchum's singing voice was recorded on two albums:  CALYPSO – IS LIKE SO... (Capitol Records, 1957) and THAT MAN, ROBERT MITCHUM, SINGS (Monument Records, 1967). Both albums are available on Apple Music and Spotify at the time of this writing.

A collection of (12) trailers completes the Blu-ray's supplemental material.