Pursued [Blu-ray]

Strangely, this black and white film lovingly restored through the auspices of Mr Martin Scorsese, is not your typical "western". Yes, there are shots fired and men ride horses, but the film is more dominated by two women with the concerns of love, family and hate than it is by the men, even though Mr Mitchum has never looked so dashing, and Dean Jagger is utterly wonderful as the vengeful evil scheming lawyer Uncle. Nor can one possibly ignore the score by Max Steiner who is in full orchestral flight, signalling every sigh, every moment of anger, or anguish. Freud gets a run, as does the legend of Cain and Abel, not to mention revenge tragedy. But above all CHANCE is the central motif - who should go to war, let's toss a coin to decide!!! Who should get the farm - let's toss a coin for it !!! And hero, put upon stepson and one of the characters PURSUED, Mr Mitchum, becomes a professional gambler.
The photography too, gives visual expression to the haunted lives therein. Nevertheless, it is the wonderful Dame Judith Anderson and Teresa Wright who run away with the acting accolades. Every moment they are on, we cannot stop watching them.
In short, well written, beautifully directed work a pleasure to view.

Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) can't understand why everybody hates him, or why so many people want to kill him, and he can't remember much of anything before Ma Callum (Judith Anderson) dragged him out of an orphan cellar and adopted him as one of her own. It's no wonder PURSUED is told as a flashback, this one is all about memory and remembering.
Ma Callum carries him to her home and throws her in a bed with his two new step-siblings, Thor (later played by Teresa Wright) and Adam (later John Rooney.) Ma Callum hurriedly bundles her charges together and they flee into the dark night - she too has inner demons to run from.
And so the stage is set for what has been called the first psychological western. You can safely throw in film noir and melodrama, as well. The psychological elements are a little too pronounced. Jeb suffers from nightmares - a pair of spurred boots moving about in the dark, flashes of light (gunfire?) Ma Callum could probably explain it all to him, but her only words of advice are "What you don't remember doesn't matter. Don't try to remember." The noir elements occur throughout, one of the most obvious is Forbidden Love - Jeb must have liked it when Ma Callum bounced him on that bed the first time; Jeb and Thor fall in love as adults. And then there are the claustrophobic deep shadows and dark corners in the Callum home and the sheer cliff walls of New Mexico. Veering back to the psychological aspects, brother Adam is jealous of Jeb and Thor's love, for more than one reason.
Add one-armed Grant Callum (Dean Jagger) as Jeb's nemesis and you've got a heady stew of melodrama.
This sounds like a recipe for a treacly mess, but it's not. Like everyone else in this one, Grant Callum has a herd of inner demons goading him on, and Jagger is at his oily best. Judith Anderson is superb as the strong frontier woman. Robert Mitchum is, well, the term sloe-eyed comes to mind. Since his character is focused on remembering the past I'll assume it was a conscious decision on his part to play Jeb Rand in such a subdued manner.
Sometimes it's unfair to judge old movies by today's standard. In 1947 PURSUED may have seemed the cutting edge of bold filmmaking. Today it seems a little contrived and predictable. But the location photography in and around Gallup, New Mexico by James Wong Howe is still impressive, and the direction of Raoul Walsh keep this one from going under.

I am very glad I ordered this older movie and was impressed with the quality and the story line. I hope Amazon continues to make available more of these old western movies as they are better in many ways than the newer westerns. Thx John