Sounds, Images

Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953)

First observation: Hollywood needs one-eyed directors again, because they seemed to make the best movies while working in 3-D. Maybe it was because they just made movies, and weren't trying to find justifications for pictorial effects. Also, Gun Fury is a perverse name for something with so few guns in it (but Horse Fury sounds stupid and Desert Fury and, even better, The Fury were already taken).

Second observation: "All women are alike, they just got different faces so you call tell 'em apart," sez Leo Gordon. A film where women are forced to find their place in a world dictated by men who speak entirely in cynical aphorisms. The two female leads (Donna Reed as the displaced Southern belle, Roberta Haynes as the spurned Mexican lover) are caged and kept, though it takes them until the end of the film to realize it. Image-of-the-film: Phil Carey drags Reed behind his horse with a rope around her waist; 40 minutes or so minutes earlier in the movie, they were dancing, his hand afraid to touch her in the presence eyes of her watchful fiancee.