BY JOHN M. WHALEN
“Broken Lance†(1954) is another great Blu-Ray release
from Twilight Time, which seems to be specializing in 20th Century
Fox Cinemascope productions from the 1950s. These wide-screen, star-studded
productions were all the rage back in the day. Utilizing the wider screen and
full directional stereophonic sound to tell big stories, they’re the kind of
movies they really just don’t make anymore. Director Edward Dmytryk shot this
film on location in Arizona and cinematographer Joe MacDonald fills every
outdoor seen with both a sense of grandeur and, somehow, a feeling of
loneliness, which befits a story about a man who outlived his time, and has
become a dinosaur.
Spencer Tracy is the man—Matt Devereaux, a tough,
hard-nosed rancher who owns the biggest ranch in the territory. He got
everything he has by fighting for it, and his hard-bitten attitude hasn’t
diminished with age. The tough way he treats everyone extends down to his four
sons, three, Ben, Mike, and Denny (Richard Widmark, Hugh O’Brien and Earl
Holliman) from a deceased first wife, and a fourth, Joe, (Robert Wagner) with a
Native American woman (Katy Jurado). The three from the first wife resent the
way they’re treated. They work hard and see little compensation for it. They’re
also a little jealous of the half-breed son, who seems favored by the old man.
The story starts with Joe being released from prison after
serving three years, taking a rap for the sake of the family. His father is
dead now and he’s taken to the governor (E.G. Marshall) and offered a deal by
his greedy brothers: $20,000 and a ranch in Oregon if he leaves the territory,
and trouble if he turns the offer down. Joe tosses the money into a spittoon
and rides out to the old ranch house. It’s deserted and ramshackle now, the
three brothers having moved into town. Joe stands before a portrait of the old
man on horseback asking for a sign to tell him what to do. The film then shifts
into a flashback which tells the story of the rivalry between the brothers, the
old man’s dispute with a copper mining operation next to the ranch that is
poisoning the water on the ranch, and a love story between Joe and the
governor’s daughter (Jean Peters). It’s a big, sprawling story of the end of a
dynasty.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because the story is
loosely based on two different sources. The first obviously is Shakespeare’s
tragedy of King Lear, which was a story of a king who bequeathed his kingdom to
two of his three daughters and lived to regret it. In the case of “Broken
Lance†the protagonist has four sons, not daughters, and Matt Devereaux doesn’t
intend to bequeath anything to anybody, at least not until he’s long buried in
the ground. The other more direct source of Richard Murphy’s screenplay is
Philip Yordan’s script for an older Fox noir pot boiler, “House of
Strangers.†In that one, Edward G. Robinson is the
patriarchal figure, the head of a bank, who gets ripped off by three of his
sons, while the good son, Max (Richard Conte) takes the rap when his father is
charged with embezzlement.
The urban drama, based on a book by Jerome Weidman,
translated fairly well to a western setting, and Dmytryk does a good job
keeping the action moving, while keeping the focus on the family’s internal
struggles and the titanic, doomed efforts of Matt Devereaux to hold his empire
together. Tracy gives a good performance, as usual, as a man who knows no other
way to live his life, although the character as written by screenwriter Richard
Murphy, seems a bit one-dimensional. It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone so
bull-headed. Wagner was adequate as the half-breed son, and Widmark turned in
his usual bad guy performance. Hey, he’s Richard Widmark and you expect him to
be a rat. Katy Jurado, of course, always added grace and dignity to any film
she appeared in and this is no exception. Jean Peters, as Wagner’s love
interest, provided at least one reason for the half-breed Joe to stay in the
territory.
The Blu-Ray transfer of this Cinemascope presentation is
first rate, as we’ve come to expect from these Twilight Time limited editions
(only 3,000 made). Picture and sound are very good. The extras include an audio
commentary with Nick Redman and Earl Holliman, who talks about what it was like
working with Dmytryk and Tracy. There’s an isolated soundtrack, featuring
composer Leigh Harline’s big orchestral sound, a booklet essay by Julie Kirgo,
some previews, and a newsreel showing Philip Yordan getting an Oscar for “House
of Strangersâ€. A pretty full package.
Bottom line: Although “Broken Lance,†strives to reach
the heights of a Shakespearean tragedy on horseback, Richard Murphy’s script suffers
from thin characterizations that lean toward stereotypes, and a plot that
eventually fizzles out in a standard horse opera shootout. It’s not a bad film,
but given the cast and the sources material it could have been great. Still, it’s
worth seeing. Recommended for fans of big westerns and the widescreen
extravaganzas of the fifties.
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John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)