La lance brisée

Saw Broken Lance last nite on Encore Western. It's my second viewing. I really enjoyed Spencer Tracy and Kathy Jurado. Tracy is worth the price of admission and Jurado's sad eyes never fail to draw me in. To those who say it's a play on Joseph & his Brothers, I'm sorry I don't agree. Beyond the superficial similarities, Jacob's sons wouldn't have dreamed of disobeying him, let alone harming him the way the Deveraux boys (Widmark, Holliman, O'Brian) do.

The film has what I believe to be the best film courtroom sequences ever, i.e. the cross-examination of Matt Deveraux.

Definitely worth seeing.

This is an enjoyable and luxurious remake from ¨House of strangers¨ in Western style . Cattle baron Matt Devereaux (magnificent Spencer Tracy as the ruthless wealthy owner who sadly contends his sons) is a widower who married an Indian woman (Katy Jurado , though plays Robert Wagner's mother in the film, she was only six years older than him in real life) . The Irish Matt is an egocentric and tyrannical self-made man that raises his family in an environment of hatred . He raids a copper smelter that is polluting his water . As Deveraux swears vengeance on those who have poised his stock . Half-breed son named Joe (Robert Wagner) takes responsibility for the raid and gets three years in jail . Serious conflicts arouse which split the family , as Ben Deveraux (Richard Widmark) attempts to divide the property among his brothers .

This over-the-top film contains intense drama , racial slur , familiar confrontation with dramatic taking on among father-sons and being beautifully realized . Interesting screenplay by Richard Murphy , based on a story by prestigious Philip Yordan . Good and agreeable Western that details the dissolution of a despotic cattle baron's family with King Lear's Shakespeare touches . The picture with exciting plot displays elements of Greek tragedy and a touching finale . It results to be a peculiar version about confrontation between father and brothers ; theme to be treated in other Hollywood films such as ¨House of strangers¨ (1949) also written by Philip Yordan , being directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz with Edward G Robinson (Spencer Tracy role), Luther Adler (Richard Widmark character) , Efrem Zimbalist (Hugh O'Brian role) and Richard Conte (Robert Wagner role) . Spencer Tracy's tour-de-force performance in the climactic courtroom scene was so powerful that it completely captivated the onlooking film crewmen . Richard Widmark as the oldest and meanest brother , in a smaller part that you'd expected from his billing , is nevertheless excellent as a bad guy . The other siblings are played by naive young Robert Wagner , tough Hugh o'Brian and slow witted Earl Holliman . Romantic interest is supplied by the ever vivacious and lovely Jean Peters who married Howard Hughes . Besides , an excellent plethora of secondary actors as Katy Jurado , E.G Marshall , Eduard Franz . Musical score well composed and conducted by Leigh Harline is impressive ; including catching leitmotif and enjoyable sounds from Western . Colorful and evocative cinematography in Cinemascope by Joseph MacDonald .

The motion picture well produced by the great producers Sol C. Siegel , Darryl F. Zanuck was stunningly directed by Edward Dmytryck . A veteran filmmaker, Dmytryck is one of Hollywood's most prolific directors who started his career in the early 40s . He was a craftsman whose career was interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist influence in Hollywood . A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several months behind bars , Dmytryk decided to cooperate . Dmytrick's biggest film was ¨The Caine Mutiny¨ , but he also realized another mutiny film titled : ¨Mutiny¨ with Angela Lansbury . Edward was an expert on warlike genre as ¨Back to Batan¨ , ¨Battle of Anzio¨ , ¨Young lions¨ and Western as ¨Broken lance¨ , ¨Alvarez Kelly¨ , ¨Warlock¨ among others . Rating : 7 , better than average . It's recommended for Western enthusiasts and Spencer Tracy fans .

Pride, resentment, jealousy, and prejudice boil over in this complex grown-up western, featuring hard boiled performances by Spencer Tracy, as a tightly-wound cattle baron, and Richard Widmark as his hate-filled eldest son. Contrasting them are Robert Wagner and Katy Jurado as Tracy's virtuous (and favorite) youngest son and loyal Indian wife.

Right on target from start to finish, Broken Lance manages to squeeze three hours worth of epic drama into a lean ninety-six minutes. There's enough material here to have made a TV-miniseries.

As good as it was, in the end there were still a few unanswered questions. Did Wagner regain his birthright? How did he deal with his other two brothers and the governor? The film should have been fifteen minutes longer!

Although a remake,this western strongly recalls the story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis.After all,that's the hero's name ,and his brothers really sell him when they refuse to give more money to the bosses of the copper mine .Leonard Maltin wrote that it owes a deal to "king lear" too,the daughters becoming sons.Richard Widmark is the stand-out and easily outshines the "good" Robert Wagner and his two other brothers who are no more than walk-ons anyway.In his final confrontation with Tracy,he even surpasses the veteran :he succeeds,which is not a small feat, in making us believe that he had a very hard life and that he's not so bad after all.

"Broken lance" ranks among Dmytryk's best works ,more human than "Warlock" and a thousand times better than the latter days ' fiascoes such as "Alvarez Kelly" and the dreadful "Shalako".Released just after the brilliant "Caine mutiny" ,it compares favorably to it,in its own way.The opening is intriguing :we do believe ,for a short while,that Joe (Wagner) is the black sheep of the family ,and then , a long flashback -a device which is rarely used in westerns - brilliantly starting with the patriarch's(Tracy)painting in a deserted house ,tells the whole story.Also unusual is the rather long trial ,a reason for which some will classify the movie as talky,which is unfair,because so many qualities in a western are rare to find.Tracy's death is a real tour de force verging on supernatural.There's also a sensitive wistful performance by Katy Jurado ,as Tracy's second wife .

BROKEN LANCE is a run of the mill Western elevated by Spencer Tracy's unfailingly high acting standards. Screenplay is OK, with an ending that requires much suspension of disbelief, and with a vested anti-racism message which, back in 1954, must have been unusual and even necessary.

Film critic Leonard Maltin sees it as Shakespeare's King Lear in the male version and in the West. He may have a point, though one could argue that the parable of the prodigal son also comes to mind, except that that son is of mixed race (Wagner) who is returning from doing time, and brother Widmark resents him to the point of short-changing him in terms of inheritance.

Widmark begins well enough but gradually goes wide of the mark, and by the end his character is overblown with self-pity, hatred, greed, envy, and many other sins, to the point of trying to shoot his half-brother (the whole sequence is pathetic and lets the film down badly). Needless to say, by comparison Wagner comes across as an angel, not least because he has done three years in jail by taking the blame for a misdeed by his father, Tracy, thereby sparing the latter that time behind bars.

That situation in effect gives Wagner the plum part in the movie but, sadly, apart from the moment when he throws a wad of money into a spitoon, he misses the opportunity. I would have loved to see Marlon Brando in that part.

Katy Jurado, playing Tracy's second wife and the daughter of an Indian chief, is Wagner's mother. Her weak acting is particularly exposed when she comes face to face with Tracy.

The other two brothers hardly have a thing to say, and sound dumb when they open their mouths. Jean Peters is beautiful, which is a plus, but her role is rather limited. The actor who plays her father is convincing, but his part is too short to be noteworthy.

Photography and settings are first class, and give this movie a kind of GONE WITH THE WIND look at times. I have now seen this film some five times, and to me it ends with Tracy's death. The remaining 20+ minutes are painful to watch without him, especially the thoroughly unbelievable sequence where Widmark tries to do Wagner.