Pursued
March 2003 Reviewed by: Wes Phillips Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Pursued is a hybrid -- it's set in the west, so it's a Western, but it's told mainly in nighttime scenes and focuses on the psychological scars and seemingly eternal torment of its protagonist, which makes it closer to film noir. Call it L'Ouest noir.

Robert Mitchum plays the haunted Jeb Rand, tortured by dreams of the day he viewed the slaughter of his family. Teresa Wright, in the role of her career, is Thorley Callum, Rand's adoptive "sister," whose search for Rand (her finding him, really) sets off the series of flashbacks that tells the story. In the end, Rand remembers everything -- and the story is all wrapped up a tad too neatly.

But that bare-bones recapitulation ignores the film's considerable power. The plot may be overwritten, but it's phenomenally effective -- especially as told by Raoul Walsh, with musical accompaniment by Max Steiner. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Pursued is James Wong Howe's mesmerizing black-and-white cinematography -- it says everything that's required about Rand's insignificance in the face of an indifferent cosmos, which is, after all, pure noir.

And even half a century after the fact, grafting such a dark, Freudian-inflected tale onto the Western genre seems exciting. (After all, it did take Hollywood another 16 years to produce Hud.) Further, the chance to see Mitchum stretch himself as an actor, emoting, primarily through those incredibly expressive half-lidded eyes, is a pleasure no cinema buffs should deny themselves.

The video transfer is first-rate; Howe's cinematography comes across with almost preternatural clarity. The sound is also good -- considering the film's age. It's not surround, or even stereo, but it is clear and undistorted. You get no extras, but I'll take a great transfer and digital remastering over any number of half-hour "commercials" for a film any day.

Besides, the DVD lists for $14.95 -- a sign, I suspect, that the studios are looking for new ways to move older, less "hot" films. That's good news for us movie buffs, since serious films at budget prices make trips to the DVD hut a lot more fun. Look for many more to come -- Universal alone has plans to release a bumper crop of Westerns for the month of May at lower prices: Bend of the River, Destry Rides Again, Winchester 73, Duel at Silver Creek, Redhead from Wyoming, Shenandoah, and The Far Country.

Now ain't that good news? 

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