Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck Passionately Pair in Selznick's Blazing Sun

 

           One of the most intriguing large-scale productions to come out of Hollywood’s Golden Era, 1946’s Duel in the Sun offered producer David O. Selznick an opportunity to bring an exciting, provocative tale to the screen after the more polite and homespun Since You Went Away fared very well with 1944 audiences and well enough with critics, resulting in nine Oscar nominations, including a win for Max Steiner’s evocative score. Helmed by the great King Vidor, starting a period wherein he showed flair bringing juicy material to the screen with vivid color (literally in the case of Sun, then to follow in monochrome via The Fountainhead, Beyond the Forest and Ruby Gentry), the ace director adeptly keeps the lengthy screenplay by Selznick (based on Niven Busch’s 1944 novel) moving at a florid pace, allowing the 145-minute run time to breeze by for audiences held rapt by the wealth of rousing proceedings unfolding, leading to one of filmdom’s  most astonishing finales.

Selznick also clearly aids in adding scope and vividness to the tale, with elaborate scenes such as a calvary riding in to stop a mob and an expertly staged party sequence, combining a tantalizing mixture of the lurid and dramatic to ensure viewers gain a rousing entertainment experience in the epic scale associated with Selznick’s major productions, specifically Gone with the Wind, at the time the most finically successful film ever made, a status it stills holds today when inflation is factored in. Selznick may not equal Wind’s achievements with Sun, but the elements tied to a first-class, absorbing narrative that made Wind such a durable success also help propel Sun forward, allowing for a distinct film with a flavor all its own. Besides the aforementioned Vidor and Selznick contributions, Dimitri Tiomkin’s pulsating score, a top-tier cast fully vested in their meaty assignments, and some of the most arresting cinematography of the era (lensed by Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan and Harold Rosson) are some of the factors which place Sun and its story surrounding the beautiful, wanton Pearl Chavez and her interactions with the McCanles, distant relatives the orphaned Pearl goes to live with on their cattle ranch during a period wherein oncoming railroad production loomed large, into the can’t miss category for cinephiles.  

                As the torrid Pearl, Jennifer Jones showcases a neurotic, sensual, highly-charged acting style and a low, earthy vocal delivery previously largely kept in check in good girl roles such as the saintly title figure in Jones’ Oscar-winning, career establishing turn in 1943’s The Song of Bernadette, followed by two more nominations for largely gentil playing, abet with restless overtones, in Since You Went Away and Love Letters. Before Sun in 1946, Jones’ expert playing opposite Charles Boyer in Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown revealed an offbeat, saucy comedic touch, then Jones threw herself into Sun with abandon and a knack for the overwrought, making her high-strung, emotional work as Pearl hard to forget, especially in her sadomasochistic-inclined scenes with Gregory Peck as the oily-but-magnetic Lewt McCanles, which caused plenty of buzz for the film and sleepless nights for the Hays Production Code. After Sun, Jones (often working with Selznick, whom she married in 1949) would build an interesting career alternating between genteel leading ladies, such as in Portrait of Jennie and possibly her biggest 1950’s success in Love is a Many Splendored Thing, with edgier, more complex and original work in her Gentry re-teaming with Vidor, stealing the show among an imposing cast as a creative liar in 1954’s Beat the Devil and fascinating as possibly the most unhinged suburban housewife of the era in 1956’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which the author covered here. After Selznick’s death, Jones largely retired from the screen, before having one final, very endearing bow working opposite Fred Astaire and Paul Newman in a true 1970’s blockbuster, The Towering Inferno.

1946 also represented a banner year for Gregory Peck, after breaking through with an Oscar nomination for Keys of the Kingdom following his debut in 1944’s Days of Glory. 1945’s Spellbound and Valley of Decision, opposite Ingrid Bergman and Greer Garson, solidified Peck’s status as the hottest new leading man in town, and with both Sun and The Yearling in 1946, he justified the faith both viewers and Hollywood executives were placing in him, showing a heretofore undetected range and skill as an actor. After offering one of his most engaging and effective performances in what would become his typically noble, All-American persona via Yearling, Peck does a surprising about-face in Sun, tackling his shady character with great zeal. Based on his accomplished work as the diabolical Lewt, it’s a shame Peck didn’t go on to show his flair as a villain elsewhere until 1978’s The Boys from Brazil, as Sun indicates how well he could thrive in this mode, while also using his angular good looks to very sexy advantage as the lustful Lewt, leading a viewer to ponder just how bad being led astray by this alluring varmint could be. In demand for the rest of his career as a stoic, earnest figurehead via classics such as The Gunfighter, Roman Holiday (in a welcomed lighter fashion), The Guns of Navarone and Oscar nominated work in work in Yearling, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Twelve O’Clock High and possibly his peak in To Kill a Mockingbird (which finally won him an Academy Award), Peck’s deft work in Sun remains a reminder of how stimulating and nefarious a screen presence he could be when given a chance to step out of his decorum.

Along with his costars, Joseph Cotton was reaping the rewards of being a top 1940’s Selznick contract player, after auspiciously starting out his screen career via collaborations with Orson Welles (who provides Sun’s opening narration with a controlled grandiosity fitting to the subject matter) in Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Costarring with Jones in Since and Love Letters, Ginger Rodgers in I’ll be Seeing You and on loan out for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (perhaps Cotton’s most mesmerizing performance) and opposite Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight in the three years prior to Sun found Cotton near the lofty status of Peck as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand leading men circa 1946. As Jesse, Lewt’s much more decent and caring brother, who also has feelings for Pearl, Cotton offers a nice counter to the heated interactions of Jones and Peck, bringing a calm dignity and genial nature to his scenes, which helps balance out some of the high theatrics on display around him. Cotton would continue to thrive throughout the rest of the decade, cumulating in a key classic of the period, director Carol Reed’s The Third Man, wherein Cotton paired with Welles onscreen again in memorable fashion.

Among the incredible cast, Lionel Barrymore shows his knack for playing an irascible heel as the headstrong Senator Jackson, who seems intent on causing Pearl specifically and others in general plenty of hardship, around the same time he was giving James Stewart similar treatment in It’s a Wonderful Life, easily winning Barrymore the award for “Prime Cinematic Bastard of 1946.” Lillian Gish makes perhaps the biggest impression among the supporting players as Laura Belle, Pearl’s kind mother figure, illustrating her undiminished ability to hold the screen with grace and authority after proving herself to be one of the most gifted screen performers during her heyday in the Silent era of film. In Sun, Gish has a moment wherein Laura Belle sits in a chair as the Senator chastises his wife for taking in Pearl, and without a word powerfully conveys the put-upon woman’s feelings with a single, jaded stare in response to the verbal attack, indicating the character’s inner strength more powerfully than any dialogue could, before Laura Belle puts her husband in his place with a quiet but unquestionably steely resolve. Other key players in the stacked cast include Walter Huston, clearly having a ball as the “Minister” who casts a lecherous eye on Pearl as he implores her to follow a virtuous path, Herbert Marshall as Pearl’s weary, dignified father, Charles Bickford as an older suitor for Pearl’s affections, Butterfly McQueen bringing her unique comic flavor to the proceedings as Vashti, and Tilly Losch, who as Pearl’s mother helps get the film off to a rousing start with a provocative dance sure to cause temperatures to rise among the men onscreen, for better or worse.

With Selznick’s keen gifts of promotion, which naturally played up the sexier aspects of the storyline, leading to the movie inheriting the famous “Lust in the Dust” moniker, Sun had no issues living up to the hype, as patrons lined up in droves to catch his latest overblown but irresistible undertaking, resulting in (according to Variety) first-run box-office rentals of $8,700,000, allowing the film to cover its high production cost and place just behind The Best Years of Our Lives as the top hit of 1947 (both films were released in late 1946). Critics were less enthused, though Jones and Gish did gain Oscar nominations for their vivid work, while gaining faithful fans who could never forget viewing one of the screen’s most perverse Westerns. One young fan, Martin Scorsese, who lists Sun as his first film viewing experience, grew up to champion the film’s vivid use of color and compulsively watchable theatrics, helping to raise the film’s reputation over the years as a prime example of a grand scale melodramatic Western from Hollywood’s Golden Age. A prime potboiler that has lost none of its power to compel, viewers looking for a diverting night at the movies won’t be burn by this majestic and moving Sun.