Pursued (1947)

Directed by Raoul Walsh; produced by Milton Sperling

Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) was saved as a boy after the mysterious massacre of his family, and adopted by the woman (Judith Anderson) who rescued him. Growing up with the Callums, tension and fear are always hanging over him, from the resentment of his adopted brother, Adam (John Rodney), to the nightmares that haunt his subconscious. Constantly meeting a malevolent stranger (Dean Jagger), Jeb struggles to find peace while unraveling the enigma of his past.

An impressive array of talent goes into Pursued, in front of the camera and behind, and it shows. Mitchum plays the conflicted Jeb Rand very well, someone who tries to live in the present but finds the dangers there linked to the past. He’s mostly a peaceable man, but isn’t afraid to stand up for himself.

Teresa Wright (who receives top billing) has an misleadingly ordinary rôle as Thorley Callum, the girl with whom Rand grows up but loves; at one point, her behaviour alters – with good reason – and Wright gives the character an eerie menace. Anderson has a sympathetic part, the kind with which she isn’t usually associated, while Jagger plays his villain as half man-of-action and half devil-on-the-shoulder, direct and insidious, as he sees the need. The ubiquitous Ian Wolfe appears in a slightly larger rôle than usual, playing a fair-minded county coroner.

The direction by Walsh is very good. By this time, he was as veteran a director as could be: his first job in the director’s chair being in 1913! He had also been an actor, an uncredited part being that of John Wilkes Booth in The Birth of a Nation. His work covered all genres, from comedies to romances, though he is best known for action (eg. High Sierra, They Died With Their Boots On, the superb White Heat). Pursued has more than a touch of film noir to it (interestingly, so does another Mitchum western, Blood on the Moon, reviewed in this blog on June 18th, 2023). Walsh adds a surreal element to Pursued, as well, reflected in Rand’s dreams and even in his relationship with Thorley; this is stressed in some effective lighting.

The screenplay is by Niven Busch, another heavyweight (husband of Wright at the time Pursued was made), editor of Time magazine and contributor to The New Yorker, he wrote for the movies and penned novels. His most famous screenplay was for The Postman Always Rings Twice. He wrote Moss Rose, also reviewed in this blog (October 22nd, 2023.) His work here is very good, and Pursued’s noirish and nightmarish aspects are as much due to his words as to Walsh’s direction. (Busch had a small acting part, oddly, in The Incredible Lightness of Being (1988), three years before his death.)

Editing is achieved by Christian Nyby, another leader in his field (Red River, The Big Sleep), who also directed (The Thing from Another World, which he edited, too), though most of that work was on television. In charge of Pursued’s photography is James Wong Howe, who started as a slate boy for DeMille, and worked on movies from The Thin Man to Hud. Here, he uses the American southwest to excellent effect; as often as that country has been used for movies’ backgrounds, Howe shows some new landscapes, impressive and perfectly in keeping with the mood of the film.

Even if all the famous names in the cast and crew didn’t matter, Pursued remains an entertaining western, with good action, fine acting, an intriguing story-line and three dimensional characters.