"The Furies" Review

 

by Daniel White

I know it's not fashionable these days to compare actors. It has become almost unseemly to say one performer is "better" than another. After all, it's a matter of taste; what I find memorable, you might say is mediocre.

That being said, while watching Anthony Mann's The Furies (1950), a word came to my mind about Barbara Stanwyck -- a word I rarely use when attempting to describe an actor's attributes: magnificent. Barbara Stanwyck is magnificent in The Furies, and demonstrates why she was one of the greatest stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Furies is the perfect showcase for Stanwyck. In it, she plays Vance Jeffords, the strong-willed daughter of larger-than-life cattle baron TC Jeffords (Walter Huston). Both are determined, ambitious, and ruthless, and when they find themselves at war with each other, her devotion is replaced by an insatiable desire to destroy him.

Mann had already made a name for himself as a talented director of film-noir (Desperate, Raw Deal), but this was his first Western, and he has made an excellent movie. Sprawling and exciting, with giant, operatic themes, The Furies is a classic Western, equal to any of the films he would soon make with James Stewart.

Huston and Stanwyck are sublimely matched as father and daughter. It's near perfect casting, and one has no difficulty accepting them in their roles. I wish the same could be said for Wendell Corey as Rip Darrow, Vance's love interest and TC's adversary. Corey has never had the stature as an actor to go head-to-head with Stanwyck (I felt the same way when the two were paired in The File On Thelma Jordan), and is the only weak link in an otherwise amazing movie.

If Corey isn't man enough to challenge Stanwyck, Judith Anderson certainly is. She plays Flo Burnett, a wily widow who has set her cap for TC. As smart and cunning as Vance, the two have a showdown which involves a pair of scissors that is as shocking a scene in the movies as I have ever witnessed.

The other important player in this robust, engrossing flick is Gilbert Roland as Juan Herrera, Vance's childhood friend, whose family squats on the Jeffords' land. Roland and Stanwyck are a stimulating pair and their scenes together smolder.

Watching Barbara Stanwyck masterfully tackle the role of Vance Jeffords, I realized there is not a single one of her contemporaries who could have handled this character as well as she. The only one who might have come close is Joan Crawford. But with Crawford you always run the risk of camp, something Stanwyck never allows to happen.

With Thomas Gomez, Wallace Ford, Blanche Yurka, Albert Dekker, and Beulah Bondi, The Furies is available on YouTube. A superb film with an outstanding cast, it serves as a prime example of why many consider Barbara Stanwyck to be one of the most enduring stars from the Golden Age of Film.