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A Brilliant Conflict

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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!

Edward Dmytryk was a skilled director. He showed plenty of memorable titles as in "Murder My Sweet" "The Caine Mutiny," "Warlock", "Raintree County"... where he showed narrative skill, a most correct direction of actors and impressive staging.The one that concerns us: "Broken Lance" is, for our taste, one of his best films. Told from a long flashback that begins after Joe Devereaux returns to his old home after spending three years in prison, the narrative focuses on the eventful life of the landlord Matthew Devereaux (a superb and brilliant Spencer Tracy) and his difficult relationship with his children and unhappy with the environment that surrounds it. Matt is a man who loves nature and respects animals. It is also a just and loving husband with his Indian wife (Katy Jurado's always accurate Oscar nominee for this role), loves much the son she had with her (Joe), but the children of his former wife, now deceased, is intolerant and demanding. Their conflict develops into a crescendo that prevents us from a storm that seems inevitable. Dmytryk will recreate every nuance of arrogance and the film emerges as a psychological portrait of great importance. Matt is contrasting as day. Defend the Indians and some even work for him. Your home is an earthly paradise and think, clearly, a man of privilege.But as in all light is usually a shade to Matthew is impossible to get along with their children and this makes the paradise into an inferno. The river that crosses his land is a symbol of the flow of life: sometimes calm... sometimes with rocks impeding the flow. Sometimes of course... and sometimes murky. Remake of "House of Strangers" by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the story of "Broken Lance" refers to "King Lear" by William Shakespeare and even "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Materials, all of these, essential in the cultural baggage of any human being. "Broken Lance" can also be made in any list of classic western movies.

This film had quite the stellar cast. Spencer Tracy plays the patriarch of his family. The sons are played by Robert Wagner, Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brian and Earl Holliman. While the actors playing the sons are pretty impressive, as I watched the film I thought that the casting was odd. The bottom line is that Robert Wagner was just way too pretty to be playing the toughest of the four sons. Seeing him in a western was difficult enough to believe and I think he is a fine actor--just outside his range here. I really don't know why Twentieth-Century Fox cast him in the role. Now I am not saying he was bad--he just didn't look the part and seemed better suited to romantic roles.The film is a remake of the wonderful Edward G. Robinson film "House of Strangers"--which itself seems to be a retelling of the story of Joseph and his brothers from the book of Genesis. Both films are about a very controlling, stubborn and sometimes cruel patriarch who bullies his sons. Here, Spencer Tracy is a cattle baron who is one of the most powerful men in the state. While the viewer naturally dislikes him (he plays a jerk who treats his sons with contempt) in the essential struggle in the film, he is in the right...for once. Apparently he has sold some mining rights on his property BUT when the miners use arsenic to mine for gold (a common but insanely deadly practice in the 19th century) it kills off some of Tracy's cattle. The miners don't seem to care so Tracy takes the law into his own hands--after all HE is always right.Eventually, Tracy's actions land him in court and it looks pretty bad for him. After all, you can't shoot at people, beat people up or threaten to hang people whenever you like! His most loyal son, Wagner, decides the best thing to do to help is to perjure himself on the witness stand. However, the other brothers obviously hate their father and Wagner is only their half-brother, so they refuse to perjure themselves as well--leaving Wagner to go to prison and Tracy to lose his case. The bottom line is that the three sons were just waiting to see Tracy fall--like sharks waiting around as another shark got sick and showed weakness.Overall, a wonderful story. It's gritty, well-acted and involving. The only problem is that although it's all very good, the original story was perhaps even better--plus it was original. Because of this, the film needs to lose a point. It's well worth seeing but I say first see the original.

Spencer Tracy certainly wasn't looking to win popularity contests with this role. He's a tyrannical old cattle baron with a streak of integrity that nevertheless commands respect. Mainly, what he gets from the three older sons is fear along with a dash of awe. What he gets from his youngest son, Joe, (Wagner) is some understanding based on Tracy's daring marriage to the boy's mother, an Indian, making Wagner a half-breed and a half-brother to the other three sons.These complexities are important because they drive much of the drama. The movie was hailed at the time for dealing tangentially, at least, with a racial topic. Perhaps Tracy punishes his older full-blooded white sons because they don't fully accept their Indian step-mother, or maybe favors his youngest son because he does. But then, Tracy has treated Ben (Widmark) badly for years, suggesting a deeper kind of character flaw. Anyway, there are a number of interesting ambiguities in the Phil Yordan screenplay. And when the showdown finally comes, it's really Dad's bad side embodied in Ben that Joe must go against.At this point in his career, Wagner was considered little more than a light-weight pretty boy. However, his performance here, I think, is both strong and substantial despite the boyish good looks. Still and all, I can't help feeling that Widmark is a shade too old for Ben's role, being only 15 years younger than Tracy. Nonetheless, that role could only be filled by an accomplished actor like Widmark, while O'Brien and Holliman really have little to do other than stand around and fill the slot of the two middle sons. Jurado got an award for her performance as the mother. But truth be told, the performance is rather wooden, along with those clumsy poetic tropes like, "I grieve for you, my husband", that Hollywood long saddled ethnic-types with. Nonetheless, there's enough crackling good melodrama to keep an audience interested. The scenes are well staged except for the huge state capitol building rather poorly matted into an ordinary Western street-- the contrast looking like an NFL lineman in a room full of of first-graders. Note too that even though the movie is filmed in wide-screen Cinemascope the locations are not that scenic. This is not, I think, a particularly picturesque Western. My guess is that the producers thought the story strong enough that it didn't need eye-catching landscape to keep up audience interest. Anyway, the movie remains an A-grade Western with a good story and a powerful Tracy performance.