The Ox-Bow Incident broke the Western mold when it was released during WWII. Daryl Zanuk at 20th Century Fox rightly guessed that because of the social consciousness of the film – and because American audiences wanted trivial/lighthearted fare during wartime – the movie wouldn’t make a dime. The critical reception of the film was highly favorable, however, and it has since become one of the great films of that era.
Actually, the novel, The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and the film, written by Lamar Trotti, are depictions of the social and political climate of Nazi Germany, cloaked, of course, in a Western get-up. Henry Fonda stars (but is only one of several notable characters) in a dramatization of a Nevada mob hanging. Three men, among them the ever defiant and unflappable Anthony Quinn as a sharpshooting Mexican and Dana Andrews as an outraged and articulate cattle rustler, are accused of killing a local man, whose wherabouts are curiously uninvestigated. But investigation is the last thing on the minds of the townsfolk who go after the accused with the tenacity of bloodhounds.
A great moral tale, which edgier Westerns have been taking cues from ever since, The Ox-Bow Incident really is a classically lyric work.
by Marlin Tyree | Source: 20th Century Fox DVD
05 Apr 2007 2:52 PM | Submit Comment