Pursued (1947)

Brought up by a neighboring family in the 1880s, an orphan grows up haunted by nightmares of a childhood trauma in which his own family was killed.

Director:

Raoul Walsh

Writer:

Niven Busch (screenplay)

Stars:

Teresa Wright, Robert Mitchum, Judith Anderson

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Teresa Wright	...	Thor Callum
Robert Mitchum	...	Jeb Rand
Judith Anderson	...	Mrs. Callum
Dean Jagger	...	Grant Callum
Alan Hale	...	Jake Dingle
John Rodney	...	Adam Callum
Harry Carey Jr.	...	Prentice
Clifton Young	...	The Sergeant
Ernest Severn	...	Jeb, age 11
Charles Bates	...	Adam, age 11
Peggy Miller	...	Thor, age 10
Norman Jolley	...	A Callum
Lane Chandler	...	A Callum
Elmer Ellingwood	...	A Callum
Jack Montgomery	...	A Callum

Storyline

After his family is murdered in the 1880s, orphan Jeb Rand is raised by the Callum family on their nearby horse ranch. He remains haunted by this childhood trauma in a recurring nightmare of flashing spurs and confinement inside a trap door as his family is slaughtered. Widow Callum does her best to make Jeb feel loved as he is growing up, but the young man stubbornly maintains a sense of his own identity. While he has great affection for his foster-sister Thor, his relationship with her brother Adam is tenuous at best, especially when Jeb blames him for shooting a colt that he was riding. Although Mrs. Callum blames the incident on deer hunters, she is aware that the it was actually the attempted murder of the youngster by her brother-in-law Grant, a shadowy figure who, for vague reasons, is determined to harm Jeb. Jeb loses a coin flip with Adam, and becomes the designated family volunteer to fight in the Spanish-American War. Jeb returns a hero, but does not find happiness. ...

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Plot Keywords:

nightmare | childhood trauma | brother in law | self defense | foster sister | 

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Taglines:

Robert Mitchum fights for the love of three people who want to see him dead...his family.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | Thriller | Western

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1947 (Germany)

Also Known As:

La vallée de la peur

Filming Locations:

Gallup, New Mexico, USA

Box Office

Budget:

£610,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

United States Pictures, Warner Bros.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Film was screened on May 31, 2013 at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan, especially to showcase the acting of star Robert Mitchum and the way director Raoul Walsh displayed the influence of Orson Welles with the movie's "crushing angles and looming close-ups." Made after WWII, the movie dramatizes a veteran's return home--after the Spanish-American War--almost 50 years earlier.

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Goofs

After Adam is shot, a dummy is used to show his body rolling down the hill. The incline is not great and a stuntman could easily have been used, so the obvious dummy is a jarring note.

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Quotes

Jeb: [to Thor] There was a black dog riding my back and yours.

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Connections

Referenced in 'El Chicko' - der Verdacht (1997)

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Soundtracks

Streets of Laredo
(uncredited)
Traditional ballad
Sung by Robert Mitchum

User Reviews

Hates Him Boy And Man

Watching Pursued tonight I was struck by the fact of how much Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound seems to have influenced this film. In the VHS copy I have, Martin Scorsese does a brief prologue and says this was a film that influenced him and he calls it a noir western. I think it's more of a psychological western in which Robert Mitchum works out his own salvation rather than get the help of a doctor like Ingrid Bergman who wouldn't have been available back then because Dr. Freud was just starting to develop his theories around the time this was made.

Mitchum's earliest recollections and something he dreams constantly was him being in a cellar and peering from a trap door as a lad and seeing and hearing a gunfight. He's rescued from that cellar by Judith Anderson who takes him in and treats him as an equal to her own children who grow up to be Teresa Wright and John Rodney. But Mitchum still experiences the nightmares and never quite seems to fit in. And he can't get the answers anywhere.

Mitchum was the third candidate for the role at Warner Brothers for the role of Jeb Rand. Jack Warner tested and rejected first Montgomery Clift yet to make his screen debut and Kirk Douglas according to Lee Server's biography. I think both those actors would have imprinted their own personalities on the part as surely as Mitchum does.

Playing a malevolent and unseen hand in the whole proceedings which run over several years is Dean Jagger who as a villain seems to be a combination of Inspector Javert and Iago. Jagger on screen is equally good in both good guy and bad guy parts and except maybe for his role in Alan Ladd's The Proud Rebel, this just might be the worst he's ever been on screen.

Jagger hates Mitchum boy and man and the reason for that hate is not revealed until almost the end of the film. It's a lot to do with the family name.

Niven Busch wrote the script for this unusual western and he was married to Teresa Wright at the time so apparently Warner Brothers bought them as a package. She's first billed in this picture even though the film is really about Mitchum. As for him, he was lent from RKO where in fact he had worked with a Niven Busch screenplay and got great acclaim for it in Till The End Of Time.

The film bills John Rodney who plays Wright's brother as introducing John Rodney. His next film was Key Largo where he played the luckless deputy sheriff killed by Edward G. Robinson. He never quite made it, but Harry Carey, Jr. in only his second film before he was 'introduced' in Three Godfathers, certainly has had one long and successful career. Carey plays a luckless storekeeper influenced by the cunning Jagger to go after Mitchum and does well with the part.

Raoul Walsh known primarily for more straight forward action films does all right with his cast in what had to be unfamiliar territory for him. Pursued is a good western, but definitely not one for the Saturday afternoon Roy Rogers crowd.