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This is How Movies Should Be Made

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Dear me this is a western in name only. With all the star names I expected a lot more. Hugh O'Brian totally wasted with hardly any lines. None of the sons would have put up with the bullying overbearing prick of a father! Maybe the movie was aimed at women as it had so many male stars but this bloke thought it a disappointing watch to say the least. Perhaps I am one of the few people who think Spencer Tracy, whilst an excellent actor in some of his films, perhaps westerns are not his forte. I don't even like 'Bad day at Black Rock' which I found rather silly. If 'Broken Lance' was remade today, we would have an entirely different movie with perhaps a more realistic storyline.

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!

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.

With both it being based on Shakespeare's King Lear and being a Western remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's tasty film noir, House of Strangers, Broken Lance had fine sources from which to work from. Throw in to the mixer that it stars Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Katy Jurado, Robert Wagner and Earl Holliman, and that Joseph MacDonald was director Edward Dmytryk's cinematographer of choice, well it's all set up to be a highly accomplished piece.And it is!Dmytryk's film tells the story of how the Devereaux family came to implode. Father Matt {Tracy}, is a tough no nonsense pioneer who after finding a copper smelter has polluted his water, illegally raids the copper mine with destructive vengeance. Matt has four sons, his three eldest are a disappointment to him, but his youngest, Joe, from his latest marriage to a Commanche woman {Jurado}, is untainted by his own bitterness. But it's Joe who takes the rap for the copper mine raid and gets sentenced to three years jail. When Joe comes out he finds that his brothers have driven his mother away and all but destroyed the family empire, including his father. Joe {Wagner} has scores to settle, especially with the oldest, and nastiest brother, Ben {Widmark}.The screenplay comes from Richard Murphy, who, reworked Philip Yordan's House Of Strangers screenplay, bagging Yordan the Best Writing Oscar at the 1955 Academy Awards in the process. And it's not hard to see why. Murphy and Dmytryk have fused together a number of intelligent strands in their picture. Not merely a tale of vengeance that dallies with black sheep of the family like thematics, it also serves up racial prejudice issues, and those of greed and corruption. It's for sure what one would term a talky piece, tho the copper mine raid itself is a pulse raiser, but it's with the talk and how it's put together that makes Broken Lance worthy of its place on any "Adult Western" list. For its court room sequences and a memorable scene involving Tracy and Widmark alone it deserves praise from the genre faithful.Acting wise there are very few disappointments. Tracy is terrific, as is Widmark, while the youthful Wagner gets away with the obvious problem of him playing a half Indian, by bringing an emotionally honest integrity to the role of Joe. Katy Jurado, who was Oscar nominated for supporting actress, is sweet and showing deft sadness in the thankless role of wife and mother, Señora Devereaux. The itches are with the others, thru no fault of their own really. Both Holliman and Hugh O'Brian as the other two brothers are practically observers in proceedings, both men never really getting to add some weight into the family drama. Jean Peters as Joe's love interest, Barbara, is an important character in the story, yet she's never fully formed. Minor problems aside tho, this is an engrossing and gorgeous picture. So with Leigh Harline's lyrical score complimenting MacDonald's sumptuous Arizona photography {the film was shot in Technicolor CinemaScope and sound mixed in 4-Track Stereo} try and see this on the best system you possibly can, because it's worth it. 8/10