I saw this with a couple of other kids in a theater when it was released and remarked that it wasn't the action movie I'd been hoping for. Our resident genius replied, "Dis is what dey call a MELOdrama." That kid was absolutely right. A true mental giant, he probably went on in life to invent string theory or something.
It's 1876 and the Bridges family lives way up in the mountains, deep snow heaped all over the place. A cougar has been nipping at the cattle, and now it has nipped Arthur, one of the Bridges sons, and killed him. That leaves Ma and Pa Bridges with only two sons -- arrogant but cowardly Robert Mitchum and well-meaning but submissive Tab Hunter. Pa Bridges is a burned-out drunk. Ma Bridges is a Bible-spouting virago who dominates everything. Teresa Wright is the washed-out middle-aged daughter whose life is in ruins. Diana Lynn is Tab Hunter's visiting girl friend, whom Ma doesn't like because Lynn's desperate feminity threatens Ma's domain.
It's talky and unpleasant. Everybody argues with everybody else in a neat farm house with white interiors. Pa flails around, boozed up, with nothing sensible to say. Diana Lynn and, later, Wright, keep urging Tab Hunter to run off to Aspen, marry Lynn, and start his own life. He agrees but then something always kneecaps his intentions until the next time he decides to go, when something else will deter him. It's pretty dull.
The one thing that can't be faulted is William Clothier's photography. There's never been anything quite like it. The screen is almost drained of color, but who needs it? Jagged dark peaks rise above vast fields of pristine snow, where there may be nothing but the tracks of a man or a cougar. The evergreens are almost everblack. And Clothier has captured tentacles of gossamer mist gradually climbing the dark crests as if the vaporous gauze itself were animate.
Without those exteriors on Mount Ranier, what you've got is a poorly drawn melodrama.
It's 1876 and the Bridges family lives way up in the mountains, deep snow heaped all over the place. A cougar has been nipping at the cattle, and now it has nipped Arthur, one of the Bridges sons, and killed him. That leaves Ma and Pa Bridges with only two sons -- arrogant but cowardly Robert Mitchum and well-meaning but submissive Tab Hunter. Pa Bridges is a burned-out drunk. Ma Bridges is a Bible-spouting virago who dominates everything. Teresa Wright is the washed-out middle-aged daughter whose life is in ruins. Diana Lynn is Tab Hunter's visiting girl friend, whom Ma doesn't like because Lynn's desperate feminity threatens Ma's domain.
It's talky and unpleasant. Everybody argues with everybody else in a neat farm house with white interiors. Pa flails around, boozed up, with nothing sensible to say. Diana Lynn and, later, Wright, keep urging Tab Hunter to run off to Aspen, marry Lynn, and start his own life. He agrees but then something always kneecaps his intentions until the next time he decides to go, when something else will deter him. It's pretty dull.
The one thing that can't be faulted is William Clothier's photography. There's never been anything quite like it. The screen is almost drained of color, but who needs it? Jagged dark peaks rise above vast fields of pristine snow, where there may be nothing but the tracks of a man or a cougar. The evergreens are almost everblack. And Clothier has captured tentacles of gossamer mist gradually climbing the dark crests as if the vaporous gauze itself were animate.
Without those exteriors on Mount Ranier, what you've got is a poorly drawn melodrama.