Stars: Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford

Director: King Vidor

Summary: After a beautiful half-Indian woman comes to live on their ranch, two brothers become bitter rivals. Based on the novel by Niven Busch.

Dubbed 'Lust in the Dust' by Hollywood wags and, at $5 million, the most expensive film made up to that time, DUEL IN THE SUN stars Jennifer Jones as Pearl Chavez, a stunning young mixed-race woman. After her father's death, she's taken in by distant relative Laura Belle McCanles (Lillian Gish), whose husband, Senator (Lionel Barrymore), is a Texas cattle baron of immense wealth. She soons finds herself attracted to the two McCanles sons: the magnetic hell-raiser Lewt (Gregory Peck) and the educated, restrained Jesse (Joseph Cotten). Since Pearl is presumed to have inherited her mother's hot-blooded disposition, she's tagged as a bad girl by Lewt, who quickly makes a pass at her without success. But with Jesse away on business, she and Lewt eventually become lovers, although she still can't decide which of the two she loves. Meanwhile, Senator is embroiled in a dispute over the invasion of his property by railroad interests, becoming enraged when Jesse chooses the pen over the shotgun as a neogotiating tool. Saturated in sexual innuendo, this fabulously overripe, overproduced melodrama, which constantly teeters on the edge of camp, is, more than anything else, the product of David O. Selznick's megalomaniacal desire to top his earlier epic, GONE WITH THE WIND. That said, the acting is very good, as is Dimitri Tiomkin's score, and the crowd scenes are superbly orchestrated.

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Before creating Duel in the Sun, legendary producer David O Selznick dreamed of making another magnum opus like his 1939 production of Gone with the Wind; he also proposed to make Jennifer Jones, his ladylove then second wife, a megastar. Thus Duel in the Sun(Lust in the Dustto some) was created as an extravagant Technicolor epic about the collision of the old West with the new, offering wide-open spaces with railroads and barbed wire, and juxtaposing character traits such as hot-blooded outlaws alongside civilised folk who are often wimpy or unwell. The film begins among giant rocks drenched in a blood-red sunset, with velvet-voiced Orson Welles intoning the legend of doomed Pearl Chavez and her demon lover; Duel in the Sunnever strays far from lush romanticism, spiced with a dash of S/M. The cast is huge (a lubriciously wicked Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, Joseph Cotton, Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Herbert Marshall, Charles Bickford, Butterfly McQueen) and there are unforgettable set pieces, the most notable being the lovers' final shootout among those red rocks, as orgiastic a finale as you could ask for. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Coming Soon Teaser, Coming Soon Trailer, Full Length Trailer, Popular Tag 1947, Wide Screen Tag 1954, Star Biographies, Comment From Martin Scorsese And Gregory Peck
Year:	1946
Release Date:	April 8, 2002
Runtime:	129 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P T D V D 1330
Label:	Roadshow Edition / Freemantle
Keywords:	Sun, Edition, Duel, Roadshow, Westerns
Genre:	Westerns