GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Kirpianuscus not great. only perfect. for the story, mix of different lines. for cast. and for the meet between Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck in a last scene who impress again and again. it is a masterpiece . for the opportunity to discover a lost age of Hollywood in the best version. for the desire, and the reasonable result, to make a different western. and for its...humanitarian perspective about love and family. sure, I am far to be objective about it as admirer of Lillian Gish and Gregory Peck . but it is real good film. maybe, obvious, perfect.

JelenaG890 I saw this movie on TCM a few months ago, and quite honestly find it very hard to believe that it was made by the same man who did "GWTW." I guess David O. Selznick had his eye set on topping "GWTW", and thought this film would do it. Well, he failed in a pretty epic way here. Everything in this movie is such an overblown mess, it's hard to even know where to start with this review. First, the opening overture goes on forever, so the movie itself takes forever to start, and it does not get much better from there. (In fact, I think the music is one of the few high points of the film.)Pearl Chavez is no Scarlett O'Hara, Jennifer Jones was certainly not Vivian Leigh, Lionel Barrymore is such a ham in this film he could have been served at a Christmas dinner, and Gregory Peck (who was so great in other roles) was horribly miscast in this film.To be perfectly honest, I am not a huge fan of Jennifer Jones in general. Although a pretty woman, the only film of hers that I have ever been able to sit through more than once is "Song of Bernadette." In my opinion that is the only film that worked for her whispering, little girl voice, because she was playing a innocent young saint of a girl. With the exception of that one performance, she was extremely limited as an actress.Selznick obviously wanted to change her saintly image from "Song of Bernadette" with this film, but in this case, her involvement with the mega-producer did her more harm than good. She overacts in every scene, trying way too hard to act sultry to the point where her performance just comes off as cringe-worthy. To be fair, though, I'm sure Selznick probably instructed her to act that way. I'm sure her Oscar nomination for this film was more based on studio politics and her then-current popularity than the strength of her actual performance. This film is not supposed to be a comedy, but the acting of Peck, Barrymore and Jones did make me want to laugh. The story itself is also laughable. While GWTW was about the civil war and the struggle to survive in the south, this story of this film really has no purpose other than to have Jones walk around like a sexpot. In my opinion, only Joseph Cotten, Lillian Gish, Butterfly McQueen (scene stealer every time), and the horse came out of this disaster unscathed. The only reason I gave this more than 1 star is the scenery, music, and the performances of those four actors. Yes, I thought even the horse fared better here than Jones or Peck!

Fred Caccia I would say, bluntly, that this film has aged terribly and had better not to show anymore, such an old Hollywood actress. The ambition of Selznick, his sickly pursuit of Oscars, his "Gone with the Wind 2" fever, forces production to sink in an outdated grandiloquence, which could impress the backward audience at the time but fails to delight cinephiles from today. "Duel in the Sun" offers a clumsy thematic treatment, grotesque characters, and a hell of Tiomkin score worthy of a Max Steiner's brass band. As for the direction, this is a dire rigidity and a drought that casts despair over the aficionado of this highly fertile cinematographic genre. The film is more a piece of crap than a western.

jjnxn-1 David O. Selznick's misguided attempt to recreate the success of GWTW in a western setting. The film has pleasures to be sure but also some woefully terrible parts. On the plus side: the cinematography is gorgeous and some of the supporting performances are good, Lillian Gish and Charles Bickford come off best. However there are some fatal flaws: a meager story to pin two and a half hours of film on and an overly earnest tone are two big deficits but what really hurts the film the most is the complete miscasting of the two leads. Gregory Peck was a fine actor but he was also an icon of resolute decency, whereas other actors with that persona like Henry Fonda could occasionally play a villain convincingly Peck could not. His casting alone would not be so bad if it wasn't paired against the absurdity of Jennifer Jones as Pearl. While I'll admit to never being a fan of hers within a limited range she could be an okay actress when the role wasn't too demanding, for instance The Towering Inferno. Pearl Chavez is far outside that scope, the part isn't really that good to begin with, even an actress as skillful as Vivien Leigh would probably been hard pressed to make her real although Ava Gardner with her raw sensuality probably could have made her if not necessarily real at least convincing but Jones mistakes over emphasis with depth and Vidor's florid style of direction doesn't help her. Part of the blame probably rests with Selznick's famed smothering control and that fact he was determined to make Jones the greatest of all stars which resulted often in putting her in material for which she was not suited and away from her strengths as a performer. The film is entertaining in an often campy way but one viewing should be enough.