The greatest movie ever made..!

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the best Westerns ever made. Superior to other films of its time because it possesses more realism and authenticity and shuns the silly, false and simplistic moralizing which was almost a requirement for American films of this period. This is a film about real, complex people involved is realistic, complex events. Film-maker Anthony Mann hailed from Great Britain - perhaps this had something to do with the unusual realism. Positives are: 1 - The beautiful cinematography alone is enough reason to rent. The lighting is superb, there is sumptuous use of darkness, and the twilight and night scenes are ravishingly beautiful. 2 - Strong, resourceful female characters instead of the usual phony, helpless, wilting flowers. These women are people in their own right, not merely appendages of some male character. 3 - The characters are an honest mix of good and bad qualities - not artificial cardboard cut-outs simplistically meant to serve as types. 4 - Minorities are portrayed as real people. The Mexicans are portrayed with sensitivity and understanding, instead of the usual condescending caricatures. 5 - Walter Huston, Barbara Stanwyck & Wendell Corey do an excellent job of bringing their characters to life. The other actors are solidly top drawer. 6 - Excellent story-telling at its finest. With repeated viewing, you see more deeply into the complex and surprisingly subtle motivations of the characters. The only negative is that the sensuality of real life was artificially pre-filtered out of the film; but in full fairness to "The Furies," this is true of all American films of this period, due to the de facto censorship which held sway at the time. In sum, a complex, vivid depiction of love, hate, greed, loyalty, betrayal, devotion, affirmation of life and the inexorability of death, as they course through the lives of real, breathing people. Anthony Mann was far ahead of his time in crafting this truthful gem. What a special achievement!

Barbara Stanwyck has some serious daddy issues in this weird cross between a women's picture, western and film noir from 1950.Walter Huston plays the daddy, and he steals the show in a vibrant performance. He owns a ranch called The Furies, which he hands over to his daughter when he tires of the daily management. But things go awry when he brings home a new wife from the city (Judith Anderson, excellent) and she has some ideas of her own about how things should be run. Tensions boil over to the point where father and daughter hate each other, and Stanwyck hatches a scheme to bankrupt her father and take the ranch away from him.It's an uneven movie at best. Characters seem to turn on a dime -- Huston and Stanwyck go from idolizing one another to hating each other back to idolizing each other -- but maybe that's the point. They're both ruled by their passions, and those passions extend to the father/daughter relationship, and sometimes confuse it, as much as to their business practices.Anthony Mann provided the noirish direction, and Franz Waxman delivers a frenzied, out-there score.Grade: B+

There's a lot of Freudian subtext in this unusual 1950 Western, but what resonates most is how director Anthony Mann so smoothly transcends the testosterone-driven genre to come up with an entertaining hybrid of a woman's picture and a Greek tragedy. At the dynamic core of this film is the masterstroke of casting Walter Huston (in his last screen role) and Barbara Stanwyck as a spendthrift father and his headstrong daughter at odds over running the expansive ranch that gives the movie its name. In Roman mythology, the Furies were supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. As females, they represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. It is this single-minded sense of empowerment that drives Vance Jeffords to usurp her wily father T.C. while seeking his approval at the same time.Set in 1870's New Mexico, the story written by Charles Schnee ("The Bad and the Beautiful") is steeped in not-so-indiscreet psychological baggage. T.C. lives by his own rules by borrowing liberally from banks, paying hired hands with his own script, and allowing Mexican settlers to live off his land. Unlike her weak-willed brother, Vance enjoys provoking her father but to what end is never clear as an unacknowledged cloud of incest hangs over their strange relationship. At the same time, T.C. has a sworn enemy in gambler Rip Darrow who is looking to avenge his father's death at T.C.'s hands. Vance falls for Darrow, but she's also drawn to Juan Herrera, a childhood friend and one of the Mexicans now considered squatters. Complicating matters even more is the arrival of T.C.'s pretentious fiancée Flo Burnett, a devious socialite out to rid the ranch of the Mexicans and push Vance aside as the female head of the beleaguered family. This ploy leads to a most shocking scene that fits well within the story's noirish shadings.As T.C., Huston gives a grand performance evoking both as the old prospector in his son John's "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" and the conflicted industrialist in William Wyler's "Dodsworth". Although a bit old for her role at 43, Stanwyck combines her no-nonsense manner with a childlike vulnerability in illuminating Vance's most complex psyche. This is excellent work from an actress who always seemed home on the range. Generally a pliable third lead in films ("Rear Window"), Wendell Corey doesn't lend charisma or a convincing edge to his swagger as Darrow, but Gilbert Roland shines in the smallish role of Juan and strikes sparks with Stanwyck that should have happened with Corey. However, it is Judith Anderson (Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca") who steals her brief scenes as Flo bringing out a palpable tension with Stanwyck in their almost-comically cutting scenes together (pardon the pun!). Veteran character actress Beulah Bondi also has a nice near-cameo as a banker's wife fully aware of her husband's prideful shortcomings.The intensely passionate movie swirls in all its psycho-sexual emotionalism and Shakespearean-level acts of murder, revenge and greed, but oddly (and perhaps due to the edicts of studio censors), Mann applies the brakes in the disappointing final portion of the film. Still, it's well worth viewing in the new Criterion Collection's 2008 release chock-full of extras. First, there is the meticulously academic commentary track by Western author Jim Kitses ("Horizons West"). Then there is an interesting 17-minute interview with Mann ("Actions Speak Louder Than Words") conducted just prior to his death in 1967. Another interview is offered with Mann's daughter Nina specifically for this release as she recalls her father's often underrated body of work. More of a curio is a silly, obviously scripted 1931 interview with Huston where he evasively responds to the vacuous questions of a pretty reporter. The original theatrical trailer and a stills gallery round out the extras.

Imagine Charles Bickford and Caroll Baker from The Big Country. Caroll has never met Gregory Peck and Bickford's never taken in a kid like Charlton Heston to raise in his own image. That's what you've got in Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston in Anthony Mann's The Furies.The title is the name of Walter Huston's spread, like the Ponderosa for the Cartwrights. But Huston's is a guy who's got something going that neither Ben Cartwright or Charles Bickford had. This man he plays issues his own money, IOU notes described as TCS as per his character T.C. Jeffords. You take his notes and presumably they can be redeemed in regular coin of the realm later.So he's a rich guy, but in his case rich is a relative term. And therein lies how Barbara Stanwyck after Huston hangs one of her childhood friends, Gilbert Roland, for horse stealing she vows vengeance on the father she loves above all. This film with more than a hint of incest going on here marks Walter Huston's farewell performance. It's quite a contest between him and Stanwyck to see who out act each other.Stanwyck has her own moment of fury when she goes after the elegant Judith Anderson who Huston has taken a fancy to and is planning to marry. That scene has to be watched, no further description is offered.Blanche Yurka who learned revenge while playing Madame DeFarge in A Tale of Two Cities plays Roland's mother here and her DeFarge training comes in handy. Others in the cast are Wendell Corey, Thomas Gomez, Beulah Bondi, and John Bromfield.Bromfield plays Stanwyck's brother a weak character who is disposed of rather early. I can't understand why his character wasn't developed more.The Furies has some interesting moments, but as a western it's not half as good as Mann's work with James Stewart later on or with Devil's Doorway with Robert Taylor.