This film is often overlooked in Richard Fleischer's impressive filmography ;it is certainly unfair ,for the main character is interesting and the whole cast is up to scratch.
An uneducated cowboy (Don Murray ) has big ambitions ; he looks like Theodore Dreiser's Clyde in "an American tragedy " which spawned "a place in the sun" (1950): the scene when Callie (Lee Remick ) is waiting for Lat with her cake while he's having dinner with posh people will remind you of Shelley Winters ' celebration of Monty Clift's birthday .Callie gave everything but a saloon gal is not a respectable lady a nouveau riche marries.
Lat is a nice guy with whom the viewer sides ;but slowly but inexorably , his careerist mind surfaces, and he's shown in a much less flattering light . Not only he treats Callie , the girl whose savings allow him to buy his ranch, with contempt ,but he also turns his back on his partner ( Stuart Whitman) ,a true friend who saved his life (whereas he could have sold the pelts instead),by refusing to be his best man for the bride is not a fine upstanding woman .
Perhaps the last part may seem too moral,but "compulsion " ,Fleischer's excellent follow-up would be too ; Tom 's(Whitman)brief remonstrance before being hanged is pivotal ,because it's the beginning of Lat's soul-searching ; when she was in pain ,Callie did not even call him ,it speaks volumes about the gal's self-denial : though she does not die-but her future looks bleak- , her character is akin to Shirley Mc Laine's in Minnelli 's "some came running "(1958).
An uneducated cowboy (Don Murray ) has big ambitions ; he looks like Theodore Dreiser's Clyde in "an American tragedy " which spawned "a place in the sun" (1950): the scene when Callie (Lee Remick ) is waiting for Lat with her cake while he's having dinner with posh people will remind you of Shelley Winters ' celebration of Monty Clift's birthday .Callie gave everything but a saloon gal is not a respectable lady a nouveau riche marries.
Lat is a nice guy with whom the viewer sides ;but slowly but inexorably , his careerist mind surfaces, and he's shown in a much less flattering light . Not only he treats Callie , the girl whose savings allow him to buy his ranch, with contempt ,but he also turns his back on his partner ( Stuart Whitman) ,a true friend who saved his life (whereas he could have sold the pelts instead),by refusing to be his best man for the bride is not a fine upstanding woman .
Perhaps the last part may seem too moral,but "compulsion " ,Fleischer's excellent follow-up would be too ; Tom 's(Whitman)brief remonstrance before being hanged is pivotal ,because it's the beginning of Lat's soul-searching ; when she was in pain ,Callie did not even call him ,it speaks volumes about the gal's self-denial : though she does not die-but her future looks bleak- , her character is akin to Shirley Mc Laine's in Minnelli 's "some came running "(1958).