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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0715515030229
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 24, 2008
Running Time: 109 minutes
Sales Rank: 6687
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1950
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston are at their fierce finest in master Hollywood craftsman Anthony Mann’s crackling western melodrama. In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch-owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his daughter, Vance (Stanwyck), a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of marriage, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Both sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is a hidden treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar–nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer • Audio commentary featuring film historian Jim Kitses (Horizons West) • A rare, 1931 on-camera interview with Walter Huston, made for the movie theater series Intimate Interviews • New video interview with Nina Mann, daughter of director Anthony Mann • Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes photos • Theatrical trailer • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Robin Wood, a 1957 Cahiers du cinéma interview with Mann, and a new printing of Niven Busch’s original novel • More!
Amazon.com:
Seconds into Anthony Mann's hardboiled horse opera, Barbara Stanwyck absent-mindedly plays with a pair of scissors. Not to worry: she'll put them to use soon enough. Until that time, Stanwyck's volatile heiress, Vance, alternately flatters and manipulates her egotistical father, T.C. Jeffords (a feisty Walter Huston in his final performance). It's the 1870s and T.C.'s ranch, the Furies, inspires envy throughout the New Mexico territory. If Vance picks a suitable husband, T.C. promises her a handsome dowry. Unfortunately, she chooses brutal gambler Rip Darrow (Rear Window's Wendell Corey). If it wasn't for Vance's friendship with Mexican-American squatter Juan (Gilbert Roland), she wouldn't inspire much sympathy, but Vance stands up for the Herreras when financiers pressure the Jeffords to throw them off their land. Then, T.C. takes up with scheming socialite Flo (Rebecca's Dame Judith Anderson), and the tense relations between father and daughter explode into all-out war. By the end, those scissors end up in someone's face, leading to a cycle of revenge-oriented violence. Adapted from Niven Busch's novel by Red River's Charles Schnee, The Furies isn't as deliriously over-the-top as Busch's Duel in the Sun, but it plays more like Shakespearean tragedy than Technicolor camp, and Stanwyck owns the screen from start to finish. The excellent extras include erudite commentary from film historian Jim Kitses, a terrific 1967 interview with Mann for British TV, a playful 1931 chat with Huston, remembrances from Mann's daughter Nina, an essay from critic Robin Wood, and a new printing of Busch's original novel. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The Great Barbara Stanwyck
This is just one more reason why my favorite star of all time is Barbara Stanwyck. There was no role she couldn't play and didn't try. How she never won an oscar is a mystery to me. She could play the meanest woman and still make you love her. There was just something about her. The Furies is just one example of this. Walter Houston is equally cast as her hard headed father. All the supporting cast is top notch. Do yourself a favor and buy this movie. It's a great western and the battle between the two stars for control is great drama
Rating:  - Furious
In one year, 1950, director Anthony Mann made four films: There was the crisp Farley Granger noir adventure "Side Street" plus three Westerns, including "Devil's Doorway," the rousing classic "Winchester '73" and "The Furies."
That's how you hustle, and for any filmmaker that's a damn good year.
That last title, "The Furies," refers to a sprawling southwestern ranch owned by the proud, controlling blowhard T.C. Jeffords (Walter Huston in his last role, one year after winning an Oscar for "Treasure of the Sierra Madre.").
During the course of the film, the main characters refer to the estate often but it is never called "the ranch," "the property" or even "our land."
It's always called "The Furies," and as if to underscore the self-consciousness of the conceit, most of the people who say it seem to be resisting the urge to lick their lips immediately afterward.
But the film's three principal characters tote their own serious grudges, so while it's a clumsy subtext, the title could also refer to these agents of vengeance. Bastards, the set of them, but in the end sympathetic as well.
Barbara Stanwyck stars as Jeffords' daughter Vance, whose devotion to her father is second only to her fondness for standing in boots and jeans with her gloved fists pressed defiantly into her hips. That stance is basically how she lives and she lives to work the ranch (er ... I mean, The Furies). Surely that's not too much to ask, is it?
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Rating: - Mann's Compelling Prairie Psychodrama Given the Deluxe Criterion Collection Treatment
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Eugene O'Neill Goes West
Cheyenne Warrior: The Original Screenplay with Author Commentary
Shadow Watcher
Nobody Drowns in Mineral Lake
If Eugene O'Neill had ever written a western, it might very well have played like this 1950 release, a beautifully photographed black-and-white drama that has all the elements of a Greek tragedy.
Like so many of O'Neill's works (e.g. MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA), the Anthony Mann-directed film, from a novel by Niven Busch, is overly talky. It doesn't really get interesting until the 2nd half when the action moves out of the drawing room onto the New Mexico plains.
Walter Huston, in his final film role, plays the megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner who seems to have a very "close" relationship with his firebrand daughter (Barbara Stanwyck). They are always butting heads over her dowry, choice of a husband and the ownership of the vast ranch itself, which is in major debt.
Matters come to a head when Huston brings Judith Anderson to the ranch, planning to marry her, which pushes Stanwyck into a violent, jealous rage.
Stanwyck delivers one of her finest performances in this atypical western. The superb supporting cast includes Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland and Wallace Ford.
© Michael B. Druxman, author of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (available December 2008)
Rating: - A classic film with an excellent story.
This film is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
The Furies, directed by Anthony Mann and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Wakter Huston, is one of the best films I have seen for a while.
It is about a greedy widower and his daughter who live on a ranch called "The Furies" in New Mexico in the 19th century. The daughter is in love with a squatter on the ranch and when the father kills him, she exacts revenge.
I really liked the film and thought it was very well made.
It includes some fine special features including the complete novel the film is based on. Also included is a theatrical trailer, audio commentary by historian Jim Kitses, a 1967 interview with Anthony Mann, a 1931 interview with Walter Huston, a new interview with Anthony Mann's daughter, Nina Mann, and a slide show of behind the scenes photos.
This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it.
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