The Unforgiven **** (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Doug McClure) – Classic Movie Review 1617

Burt Lancaster, Audie Murphy and Doug McClure star as rancher brothers of the Zachary frontier family in this sterling, thoughtful Western directed by John Huston in 1960. Taken from a novel by Alan Le May who also wrote the similarly themed The Searchers, it is esteemed as a notable if flawed and uneven semi-classic.

It’s a shame that Audrey Hepburn is oddly cast as Rachel, the Native American woman whom the family have adopted. The family’s neighbours turn on them when it is discovered that their adopted daughter was stolen in a raid from the local Kiawa tribe after the truth is revealed by the mother (Lillian Gish).

Murphy plays the hot-headed brother Cash, who reacts badly to learning his adopted sister is a Native American and leaves the family. Inevitably, her own people want her back, and that all leads up to the family having to fight off an Indian raid in the movie’s spectacular climactic massacre.

The Unforgiven is a beautifully shot movie with a strongly expressed message about racial intolerance, even if that was toned down from the original intention. The film is made memorable through the distinguished ensemble playing of the notable cast, Franz Planer’s lovely Technicolor widescreen cinematography, the carefully built up doomy and moody atmosphere and the controlled, involved direction by Huston. Lancaster makes for a handsome, dashing, commanding star presence.

But good and powerful though Lancaster, Murphy and McClure are, old-timers Lillian Gish and Charles Bickford could still give the rest of the cast acting lessons. And Joseph Wiseman also stands out as a crazy ex-cavalryman now turned preacher who hates Hepburn.

Huston wanted to make a serious comment on race relations, but the production company sought a commercial success as an action adventure. Huston bowed to pressure, compromised and stayed aboard to use his $300,000 salary to restore his Irish manor house and enjoy the location shoot in Durango, Mexico, to follow his passion for pre-Columbian art. It suffered from heavy editing, with John Saxon’s role as a halfbreed named Johnny Portugal mostly cut, though that’s probably a good thing.

Hepburn fell off a horse and was injured for a few weeks, Murphy nearly drowned in a river, and Gish kept telling Huston that D.W. Griffith would have directed it differently, though afterwards she acclaimed Huston as another Griffith.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1617

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