Customer Reviews

Broken Lance

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This has been one of my favorite movies for over twenty five years. Scene after scene, there's something to watch for. What I've always loved about this movie is the great, wrenching dialogue. And watching a young Robert Wagner isn't too difficult either.

But now, on DVD, I feel as though I am seeing the movie for the first time (or at least the second time!) The quality of this DVD is impressive. I also own a DVD version from a few years back that came from China, with Chinese subtitles. Comparing the two on my 55" tv is like comparing a digital picture taken with a 2 megapixel camera to a digital picture taken with a 12 megapixel camera. The quality of this Twentieth Century Fox DVD is outstanding for such an old movie. The picture is very clear, the color saturation is deep and rich, the sound is great. I've noticed nuances about the picture, and the background scenery, that I never noticed before.

This edition also features both a widescreen and a full frame version of the movie, on a double sided disc. I don't think there were any special features,aside from the original trailer, but I am happy to have this excellent version of my favorite old film.

When it's good, BROKEN LANCE (1954) is a sprawling story about the rise and fall of cattle baron Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy), color by DeLuxe, in Stereophonic Sound, and, most important of all, it's filmed in CinemaScope. Borrowing feuding and greedy children from King Lear and a Native American wife, and half a title, from the influential James Stewart vehicle, Broken Arrow, it's an entertaining near-classic.
Matt Devereaux is one of those larger-than-life pioneers whose success makes him an anachronism. Parcels of his land, once simply a buffet board for his 50,000-head herd of cattle, is now being leased out to oil and mining concerns. There was a time when men like Devereaux would string up cattle rustlers on the spot and the local marshal, assuming he was within a hundred miles and sober, was probably glad to be rid of the bother. Back then whatever Devereaux pushed against yielded. But the successful pioneer plants the seed of his own extinction. The copper found on Devereaux's land need men to dig it, and men bring civilization and the rule of law. The unfiltered waste of a copper mine dumped into a stream pollute the water and kill cattle. Devereaux is not the type to calmly negotiate when forty of his cattle are found poisoned. Back then Devereaux's actions brought results; now they simply usher in tragedy.
While never losing sight of Devereaux's impulsive and sometimes brutal personality, Tracy is able to give the character enough warmth to maintain the audience's sympathies. Katy Jurado, who received an Oscar nomination as Señora Devereaux is little more than a minor satellite in the Great Man's orbit, stoic and ever-suffering. Frankly, I thought Señora Devereaux was a pretty one-note character, one which Jurado handles well enough but not one that seems particularly memorable or Oscar-worthy. Robert Wagner plays the pivotal role of Joe Devereaux, Matt's `half-breed' son by Señora Devereaux and clearly his favorite. Wagner, as was his wont, is painfully stiff in a role that in abler hands would have probably would have filled out the tragic qualities of the story. The other three sons from Matt's first marriage are played by Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brien, and Earl Holliman. O'Brien and Holliman aren't much more than set dressing (although Holliman would have been a better choice, a much better choice, to play Joe). Widmark, as the resentful, scheming and devious elder son ably holds his own with Tracy, and their scenes together are high points of a movie that at times dips perilously close to melodrama.
The print is in very good condition and the dvd includes the full-screen and widescreen versions of this movie. Watch the widescreen version. Cinematographer Joe MacDonald painted a beautiful movie and director Edward Dmytryk makes use of the whole screen, favoring long, unbroken scenes uninterrupted by close-up or cuts to reaction shots. Just two actors moving through space and working a scene. When it's Tracy and Spencer squaring off, it's a joy to behold. Strong recommendation, especially for fans of traditional, large scale westerns.

'Broken Lance' has many admirers, and there are many good things about this sober Western. The film has been called an updated 'King Lear' - an all-powerful, tyrannical father unwisely cedes control (land) to his children, all turning against him except for the youngest, who is the most ill-used - but the adaptation is loose and mercifully unliteral: there are no raging storm scenes or impertinently wise Fools, just a grandeur-exuding atmosphere of a great man and the power he created declining. Though filmed in Fox's ugly Technicolour - that muddy colour that would be called 'lurid' if it didn't yearn for the respectable - there is an intelligent compositional eye, filling the landscape with dramatic and symbolic imagery. The prologue is particularly striking - a moody young man, Robert Wagner, released from three years in prison, rejects a financial offer by brothers eager to be rid of him. The journey he takes into the past is one of progressive decay and danger - first he is forcibly brought to the governer, in whose building gleams an imposing portrait of his father. When he visits his father's land, with all its traces of former activity abandoned, he is shot at from a distnace by a man who turns out to be an Indian friend -- the surreal shot of a seemingly self-standing gateway in an empty plain points to the importance of this sequence, as a kind of mythical portal into another realm; when he finally enters his family home, it is a ghost house, a gothic ruin, its dereliction shrouded in shadow. Like the films noirs with which director Huac Dmytryk made his name, the movie begins with an end; a heavy air of fatalism hangs over the subsequent long flashback.

What probably most appeals to fans is the film's (relative) political sophistication - as a backdrop to the usual Oedipal structures is a portrait of the West as it moves from a mythical plane into the modern era. It especially highlights two problems that would blight the nation in the next century - race and advanced capitalism. Spencer Tracy is an Irishman whose second wife is the daughter of a Cherokee chief. He is too important a landowner to ignore, so the locals refer to her as Spanish; the wives of these friends are nevertheless terminally indisposed whenever he gives parties. Of his four sons, the elder three from his first marriage, his favourite is the youngest, Wagner, through whose eyes the film unravels, and on whom centres the crises of race (he is a half-breed who loves a WASP whose father disapproves) and property. The actual catastrophe of the film occurs when a copper company on Tracy's land dumps refuse in his river, poisoning his herd. A fight at their headquarters, in part sparked by a racist comment directed at Wagner, leads to a court case, to offset the risks of which, Tracy is advised to divide the land between his sons. The old pioneers who tamed the land have been superceded, leaving only division and hatred in their wake.

You have got to admire a Western that interweaves its themes intelligently and without sensation (although a ridiculous coda stand-off between two brothers nearly ruins the good work). The restrained use of music and the insistence on stillness (intimating burgeoning violence) adds a maturity to the action. The treatment of the Indians is sensitive for the time, with the relationship beween Tracy and Katy Jurado clearly signalled as a loving and positive thing. The title indicates the film's theme, the (1950s?) failure of authority, family and masculinity.

Still, I found the film unsatisfying. This is partly due to miscasting - Wagner is too wooden to carry the film's moral weight; his role should have gone to the nervy, brilliant Richard Widmark, riveting as his resentful older brother who finally turns against his father's abuse. But it is mostly due to the stodgy direction which often confuses the sombre with the plain slow. Compared to the similarly-themed 'Gunman's Walk', 'Lance' lacks verve or true insight.

Tracy is a believable cowboy, nicely balanced for handling a bull whip, riding dangerously the hills...

Tracy plays a despot, absolute ruler cattle baron "making the wrong move with the wrong people," using his force to restrain the pollution of his cattle's stream: "The river is on my land. You are on my land. You close this operation down."

His first three sons (Widmark, O'Brien and Holliman) were unanimously disappointing to him... He considered them cattle thieves, treating them harshly, without mercy... Only the fourth son and the youngest one (Robert Wagner) by his present wife, a Comanche woman played by the clever, quick-witted Katy Jurado has his affection and care... The other sons looks only forward to his demise so they may take control over his cattle empire...

Tracy -- irritated and frustrated as a father -- expends excessive reasons that arouses the sensation of hate provoking avaricious rebellion, and nearly destroys his younger kid Joe...

It was interesting to follow Dmytryk's study of racial prejudice against the Indian wife of a domineering white father... Interesting to compare the rough resilience of Tracy with his character--isolated by mortal danger in "Bad Day at Black Rock," a character enlightened with real feelings specially in guessing the conclusion... Somehow this is missing in Dmytryk's "Broken Lance" where the autocratic father seems so artificial, an unfavorable comment that can be aimed against the movie itself...

Widmark offers a fine performance as the unlikable eldest son, while Robert Wagner and Jean Peters manage the romantic interlude...

The screenplay, based on 1949s "Home of Strangers" wins an Oscar and the fiery-eyed Mexican star Katy Jurado was nominated for best supporting actress...

Filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor and with great sceneries of the state of Arizona, "Broken Lance" remains a first-rate adult Western...

"Broken Lance" opens with a lone coyote running through the desert terrain and then onto the prison release of Robert Wagner, as he's ordered to come into town to see the Governor. This is one of the best westerns of it's era, following close to "The Searchers," and `The Big Country." Spencer Tracy gives an incredible performance as Matt Devereaux, husband to an Indian princess, father of four sons, and owner of a cattle ranch empire. Richard Widmark plays the eldest son, who is jealous of his half-breed brother, Robert Wagner, and is set on bringing his father down. "Broken Lance" is one of those western's that gives an authentic feel to it's characters and most important, the material it's handling. Spencer Tracy is very entertaining as his character is being questioned in a court room scene. His answers to the Prosecution's questions are pure delight. Katy Jurado plays Spencer Tracy's Indian princess wife, with a warm and caring spirit that is most entertaining. Their scenes together are both touching and genuine. "Broken Lance" has both widescreen and fullscreen formats, I watched the widescreen version for it's depth and full scope of the great western scenery. The transfer is clean and sharp and the sound is too. I highly recommend "Broken Lance," especially to Spencer Tracy fans, as well as "The Searchers (1956)," "The Big Country (1958)," and "Duel in the Sun (1946)."

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment present "BROKEN LANCE" (1954) (96 mins Color), under director Edward Dmytryk, producer Sol C. Siegel, screenplay by Richard Murphy and Philip Yordan., musical direction by Alfred Newman, music score by Leigh Harline . . . . .cast includes Spencer Tracy (Matt Devereaux), Robert Wagner (Joe Devereaux), Jean Peters (Barbara), Richard Widmark (Ben), Katy Jurado (Senora Devereaux), Hugh O'Brian (Mike Devereaux), Eduard Franz (Two Moons), Earl Holliman (Danny Devereaux), E.G. Marshall (The Governor), Carl Benton Reid (Clem Lawton), Philip Ober (Van Cleve), Robert Burton (Mac Andrews), Robert Adler (O'Reilly), Harry Carter (Prison Guard), Nacho Galindo (Cook), Julian Rivero (Manuel), Edmund Cobb (Court Clerk), Russell Simpson (Judge), King Donovan (Clerk). . . . . . . our story features Spencer Tracy as a cattle baron with four sons , three (Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brien and Earl Holliman) by a wife who died two years after Tracy settled in the west and started building his cattle empire...Tracy remarries, this time to an Indian princess (Katy Jurado) and has another son (Robert Wagner)...Tracy favors Wagner and treats theother three sons with disgust, thus making it very difficult for all concerned...a copper smelter is polluting the water and killing the cattle on his ranch, he raids the smelter and when things go wrong Wagner takes responsibility and is given three years at hard labor...Tracy dies of a stroke and Wagner plans to seek revenge when he gets out of prison... screenwriter Philip Yordan won an Academy Award for his work on "Broken Lance", while Katy Jurado received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her performance as Senora...this wonderful cast keeps the film together as director Edward Dmytryk, best known films from the pre-McCarthy period of his career were "Crossfire" (1947), for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination and "Murder, My Sweet" (1944), as the latter an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell My Lovely" (1975)....these films were made with expensive stars of the calibre of Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando, but apart from the memorable Western "Warlock" (1959), which he also produced, his work had lost much of the emotional urgency and psychological thrust represented by his early film noir "Crossfire" (1947)...after his film career tapered off in the 70s, he entered academia and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, and at the University of Southern California. He wrote several books on the art of film-making, Dmytryk died in 1999, aged 90.

Specal footnote, actor Spencer Tracy (April 5, 1900 - June 10, 1967) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor who appeared in 74 films from 1930 to 1967, was often described as one of the finest actors in motion picture history...in 1935 Tracy signed with MGM, won the Academy Award for Best Actor two years in a row, for "Captains Courageous" (1937) and "Boys Town" (1938)....Tracy was also nominated for "San Francisco" (1936), "Father of the Bride" (1950), "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955), "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958), "Inherit the Wind" (1960), "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961), and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967)...Tracy and Laurence Olivier share the record for the most best actor Oscar nominations (9)...Tracy was one of Hollywood's earliest "realistic" actors; his performances have stood the test of time, other actors have noted that Tracy's work in 1930s films sometimes looks like a modern actor interacting with the more stylized and dated performances of everyone around him...In 1941, Tracy began a relationship with Katharine Hepburn, whose agile mind and New England brogue complemented Tracy's easy working-class machismo very well, though estranged from his wife Louise, he was a devout Roman Catholic and never divorced, Tracy and Hepburn made nine films together.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
BIOS:
1. Spencer Tracy (aka: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy)
Date of birth: 5 April 1900 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Date of death: 10 June 1967 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles
2. Richard Widmark
Date of birth: 26 December 1914 - Sunrise, Minnesota
Date of death: Still Living
3. Robert Wagner (aka: Robert John Wagner)
Date of birth: 10 February 1930 - Detroit, Michigan
Date of death: Still Living
4. Katy Jurado (aka: Maria Cristina Estella Marcella Jurado de Garcia)
Date of birth: 16 January 1924 - Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Date of death: 5 July 2002 - Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
5. Edward Dmytryk (Director)
Date of birth: 4 September 1908 - Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada
Date of death: 1 July 1999 - Encino, California

Want to thank 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for releasing "Broken Lance" (1954), the digital transfere with a clean, clear and crisp print...looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage era of the '40s & '50s...order your copy now from Amazon or 20th Century Fox Entertainment where there are plenty of copies available, stay tuned once again for top notch wonderful character actors of the cinema brought back so many wonderful memories of the times when film makers cared about you who purchased a ticket and came back for more...just the way we like 'em.

Total Time: 96 mins on DVD ~ 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment #2227276 ~ (5/24/2005)

This is the way movies used to be photographed in Cinemascope ! Unfortunately all too often todays films seem to forget they are made for the wide screen and seem to be shot for the square tv screen with everything happening in the middle. This film has broad scope and wonderful scenery! Spencer tracey is great as usual and Robert Wagner looks like he does now except for a few wrinkles , some gray hair and a few more pounds! I enjoyed this movie and its grand spectacle greatly!!!

Broken Lance is a magnificently performed and directed Western that is truly King Lear on the prairie, but also has well-developed characters, excellent writing, excellent acting, and first rate location filming.

Spencer Tracy is the head of the Devereaux clan, a family that includes a Native American wife (played by Katy Jurado), a half-breed son with Jurado (played by Robert Wagner), and three sons from Tracy's first marriage (Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brian, and Earl Holliman). Devereaux is very hard on the first three sons, but dotes on his other son and his wife. When a copper mine is found to be contaminating Devereaux's water supply, things come to a head.

The interaction between the family members seems genuine and rings true, unlike many other films. Tracy gives him usual brillant performance, and everyone else is great. Edward Dmytryk's direction sets the proper tone and mood for every scene. This is an extraordinarily good film, and one that's worth watching many, many times.

an early cinemascope western and thus great to watch, even on a small screen. spencer tracy stars as the cattle baron father of 3 unloved sons (richard widmark most notable) and 1 loved (robert wagner), a half-breed with his second wife, the brilliant katy jurado (you might recall her as gary coopers mistress in "high noon"). the movie required a stronger script to jump into the realm of the top westerns, but theres enough to give you an idea of what mightve been.

Superior Spencer Tracy movie.Tracy does an award-winning performance as a dictating land baron with an outstanding performance by a very young and very handsome Robert Wagner.Superior western.