Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

billcr12 Robert Mitchum is Jeb Rand and it all begins with the star and Thor Callum (Teresa Wright) at an abandoned house in a desolate part of New Mexico. A flashback to Jeb as a small boy hiding in a basement as he witnesses his father's death at a shootout. He is taken in by Thor's mother and the two grow close. A mysterious man shows up and he seeks revenge on Jeb for some wrong he has suffered at Jeb's father's hands. The plot unfolds slowly and it is a good one. Jeb and Thor fall in love but face obstacles in the form of skeletons from the past. It becomes a sort of Hatfield and McCoy type situation and Mitchum is his usual laid back self and Wright is pretty and self assured as his love interest. Although the film is from 1947, it holds up well. Raoul Walsh's direction is filled with shadows and silhouettes, much like Welle's Citizen Kane. Pursued is definitely one of Mitchum's best.

JohnWelles Pursued (1947), a noir Western directed by the great Raoul Walsh and stars Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright and Judith Anderson.The plot is simple enough: Set in New Mexico (and shot there too) around the turn of the century and told in flashback, the film tells the story of Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) whose family was murdered when he was a small boy. The sight of this haunts him, which manifests itself in bad dreams, into adulthood, as he is brought up by Mrs. Callum (Judith Anderson) and her two children, including Thor (Teresa Wright), whom he falls in love with. When the killers (led by the effectively cool Dean Jagger) discover that he exists and the only Rand left, they vow to kill him too. But Rand also has other problems to sort out, especially his jealous half-brother Adam Callum (John Rodney).The photography, by the esteemed James Wong Howe is breathtaking, all harsh black-and-white vistas; the editing too, by Christian Nyby (who would later go on to take credit for directing the classic science fiction film The Thing from Another World! [1951]) is above average, and the music by Max Steiner is up to the same high standard of the of his other classic scores. The direction is brilliantly handled by Walsh and the screenplay by Niven Busch throws up more than a few surprises. Robert Mitchum is his usual laconic self (which is no bad thing!), Judith Anderson as always is excellent, Teresa Wright is good as Mitchum's half-sister and love and Dean Jagger, Alan Hale and Harry Carey Jr. all turn in memorable performances. The film itself has been influential, being homage in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and Martin Scorsese has talked about his great admiration for it. This was also, tragically, the last movie "The Doors" singer Jim Morrison watched before he did on July 3, 1971. Pursued is an extremely good Western noir that deserves to be much more well known than it is and I strongly urge fans of either Westerns or noir's to see it.

bkoganbing Watching Pursued tonight I was struck by the fact of how much Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound seems to have influenced this film. In the VHS copy I have, Martin Scorsese does a brief prologue and says this was a film that influenced him and he calls it a noir western. I think it's more of a psychological western in which Robert Mitchum works out his own salvation rather than get the help of a doctor like Ingrid Bergman who wouldn't have been available back then because Dr. Freud was just starting to develop his theories around the time this was made.Mitchum's earliest recollections and something he dreams constantly was him being in a cellar and peering from a trap door as a lad and seeing and hearing a gunfight. He's rescued from that cellar by Judith Anderson who takes him in and treats him as an equal to her own children who grow up to be Teresa Wright and John Rodney. But Mitchum still experiences the nightmares and never quite seems to fit in. And he can't get the answers anywhere.Mitchum was the third candidate for the role at Warner Brothers for the role of Jeb Rand. Jack Warner tested and rejected first Montgomery Clift yet to make his screen debut and Kirk Douglas according to Lee Server's biography. I think both those actors would have imprinted their own personalities on the part as surely as Mitchum does. Playing a malevolent and unseen hand in the whole proceedings which run over several years is Dean Jagger who as a villain seems to be a combination of Inspector Javert and Iago. Jagger on screen is equally good in both good guy and bad guy parts and except maybe for his role in Alan Ladd's The Proud Rebel, this just might be the worst he's ever been on screen. Jagger hates Mitchum boy and man and the reason for that hate is not revealed until almost the end of the film. It's a lot to do with the family name.Niven Busch wrote the script for this unusual western and he was married to Teresa Wright at the time so apparently Warner Brothers bought them as a package. She's first billed in this picture even though the film is really about Mitchum. As for him, he was lent from RKO where in fact he had worked with a Niven Busch screenplay and got great acclaim for it in Till The End Of Time.The film bills John Rodney who plays Wright's brother as introducing John Rodney. His next film was Key Largo where he played the luckless deputy sheriff killed by Edward G. Robinson. He never quite made it, but Harry Carey, Jr. in only his second film before he was 'introduced' in Three Godfathers, certainly has had one long and successful career. Carey plays a luckless storekeeper influenced by the cunning Jagger to go after Mitchum and does well with the part.Raoul Walsh known primarily for more straight forward action films does all right with his cast in what had to be unfamiliar territory for him. Pursued is a good western, but definitely not one for the Saturday afternoon Roy Rogers crowd.

kenjha A man has been pursued all his life but does not know why. The film opens with Mitchum's pursuers closing in on him and Wright coming to his side. He relates the story of his life to her, seen in flashbacks. It is strange that he tells her the story because she has been a part of his life since childhood. This bizarre film is unlike any other Western, and is really not a Western in the traditional sense. Mitchum and Wright are OK but the characters are not well developed and their motivations are unclear. Walsh enlivens the action scenes but can't rise above the disjointed script, not helped by the awkward storytelling structure.