The Unforgiven

Some westerns are content to go for the lowest common denominator, an entertaining story with ridiculous amounts of action. I don't mean that as negatively as it sounds, I own a lot of movies like that. But some westerns strive for something else whether it be getting a message across or trying to make a statement about the times. These can be hit or miss because sometimes they strive to do too much, but every so often they find that balance, like John Huston's 1960 adult western The Unforgiven.

Based on a novel by author Alan Le May, who also wrote The Searchers, you have to figure you're not getting a typical shoot 'em up western. And in general, westerns were getting away from the old stereotypes, especially in the 1950s with some adult, psychological westerns like Anthony Mann's movies teaming up with Jimmy Stewart (all highly recommended). The Unforgiven doesn't settle for anything easy in it's story about a western family dealing with the revelation that their adopted daughter may be a Kiowa.

The Zacharys are a frontier family working their spread in the Texas panhandle and looking to put together a cattle herd to drive north to Wichita. The patriarch of the family since his father died years before, Ben (Burt Lancaster) is the leader, the oldest brother who keeps everyone else in check. His mother, Mattilde (Lillian Gish), runs the house and makes sure the family stays together. Helping Ben around the spread are his two younger brothers, Cash (Audie Murphy), a fiery, hot-tempered cowboy, and Andy (Doug McClure), the youngest brother who's still growing up. Then, there's Rachel (Audrey Hepburn), their adopted sister who their father supposedly found after her parents were massacred by Kiowas.

One day, a mysterious rider (Joseph Wiseman) rides into town with some revealing news. He says that Rachel has Indian blood in her, and that the story her father told was a lie. Everyone around turns on the Zacharys, and the news even tears the family itself apart with Cash refusing to live in the same house as a 'red-skinned' Indian. Even Ben's longtime partner and neighbor Zed Rawlings (Charles Bickford) refuses to deal with the family. All the while, Ben must hold the family together, even when the Kiowas come to take Rachel back.

Any movie, including a western, that deals with racism as straight forward and honest as this one is going to be polarizing. The Unforgiven can be brutally honest in that sense. We're introduced to all these characters, get to know them, and across the board they seem like good people. But the moment the possibility arises that one among them could be an Indian, they turn on each other. That could have been what the times were like, but it's a story that could be set in any decade or time in American history. It works because it doesn't try to whitewash the story.

Credit for that goes to Huston and his cast, an impressive listing of actors. It's not Lancaster's best part, but he's solid in the lead role. Hepburn is a bit of an odd choice as Rachel, but she pulls it off even if she looks little to nothing like a young Kiowa woman. This movie is known as much for the behind the scenes issues with Hepburn, but her role as Rachel works because she makes the character easy to identify with and very sympathetic.

Surprisingly enough with Lancaster and Hepburn in the leads, it's Audie Murphy that has the best part. His Cash Zachary is a deeply flawed character, a racist at the most basic who wants nothing to do with Indians of any sort, even his own adopted sister. Always known for playing the good guy in a white hat, the WWII hero plays completely against part here as the racist cowboy and comes across the best because he puts it all into the part. Of the rest of the cast, Gish and McClure round out the family, a believable representation of a frontier family, and John Saxon has a cool if small part as Johnny Portugal, an Indian horse wrangler/breaker, including this well choreographed chase scene.

Judging the movie apart from its story is a lot easier because Huston presents such a well-package western. Visually, he gets the spectacle down, the epic feel of what living in the west was like. The movie was shot in Durango, Mexico where many westerns were filmed, and it looks beautiful. The west was full of big, wide open spaces and Huston utilizes that feeling with some memorable long shots, some seemingly from miles away on a rock butte or hill. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin's score isn't as consistently strong as some of his others, but his music in those scenes fits perfectly.

A western that's dark and gloomy and doesn't pull any punches with its story dealing with racism and prejudices in the wild west. The movie benefits from some great performances, including a career-best part from Audie Murphy, and location shooting in Durango. This isn't as well known as Alan Le May's other highly respected western The Searchers, but it deserves more recognition than it's gotten in the years since.

The Unforgiven (1960): *** 1/2 /****