Word: duel
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...Duel in the Sun (David O. Selznick; Vanguard) is a knowing blend of oats and aphrodisiac. It is the costliest, the most lushly Technicolored, the most lavishly cast, the loudest ballyhooed, and the sexiest horse opera ever made...
With all their frenzied galloping, Duel's horses run a poor second to Sex (Jennifer Jones). Jennifer is the half-breed Indian girl who works on the Barrymore ranch. She is mildly mystified by the pure love that good Joe Gotten offers her. But her savage blood beats a wild response to the dishonorable advances of that fascinating rascal, Peck. She tries ever so desperately to resist the bad man. She tries - and fails provocatively, in a low-cut bodice - first in the ranch house, and again on the rush-fringed riverbank, and several times in her own dimly...
Millions of moviegoers will feel that the mere opulence of Duel's color, music, noise and activity is good enough value for the price of admission. The picture is even rich enough in big name actors to be able to shoot them full of holes (or otherwise dispose of them) with carefree recklessness. In addition to the hard-riding, hard-loving stars, such well-known players as Herbert Marshall, Walter Huston, Otto Kruger, Harry Carey, Tilly Losch, Charles Bickford and Sidney Blackmer appear briefly in minor roles-and are seen no more...
...current hullaballoo precipitated by attempts of assorted self-appointed guardians of public morals to cut parts of "Duel in the Sun" and "The Outlaw" raises some questions about the entire question of film censorship. If box office receipts are a good criterion, the public rushes to see any movie given the thumbs-down treatment by the women's downtown sewing club. The numerous amateur and state boards of review create delightful confusion, all the while playing into the hands of the film press agent...
...creep into a picture. Unfortunately, Girl Scouts and ex-ward bosses have crawled back into the censorship field and take pot shots at anything coming out of Hollywood in a two piece bathing suit. Significantly, the old adage about the cure being worse than the disease applies here. Witness "Duel in the Sun." Selnick's horse opera attained a thirty percent box office edge over other films once criticism had been levelled at it. Had "Duel's" standards of decency been left to the Johnson Office, and its artistic merits to the gentle handling of the critics, almost assuredly...