I think Jennifer Jones stinks in this movie. Too bad the Producers couldn't wait for Teresa Wright to come off of maternity leave. I think she would have done a much better job. Just my opinion but I think Jennifer overacts, it can be very annoying for me to watch her.
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she was more irritating as madam bovine: I actually know girls that act like that.
Jones was ass-hot and spankable back then. use mother theresa wrongwright? phhoey! jones was the right actress. if vidor had been left alone by david alka-selznik the moovie would have been great.
all the ingredients were there just mixed wrong. butterfly mqueen is less irritating than in gone wth the wind.
if jones is bad in this moooovie then peck was tooo.
as it was I did not belive pecks bad boy he didn't convince me but jones did... she was always great playing slutz of one kind or other. slutz, or innnent teennagers like in portrait of jenny jonez.
that was her problem, she was a actress of limited uses.
I liked it...sure, it was no epic western and Jennifer Jones did overact on a few occasions, but in the end I really enjoyed it. Gregory Peck was awesome in this.
"I know you're in there, Fagerstrom!"-Conan O'Brien
i laughed out loud - belly laugh - when jones started 'dancing' after cotten left her - crying in the bed - jiggle the rack. ridiculous.
cotten and peck as brothers - one good, one bad - was bizarre. great actors, both.
i think what we're missing that would make this film run together and work is the level of booze the nation was imbibing in the postwar years. my god. if we all smoked and drank coffee and martinis all day, with that special arrogance of the american mindset in the late 40s-early 50s (listen to the voiceovers in these movies! they explain everything to you, from politics and morals to science, sex and the mind - oh, yeah, it's all figured out!), we might be able to stagger onto screens with this kind of circus hilarity. how it was, ya know. how men oughta be. how the dames carry on. all of it would die with vietnam - look how the movies change. this relic is a priceless gem - a time capsule into the ever-changing insanity that is our national consciousness.
I thought she was fine . I mean you have to consider the times. I thought in certain scenes where she had to show intense emotion she was great. Let's face it the role is miscast, a white woman playing someone of mixed race . I mean really the role should have gone to Dorothy Dandridge. But the times were such that that would have been a disaster at the box office, or censored , or both.
She has a fascinating face. She looks so different in the final scene where she and Peck have their duel. I thought she was insanely beautiful and I can understand how Lewt who couldn't marry her because of his father wouldn't want anyone else to have her either.
In the scene following Lewt's bridaling of the black stallion, Pearl pulls her hair up off her neck and over her head, flashes her blinding white teeth and breathily asks Lewt if he would like to "go for a swim". I would bet money that Jones in that scene was the inspiration for the persona adopted by Marilyn Monroe a few years later.
By the finale I couldn't stand Pearl, she always proclaimed that she hated Lewt yet kept going back to him. I thought she was too promiscuous and didn't see why the finale tries to portray Pearl and Lewt in a sympathetic light when they were both unlikeable characters.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
Starbuck572001 - I thought "Marilyn Monroe" when I saw Jennifer Jones in this movie too!
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boy oh boy do I ever agree with you!Although she could be really good in some movies,this was not it.For lack of a better discription,she seemed to go through scene after scene with the same sneaky glare on her face.Maybe if another actress had played this part,I wouldn't have laughed so hard at the ending,because it wasn't suppose to be funny.
shareThat's because you're an idiot.
shareShould have been titled "Gone With the Wind II (or How I Realized I've seen 'Its A Wonderful Life' One Time Too Many)".
<Too bad the Producers couldn't wait for Teresa Wright to come off of maternity leave. I think she would have done a much better job.>
LOL, Teresa Wright in a part like that? She wasn't the type to make men lust. And her voice could sound whiney at times.
I disagree. I liked this movie. I liked jennifer jones and Gregory peck. This movie also brings out a very true fact. Most women love bad boys, and not just bad boys, VERY BAD BOYS.Sad, but very true. The worse they are treated the more they keep coming back for more. Treat them like a queen and they will hate you for it. Not all but a hell of a lot of them.
shareMovie's not bad but this is the second time I've seen it on TCM and Jennifer Jones does seem to be overacting (overly dramatic) just a little bit. And the ending always makes me laugh. I'm sorry but it's almost like the end of 'War of The Roses' but it's not a black comedy and it's being much more serious. Two people that truly love each other, shooting each other multiple times to death. I'm sorry but I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. Nothing says 'Love' like a bullet to the gut! Happy Valentine's honey, here's flowers, chocolates, and...BLAM!! Thanks Dear, you're so sweet...BLAM!!! I would have loved to see Bette Davis and Henry Fonda playing the leads on this part! Still an o.k. movie overall and filmed nicely. Peck and Cotton are good but Lionel Barrymore gets on my nerves. He sounds like 'Simon Bar Sinister' from the UnderDog cartoons. I'm starting to laugh about the ending again where the lovers are shooting each other so I better sign off now.
shareI really like the movie and just saw it again last night, but I have to agree with you. It's such fun making fun of the ending!
shareJennifer Jones's acting is consistent with the high level of melodrama in this film. I mean listen to that score! It's hilarious! The horn section goes crazy during Mrs. Chavez's salacious dance at the beginning of the film.Does anyone in their right mind think that music is appropriate for the West of the 1880s?
That said, I think Jones does a good job of portraying a young girl who can't be the good girl she wants to be because she's an oversexed bombshell that men can't help but drool over. She's simultaneously attracted and repelled by Lewt McCanless(played by a terribly miscast Gregory Peck).
Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotton run neck and neck in the bad acting department with a slight edge going to Cotton. Their acting is absolutely wooden.
Lionel Barrymore plays the same identical character he played a year or so later when he was cast as the greedy banker in "It's a Wonderful Life". Here he plays the selfish greedy cattle baron and Lilian Gish plays his long suffering wife whom he suspects of once having had an affair with Pearl's late father Scott Chavez.
When you watch Butterfly McQueen(who portrayed Prissy in "Gone With the Wind") once again playing a ninny you can see why this film took so long to reach commercial TV.
There is a photo taken on the set of D.W. Griffith visiting with King Vidor, Barrymore and Gish. Film buffs would've known that D.W. had directed Gish and Barrymore in dozens of short movies circa 1910-1913.
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did."
Lets face it, even with Teresa Wright, this still would have been an awful movie due to bad screenwriting, directing, editing, acting, etc.
"Let us be crooked but never common"