BY JOHN M. WHALEN

It’s hard to decide if David O. Selznick’s “Duel in the Sun” is a work of twisted genius, or just the worst, corniest, unconsciously hilarious movie ever made. It hovers in a weird place somewhere between a Eugene O’Neill tragedy and a sketch that Carol Burnett might have come up with on her old TV show. Remember when she lampooned Gone with the Wind? She came down the staircase in a gown made from the curtains that used to hang on the window, complete with curtain rod draped across her shoulders? There are scenes in “Duel in the Sun” that are unintentionally almost as funny as that.

Based on a Niven Bush potboiler and directed by King Vidor (along with several others), the film tells the tale of half-breed femme fatale Pearl Chavez, a woman whose passion and hopes for a better life are doomed by her heritage and a script straight out of a soap opera. Selznick cast Jennifer Jones, who was his paramour at the time, as Pearl, hoping to duplicate with her the success he had with Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind.” Jones gives it everything she’s got, in a performance that is fascinating, even entrancing at times, but occasionally so over the top that, occasionally, you can’t help snickering.

The story begins with a sequence that was actually directed by William Dieterle after the production was finished. Selznick felt that some explanation of Pearl’s provocative sex-pot behavior was needed in order to make her a more sympathetic character. Vidor refused to return to return to direct the additional scenes after already having been through numerous reshoots during production. Herbert Marshall was added to the cast to play Pearl’s father, a refined, educated man caught in a humiliating marriage to a wild Native American woman. Pearl witnesses her father’s murder of her mother when he catches her with another man. Before he is hanged, he arranges for Pearl to go live with Laura Belle McCanles (Lilian Gish), a refined woman he once loved and who is now married to Sen. Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore), owner of Spanish Bit, one of the biggest ranches in Texas.

When she arrives, Pearl discovers the McCanleses have two sons, one good and the other a downright dirty dog. I guess you could say if the McCanles ranch were the Garden of Eden, Laura Belle and Jackson would be Adam and Eve, and Lewt (Gregory Peck) and Jesse (Joseph Cotten) would be Cain and Abel. But what does that make Pearl? Joseph Cotten is well cast as the honest, upright, dutiful Jesse. He’s been to college and is a lawyer. He likes Pearl quite a bit. And she seems to like him until she lays eyes on the tall handsome, cold hearted Lewt. Why Gregory Peck was chosen to play Lewt will remain a mystery for all time. He is totally out of his element as the senator’s favorite son. He’s called on to treat Pearl like dirt. He slaps her around, forces her to swim all day in a pond without any clothes on until it gets dark, and finally forces himself on her. Sorry. I just don’t see Atticus Finch doing something like that, but I guess everybody has a dark side.

There’s a big plot element that comes into the story about a third of the way through. The railroad wants a right of way through Sen. Jackson’s land, and, dang it, he ain’t about to give up one inch of Spanish Bit. There’s a showdown with the rail workers, and when Jesse refuses to order McCanles men to fire on them, the senator calls him a traitor and orders him off the ranch. So that leaves Pearl alone with Lewt, and try as she might to be the respectable young woman her father wanted her to be—a woman like Laura Belle—she can’t help being obsessively attracted to Lewt. He messes around with her, but when she tries to get him to marry her, he won’t, because his father is an Indian-hating racist and would disown him if he did.

Well, there’s a lot of agonizing and squirming around as Jennifer Jones climbs all over the scenery. Even Gish and Barrymore reach various levels of melodramatic absurdity. In one scene the old blowhard senator goes into a long monologue about the night he almost lost her to Pearl’s father and how he rode all night to get back to her. Meanwhile, she’s lying in bed listening, sick with some fatal disease. Moved by his sudden emotional outburst, she sits up and reaches out to him. The senator keeps rambling on as only a Barrymore can, oblivious to her condition, until finally Laura Bell falls out of bed flat on her face on the floor. Can’t you just see Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence doing that scene on The Carol Burnett Show?

From all of this you might think this is a movie to be avoided. But that’s not actually the case. Despite its being referred to in the annals of movie history as “Lust in the Dust,” there are some rare moments of insane brilliance. The movie ends with one of the most talked about scenes in movies. Pearl and Lewt, dying of their twisted love for each other at the foot of Squaw Head Rock, is unconventional and almost beyond anything you could say about it. Martin Scorsese says “Duel in the Sun” was the first movie he ever saw and you can see the obvious influence it had on one of today’s most obsessive filmmakers.

Kino Lorber’s KL Studio Classics Blu-ray release includes the roadshow version of the film with Dimitri Tiomkin’s prelude, overture and exit music. There are other extras, including audio commentary by film historian Gaylyn Studlar, interviews with Celia, Carey and Anthony Peck, as well as a trailer gallery. It’s quite a package and quite a film. 

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John M. Whalen is the author of "This Ray Gun for Hire...and Other Tales." Click here to order from Amazon.