The New Pictures

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.

Its pulp-western plot, decked out in flamboyant, operatic finery, is set in late 19th Century Texas. The evil old cattle baron (Lionel Barrymore) lives in a pretty ranch house with his good wife (Lillian Gish), one good son (Joseph Gotten) and one very bad son (Gregory Peck). When the railroad (civilization) tries to encroach on Barrymore's rangeland, all hell breaks loose in the form of rip-roaring gunplay, overheated histrionics, and the tattoo of hoofbeats across gorgeously tinted landscapes.

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 lighted bunkhouse, and. even as she is dying, on a sun-scorched mountaintop. The audience eventually learns (thanks to the Johnston office) that Illicit Love doesn't really pay in the long run, but for about 134 minutes it has appeared to be loads of fun.

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.

Producer David O. Selznick, who is credited with writing the screenplay himself (from a Niven Busch novel), spent an unprecedented amount of money on this picture (reported to be $6 million, plus $2 million for promotion). By giving moviegoers a sort of super-sumptuous scrapbook of all the titillating, sure-fire elements that experience has convinced him they want, he figured to earn his millions back--plus a sizable profit. Box-office returns in Los Angeles, where Duel has been showing simultaneously in two theaters for the last couple of months (and is reportedly outgrossing Gone With the Wind by some 34%) indicate that Mr. Selznick may well be Hollywood's smartest businessman.

If the picture adds nothing to his reputation as a producer of quality entertainment, it will be because Mr. Selznick's profit motive is showing. All costly films, to be sure, are manufactured for profit, but the successful works generally keep pointing winningly to their warm hearts and remain sentimental about their subjects (The Razor's Edge) or their characters (The Yearling) or their audiences (It's a Wonderful Life). With no pretense at all to having a heart, big, beautiful, humorless Duel remains shrewdly cynical about both itself and its sensation-hungry public.

Duel's promotion campaign--which includes practically every trick imaginable, from dropping 5,000 parachutes at the Kentucky Derby to beach stickers which spell out the title on sunburned skin--makes Hollywood's normally brassy efforts in this line look pale. Duel is currently showing only in Los Angeles; the plan is to blanket the country, area by area, during the spring and summer, releasing some 350 prints before fall. Reasons for the distribution delay: 1) labor troubles have delayed Technicolor processing; 2) difficulties with United Artists have forced Mr. Selznick to set up his own distribution machinery (Selznick Releasing Organization) overnight; 3) Duel has raised more eyebrows and run into more censorship trouble than any other movie since The Outlaw (TIME, June 10).

Hollywood has been saying, with some bitterness, that Duel's censorship troubles come at a bad time, for everybody in pictures. Through the Legion of Decency, the Catholic Church can pledge some 24 million Catholics to avoid the picture if it disapproves. Protestants and Jews in the Los Angeles area have also questioned Duel's morals. Now an aroused group of churchmen, including all denominations, seems to be shifting the offensive to include not only Hollywood's public product, but also Hollywood's private life (TIME, March 3).

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