The Rustlers and the Mob

One thing the Wild West is not famous for is due process. But efforts were made, such as is dramatised in 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident. A concise, sharp little film at only around an hour and fifteen minutes, it follows a small frontier community who band together and track down some people they believe to be cattle rustlers and murderers. It's impressive how well this film communicates the psychology of the group, likely driven as much by boredom and vanity as any desire for justice or even revenge.

I wonder why the movie is so short. There are a few obvious spots where director William A. Wellman and screenwriter Lamar Trotti could have easily gotten another fifteen minutes of film. Henry Fonda plays Gil Carter, more or less the film's point of view character, whom we meet coming back into town to discover the girl who'd promised to wait for him, Rose (Mary Beth Hughes), hasn't.

They run into each other later in the film when it's revealed she has a husband now. Gil and Rose give each other meaningful stares--his desperately questioning, hers queasily polite. It felt like this was going to lead to a later scene where the two have it out but that scene never comes. It's such an interesting choice on the part of the filmmakers and I wonder if it may have been to establish Gil as a man in a particularly raw, dissatisfied state of mind. This makes him a better choice to be the character whose moral choice we follow. The preacher (Leigh Whipper) and the store owner (Harry Davenport) who argue for giving the suspects a fair trial are simple, decent men. Gil's situation better implies his imperfection, so it makes him a better example of someone who can still make a rational decision despite the circumstances.

The victim is a cattle rancher everyone knows but one senses the desire to catch the culprits is more about everyone being tired of hanging around and drinking in the dull, dusty town. The posse is led by a man dressed as a Confederate major (Frank Conroy). Interestingly, Gil seems certain that the man is a fraud, that he probably never fought in the Civil War, arguing that a man like him wouldn't come to this godforsaken little town if he didn't have something to hide. It is curious that a man would pretend to be a leader in an army that at this point would be completely illegitimate. It makes a sharper point of the fact that he's the one who decides to be the moral authority.

The Ox-Bow Incident is available on The Criterion Channel.

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