Reflections on Duel in the Sun (1946) (dir: Vidor, prod: Selznick)

After reading the second in Mulvey's series of influential analyses, I decided to watch this piece again, partly to try and discover what was so inspirational about it. Mulvey's article actually mentions the film only on a couple of pages, and she focuses on the character 'Pearl Chavez' and her difficult relationship with the two brothers Jesse and Lewt (apparently short for Lewton, which already carries an intertextual moment for the British viewer, thinking of the town of Luton?).

Mulvey seems safe enough in suggesting that the film evolves into a melodrama, although there are some sub-plots which are familiar in a Western. The owner of the ranch Spanish Bit (not a sexual innuendo, surely?), known throughout as 'the Senator' is determined to preserve his ranching way of life against the encroachment of the railway and industrialisation, for example. The cause of the latter is embraced by Jesse, producing a classic father-son conflict. I even detected some hints of the split between South and North, although it was hard to place the action in terms of the Civil War. 'The Senator's' apparent allegiance to the US flag might have referred to some earlier conflict between Texas and Mexico? Certainly, the ranch is situated in the Deep South, and not the post-bellum West as is traditional. There is also a black female servant (just possibly still a slave), whose name sounds like Vashtie, of whom more below. There are also shoot-outs, one in a bar.

Mulvey does indeed maintain a curious silence about 'race' in the film (see hooks on this). The black female servant is a classic infantile naive woman with a high childish voice whose role is to provide comic relief through misunderstanding both simple instructions and the social situation. Above all, though, Pearl herself is of mixed descent, with an Indian/Mexican mother. We see the mother in an early sequence, dancing exuberantly and uninhibitedly (for the time)in a bar, going off with a man, and eventually being shot by her husband. The young Pearl is also dancing outside the bar, and is taunted by her mother's lover, who offers the first of many suggestions that Pearl's 'mixed blood' has somehow conveyed the mother's dubious and promiscuous character to her.

This theme is pursued throughout the film as well, and is just as important, in my view as the gender issue per se: a 'racial' predisposition towards feistiness, tomboyishness and open sexuality is frequently suggested. Pearl is openly mocked and rejected by 'the Senator', who mutters about not having Indians take over his house that he has worked so hard to build. Lewt mocks Pearl on several occasions, including sneeringly referring to her name as evidently deriving from her 'white half'. Her racial characteristics provide the problem in her possible marriage to the respectable Jesse, as well as her sexuality as such: those characteristics prevent her from ever properly belonging to the household or finding a place in it, and make her unsuitable even for marriage to Lewt. Pearl's skin colour probably serves as a visual clue to the audience that her ambitions, to be 'a lady', as well as to be 'good', are bound to be doomed, since she will always be an outsider and a threat. Pearl herself speculates more than once about whether she can ever be anything more than 'trash' (given her racial background).

Pearl's options do not seem to be quite as Mulvey describes them either. Jesse disappears from the action quite early, in fact, as he leaves the ranch to go off and pursue his career as a politician. He is an option for her right at the beginning of the film, but Jesse gets jealous when he sees Pearl in a compromising position with Lewt (in the same room, unchaperoned -- it was the 1940s!). Jesse's 'ideal (respectable, socially established and white) woman' also appears fairly early, as someone clearly belonging to his new life with urban folk. Perhaps most oddly of all, when Jessie does return, he offers to let Pearl come and share the household with him and Helen (probably not as some polymorphous sexual threesome, of course, but with Pearl as some kind of female companion, honorary kin, or live-in spinster).

Having succumbed to Lewt, Pearl thinks that she is engaged and expects the announcement to be made at a party. However, she is sneeringly rejected, with both sexual and racial taunts, by Lewt, leaves the party, and encounters another marginal character -- Sam. On an impulse, she finally agrees to marry Sam, who offers her love and support, if not exactly sexual excitement. This could be another solution for Pearl, to use Mulvey's terms, another way of reconciling herself to patriarchy (although I bet the knowing 1940s audience was already predicting future problems in the marriage -- age as well as 'race' would mean they could never be happy). Lewt gets jealous (for class reasons as well as sexual ones -- Sam is only a small farmer) and contemptuously shoots Sam in a bar. This inaugurates his final split from respectable society, and offers another reason for Pearl to get even with him. Pearl also fears that Lewt will attack Jesse again, and it is this that finally makes her mind up to go and shoot Lewt: Lewt has transgressed enough to warrant punishment because he has shot his brother (we can forgive all his other transgressions). Pearl gets to represent the symbolic here -- she may be 'half-Indian', but she knows what is right according to the Law of the West better than the white folks do, and goes off to 'do what a (white) man's (usually) gotta do'! Maybe this reconciles a racially mixed person to the 1940s audience as a heroine at last?

The final shootout (not a classic 'walkdown' duel) between Pearl and Lewt is an odd one. Mulvey suggests that it hints at some interdependence between hero and villain, but, for me, there was also some hint of collusion between two outsiders left celebrating the wildness of their lives one last time (another Western plot, of course). The film itself suggests that the two were really deeply in love with each other, and, in a typically melodramatic end, the dying tough guy finally gets to admit his love for Pearl -- she feminises him and gets him to feel emotions, as in the classic melodrama. United they die -- what else could they do?. Both in the very beginning, and at the end, their relationship is symbolised by a flower growing in the barren rocks against an improbable Hollywood sunset, with some schmaltzy voice-over lending some eternal and universal significance to the events. Good old 'emotional realism'?

There are some other characters in the film that are worth thinking about too. The saintly Laura Belle (?), wife of 'the Senator' has not an iota of racial prejudice in her, and takes a very calm and supportive stance towards Pearl's sexual adventures with her son and to her social ambitions. We also learn something of Laura Belle's story, right towards the end, of her life and the film. She has been unhappily married to 'the Senator' for years. They discuss her early infatuation with none other than Chavez, Pearl's father. Her flight to meet Chavez led to 'the Senator' chasing her, falling from his horse, and being confined to a wheelchair ever since. I am not sure if they were actually married at the time or just courting.. Out of loyalty, she devoted the rest of her life to 'the Senator'. Now there was a strong woman! Come to think of it, perhaps this also explains a possible puzzle for the 1940s audience as well - how the gentlemanly Chavez found himself away from his proper place with the prosperous white ranchers, married to a bar girl in exile in Mexico.