Barbara Stanwyck is one of the great movie stars of all time, a uniquely and strikingly beautiful woman that was able to shift between different kinds of roles, all straddling the lines of morality, driven and even at times demented. Her performance here and that of Walter Huston, another legend are what makes The Furies more than just an interesting early Mann western with a dark side and healthy does of Freud.
The point at which I really started to think this movie was doing something different was when Stanwyck throws the scissors at Huston's new fiancee, disfiguring her for life. This is not a happy exploration of the westward expansion, nor is it a Searchers or Wild Bunch deconstruction of the western mythology. It is instead, as the cover might imply, a noir re-imagining of the civilized invasion, and a kind of twisted Citizen Kane without laws. That being said, the ending is a little too pat, much in the same way Bigger Than Life wrapped up everything too quickly and easily. Not surprisingly, Mann and Ray had a common ability to work within the system to produce something entirely outside of it, and both directors are largely undervalued outside of cinephile circles.
But it all comes back to Stanwyck here, who gives one of my favorite performances by her that I have seen. This movie was made the same year Bette Davis made All About Eve, and while that film is a far better one, the performances are similar in that they highlight many of their respective strengths, and typify the kind of character that made them the stars that they were. Too often these days women are written to play off of the male lead, making their characters afterthoughts in both plot and theme. With Stanwyck, that was never a problem.
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