The Furies, Anthony Mann (U.S., 1950)

This tumbleweed noir is filled with leathered longing and rawhide, played out not on the jingle-jangle plains but a Freudian frontier. Egotistical land baron T.C. Jeffords (wily Walter Huston) runs a vast ranch, The Furies. His daughter Vance (Barbara Stanwyck in full fume) has been reared to be strong-willed like her adored dad yet the bewhiskered coot barely acknowledges her. When she is run off the ranch, Vance becomes the rustic version of a Fury, goddess of retribution. Only Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), a money-grubbing gambler, is a match for Stanwyck’s smoldering self-assertion—he knows when to fold ‘em.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Charles Schnee, from the novel by Niven Busch. Photographed by Victor Milner. With Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland. (107 mins, B&W, 16mm, Permission Paramount Pictures)