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The Unforgiven

Actor(s): Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, John Saxon, Charles Bickford
Director(s): John Huston
2

Details

MPAA Rating: NR
Content Advisory: Violence, Questionable for Children
Movie Release: 1960
DVD Release: 05/20/2003
Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
Audio Tracks: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Number of Discs: 1
Studio: MGM
Members Wishing: 6
Genres: Western, Revisionist Western, Psychological Western

Synopsis

One of Hollywood's most famous and acclaimed directors, John Huston guides this western with an unerring hand -- the cast of notable stars is no drawback either. Setting up the story with a series of suspenseful scenes, Huston has a mysterious stranger on horseback come into a small community in the Texas Panhandle and then proceed to cause a mini-war. The time is the mid-19th century and there is already antagonism between the white settlers in the community and the local Kiowa Indian nation. The Zachary family is at the crux of the trouble. Matilda (Lillian Gish) is the matriarch who holds a family secret -- her adopted daughter Rachel (Audrey Hepburn) is actually a Kiowa child. There are three brothers in the Zachary family, and one of them, Ben (Burt Lancaster) is obviously in love with Rachel. Another, Cash (Audie Murphy) hates Native Americans, while the youngest (Doug McClure) is there to defend the family when they need it. The stranger on horseback has done the unthinkable, he has made it widely known that Rachel is a Kiowa -- and then the battles begin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Cast

Burt Lancaster - Ben Zachary
Audrey Hepburn - Rachel Zachary
Audie Murphy - Cash Zachary
John Saxon - Johnny Portugal
Charles Bickford - Zeb Rawlins
Lillian Gish - Matilda Zachary

Editorial Review

John Huston's offbeat, idiosyncratic, and totally engrossing 1960 western drama The Unforgiven comes to DVD in a stripped-down but nicely made letterboxed edition, as part of MGM/UA Home Video's "Western Legends" series. The 121 minute movie appeared on laserdisc in the last 1980's in a letterboxed edition that didn't look half as good as the transfer here -- even the night shots reveal a vast range of useful and usable image in their subdued, silky lighting, and the whole transfer goes the laserdisc one degree better in sharpness, resolution, and lighting; the bright exteriors of Rachel Zachary's ride in the opening scene give way to the dark interior showing her hair being fixed by Lillian Gish's matriarch, and tease the eye with details across the entire range of lighting. The DVD is letterboxed to the 2.35-to-1 Panavision aspect ratio, and the vast landscapes and big-sky frontier scenes all look glorious, and are the kind of images that sell big-screen monitors, but are just as impressive on, say, a 21-inch screen; the resolution is pushed so hard, that the image shimmers on some close-up shots of foliage or fabric; and a storm scene comes off so vivid that you can almost feel the dust cutting across the prairie -- and when Burt Lancaster's Ben Zachary defies the Kiowa who wishes to buy Rachel, the blue in his eyes flashes as bright as any color in the landscape behind him. The audio is mastered at a decent volume level, and that goes double for Dimitri Tiomkin's score -- Tiomkin was never known for his love themes, but the audio here brings out the sonorousness of his string writing accompanying the scene 14 minutes into the film, in which Audrey Hepburn's Rachel greets Burt Lancaster's Ben Zachary bathing in a creek, to a point where their passions sing big and deep enough to fill the plains and the screen in a way that they haven't since the original theatrical run of the movie. There's no insert or annotation, but the chaptering is generous, 24 in all. The major bonus is a four-and-a-half minute trailer without narration that assembles most of the more suspenseful scenes together; it is accessible directly through a two-layer menu that pops up automatically on start-up. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide