MovieChat Forums > Duel in the Sun (1947) Discussion > What is the worst scene in this film?

What is the worst scene in this film?


I'd almost pick the climactic duel. But I think I'll go for the scene where Jennifer Jones realizes that Joseph Cotten will never forget her indiscretion with Gregory Peck. She spells it out for us with her overacting: "Fine! Then I'll just go ahead and be a slut!"

What's your pick?

... Justin

P.S. Apologies in advance to those who love this film sincerely rather than as camp.

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That scene is incredibly ill-conceived. I take it that Selznick was the one responsible for making this film so ludicrous. I can't get over how bizarre it all was.


... Justin

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I agree the last scene. Note that Jones is shot in the left shoulder, but somehow can't use her legs but CAN use her arms including the left one. This way she can crawl to Peck.

I can't imagine what those guys saw in this movie to give it more than 2 stars here at IMDB.

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As of this writing, 202 people rated it a 10!

... Justin

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What I like most about the ending is the way Jones is sweating off her brown and orange greasepaint, and it's smearing all over.

As for the worst scene, I nominate the scene where Pearl pays her father a last visit in jail. He's calm and chilly, almost bored... and she's shrieking and thrashing around hysterically. In a film stuffed with screaming overacting, it's the one scene where the overacting is contrasted against underacting, and the contrast makes it all look worse than ever.

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I just started watching this movie and I have my choice already.
During the PRELUDE, I can't help but think I'm at Mount Rushmore looking at Abraham Lincoln!!!

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It's been awhile since I saw the movie and posted this thread--but didn't the overture, prelude, forward, preface, and whatever else they stuck to the beginning of the film, total 14 minutes?

... Justin

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Something like that, It was a long time.
I walked away.

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Worst worst: the Prelude. Fifteen minutes of pseudoclassical music which should've put the audiences to sleep before the story even began.

Best worst: Walter Huston as the Sinkiller and Jennifer as the Sinner wearing only a Navajo blanket. Did 1946 audiences really manage to keep from drowning out the dialogue with laughter?

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Maybe they couldn't laugh because the first fifteen minutes had already put them to sleep.


... Justin

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Best worst: Walter Huston as the Sinkiller and Jennifer as the Sinner wearing only a Navajo blanket.


The character of Sinkiller, in general, and this scene in particular, was reminiscent of, and may even have been inspired by, Huston's performance in the 1932 film, Rain.

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How come so much people on this board don't know that the preludes in these lavish hyped big productions were meant to put the audience in the mood while sitting in the theatre, talking to your seat neighbor, take a pee, kiss your lover, etc.

No one kept starring at the screen for 15 minutes!

If you do so, YOU are dumb. Not the movie.

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I know right. I always get up and fix my self a snack or use the loo. This film is one of my favorite J.Cotten/J.Jones pairings.

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Somebody must love this scene because in Takashi Miike's Japanese western SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO it's duplicated for laughs as is one of the deaths from Peck's THE OMEN.

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0906665/ I hadn't heard of that. I may have to check it out.


...Om

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I watched DITS over the weekemd and told my wife the book had a happier ending but I don't know what happened. My father remembers the endig very well but didn't know either. The Kiike film carries it to a ludicrous extreme but lacks the overheated melodrama leading up to it.

It's a great homage to the spaghetti westerns with nods to the "Dollars" films and the original Django. All of the actors speak English even if they don't know how and there is a cameo by Quentin Tarantino. The Washington Post's former critic Stephen Hunter called Miike "funnier than David Lynch and sicker than John Walters." Showtime refused to air a horror/torture film he made for its Masters of Horror series.

See you at the movies.

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No, the worst is the "trash, trash, trash, trash!" scene. My sisters and I sometimes say that when we see someone on tv acting like an idiot.

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Don't renenber "trasg", but people acting like idiots on tv just reminds me wny I watch almost no tv, especially the reality shows. The last show I watched regularly was GUNSMOKE reruns on MOVIELAND. But, like the Western Channel, they run the same episodes in the ground.

I enjoyed Miike's film because I love westerns and wish they made more. A friend of mine once wrote a script for Wayne, Stewart and Fonda about three old cowboys who go out for one last adventure and at least one doesn't come back. Fonda and Stewart initially balked at playing old men but changed their minds. Wayne still refused. So my friend turned it into a book called LONESOME DOVE.

See you at the movies.

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The entire film was so over the top, that it is difficult to single out one scene was the worst, however there was one truly great sequence in it, when the Senator gather together all of his cowboys to ride to Spanish bit to halt the railroads, and then the arrival of the US Calvary in a nick of time was awesome.

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I'd say, any scene between the opening and the end credits.

But hey, it's camp - it's fun in its own campy way.



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[deleted]

Where she is crying on the floor in the room when Lewt won't take her with him escape the law. He just ave his freedom to roam. Closely followed by the ending.

If we can save humanity, we become the caretakers of the world

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When Jennifer Jones has to act like she was dying from a gunshot wound







so many movies, so little time

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