Before tonight, I'd never seen this underrated western. It is a complex morality play as well as being a film noir. The film begins with a young boy (Jeb Rand) being rescued from a house destroyed.<br /><br />He becomes part of the family, sort of headed by Ma Callum (wonderfully maternal by the skilled Judith Anderson). He is well loved by this woman, and should have grown up a normal hard working individual if she'd had her way, much like his stepbrother Adam (John Rodney). To all outward appearances, he did. He universally accepts his fate when he loses a coin toss. As the loser, he goes to a war he has neither interest in or understanding of. He comes back a hero. The ranch has been very profitable and the girl he left behind loves him and wants to marry him.<br /><br />Again, everything seems good.<br /><br />The tranquility is only on the surface, held together by the love of the mother matriarch. The natural son is insanely jealous of the adopted son. We never really find out why, nor does it matter. All the courtesy and soft-spoken talk is all veneer. Everyone has twisted emotions except Jeb (Robert Michum), who has problems, which he never denies, nor does he easily relate his problems.<br /><br />After two very ugly killings, Thor (Teresa Wright) hatches a plot. She consents to being courted and married.<br /><br />There is revenge in her heart. She is not the naive girl who wants the three of them to live together guided her mother's love and powerful moral upbringing. Thor is consumed by a Gothic kind of hatred. The hatred is so deeply ingrained that the mother, herself filled with a disappointed and mourning hatred, cannot stand to watch what the Thor has planned: she wants to kill Michum just as he thinks he has everything.<br /><br />Michum persists, but not stupidly. He confronts her hatred. Incredible as it may seem, he forces her to back away from killing him and to let her love surface in its place, which he knows is there.<br /><br />That is the complex characterization of the first half of the movie. The second part has to do with the Callum gang (headed by Grant  played by an amazingly sinister Dean Jagger) that tries to kill Michum on his wedding night at the old Rand ranch.<br /><br />The rest of the movie is all gun shooting and melodrama, which I won't reveal more about.<br /><br />The photography is astonishing with its shadows and light, which is like choreography. Wright is like a salad with ingredients that don't look they should go together but do. She is an underrated actress who must convey complex emotions, which not only contradict one another, but also are sometimes also false. It is to her credit that she does this easily. She is as Michum says, quite beautiful from a small distance. Close ups reveal how consumed she is in her depravity. If you don't believe this, watch her in the pride the Yankees. Close ups or shots taken from a distance show the same thing: a radiant vibrant woman transparently in love. This movie shows quite different side.<br /><br />I can't quite bring myself to give this a 10, because the plot suffers the same way all morality plays do. Let us say it is an interesting eight with subtleties that make it very engaging.<br /><br />An interesting 8 (out of 10).