SPOILERS..........SPOILERS ............... EVERYWHERE.<br /><br />A western as nightmare, peopled by strange characters obsessed with their ancestors, Pursued explores the deep hatred created by family feuds and infidelity. It mixes genres, styles and methods using flashbacks, noir lighting and melo-drama within the Western framework.<br /><br />Mitchum's character is raised from a child by Judith Anderson after a night of murder and mayhem at his shotgun shack, leaving him an orphan. He grows up in a single parent family with a brother and sister but there is no brotherly love and sisterly love becomes lust. He knows he doesn't fit in and that there's a dire secret from his past leading him to paranoia.<br /><br />***SPOILERS BEGIN***** Mitchum's paranoia is reinforced when his pony is shot out from under him by Dean Jagger, a sinister figure who is the ultimate bad penny. There's a touch of quasi-incest when a deeply disturbed Teresa Wright and an equally deranged Robert Mitchum pledge their love only to have it turned on its head when Mitchum shoots her brother in self defense after he returns from active duty, having lost the toss of a coin, an earlier version of the draft ballot. The plot is thick with devices, tricks and clues.<br /><br />When Wright's love turns to hate she devises a revenge so steeped in wickedness and deceit, it's stomach-turning. Mitchum has done nothing to deserve his run of bad luck and bad treatment. He was orphaned by a vengeful brother-in-law, rejected by his adoptive brother who attempts to kill him, goes willingly to a war he has no interest in, and when he does the unthinkable and kills his brother, his "beloved" rejects him outright with a scathing gesture.<br /><br />It all culminates in a final dreadful scene where Mitchum is prime for a lynching.