Broken Lance

2/18/2017

Edward Dmytryk Crafts The Western King Lear. With both it being based on Shakespeare's King Lear and being a Western remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's tasty film noir, House of Strangers, Broken Lance had fine sources from which to work from. Throw in to the mixer that it stars Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Katy Jurado, Robert Wagner and Earl Holliman, and that Joseph MacDonald was director Edward Dmytryk's cinematographer of choice, well it's all set up to be a highly accomplished piece. And it is! Dmytryk's film tells the story of how the Devereaux family came to implode. Father Matt {Tracy}, is a tough no nonsense pioneer who after finding a copper smelter has polluted his water, illegally raids the copper mine with destructive vengeance. Matt has four sons, his three eldest a

5/1/2026

I am not sure that the retrospective elements actually helped this gritty family drama, but the presence of Spencer Tracy adds the kind of gravitas to this film that he usually delivered - and that helps this to stand out from the crowd a little. He is the curmudgeonly rancher with four sons. Three, led by the disgruntled "Ben" (Richard Widmark) are the sons of his now deceased first wife; "Joe" (Robert Wagner) is the son of her successor and is clearly his favourite. It's the late 19th century and so his old style ways are being tested by industrialisation, and it's a problem with a polluting copper mine that causes disruption to his way of life and to that of his sons. His ways of dealing with things are ill-suited to the more legalistic ways that are emerging from the east, and so after