Lyrical drama

PostED ON 16.10.2015 AT 10:29am

Pursued by Raoul Walsh (1947) - A young and determined girl searches for someone in the ruins of a house in the landscape of the American West…Raoul Walsh's Pursued has one of the most sweepingly poetic opening scenes in the world, especially when you see that the girl has the intelligent and concerned face of Teresa Wright, and the boy she is looking for has powerful torso of Robert Mitchum. "Why did everything go wrong?" It is the question pondered by both the characters of the movie and viewers who are instantly affected, enticed by the mysterious couple who obviously need one another.

The need for the other is the leitmotiv of many great filmmakers of in search of real stories, starting with the Dardenne brothers, who are also very big western fans. Pursued shows a succession of poignant shots where all that matters are the ties that bind us to one another. Like the face of a child who suddenly returns before plunging into darkness, or the same child, now a teenager, who withdraws because he is an orphan and rejects the world in one swoop, bringing his hands to his forehead. Hovering perpetually between moments of abandonment, hope in others and fear, the aptly named, La Vallée de la Peur (Litt. The Valley of Fear) is a story that plays on threats. How reliable is the other? To what extent should we trust the hero himself? Walsh plays constantly with half-closed eyes of the listless young crocodile Mitchum, to plant seeds of doubt and ambiguity, prompting the viewer's desire to know exactly what it's all about, ultimately. Then comes a sublime scene where Mitchum, like Cary Grant with his glass of milk in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, bursts into the bedroom of the heroine, tall, upright, dark, performing gestures that seem paradoxically too immobile to place all their stake in the film. This is the great moment of fear and fury, the time to hold it together! In acting, rarely has Mitchum been so powerful, so protective and dangerous all at once. This film will knock you over.

Virginie Apiou