The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) – DVD

****/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras A-
starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Henry Morgan
screenplay by Lamar Trotti, based on the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
directed by William A. Wellman

by Bill Chambers William A. Wellman's 1943 film The Ox-Bow Incident is so brave and piercing that you can overlook its gawky title. That star Henry Fonda had a knack for picking westerns goes without saying, but The Ox-Bow Incident has more gothic qualities than do most oaters made prior to the dawn of Europe staking its genre claim: it's the scene in cowboy flicks where a bunch of guys cheer on an unceremonious hanging expanded to feature-length. The movie has such definitive–and perhaps, given the climate, urgent–things to say about mob mentality, the sour side of fraternity, that the Navy-enlisted Fonda deferred his tour of duty in order to appear in it. What makes this doubly noble is that, despite his lead billing, he's really not The Ox-Bow Incident's leading man. With a cast of dozens granted comparable screen time, no one is.

Gil and right-hand-man Art (Fonda and "M*A*S*H"'s Harry Morgan, credited as "Henry") are a couple of drifters who've travelled to Bridger's Wells, Nevada in the hope that Gil's "I'll wait for you" has waited for him. They saunter into a bar, whereupon they learn that the spinster-ish girl, Rose (Mary Beth Hughes), was driven out of town by its married women ("No torches or anything like that," the bartender assures, somewhat ominously). Suddenly aimless, Gil and Art talk each other into joining an impromptu posse in pursuit of the bandits who robbed a local farmer and left him for dead. It isn't long before the search party happens upon an encampment sheltering three suspects: the young, recently married Mr. Martin (Dana Andrews); old coot Halva (Francis Ford, John Ford's older brother and, like the majority of the film's cast members, uncredited); and Mexican ranch-hand Juan Martinez (Anthony Quinn). Ex-Civil War commander Major Tetley (Frank Conroy) assumes control of the posse and is in no mood to hear his captives' pleas of innocence. Unfortunately, the others bend to his will.

The Ox-Bow Incident was to immediately follow Fonda's career-making The Grapes of Wrath (1940) but sat on the shelf for two years (and almost permanently) because its politics terrified Fox executives. To that end, it can be seen as a quasi-sequel to Grapes: Fonda's Gil may be a little rougher around the edges than his Tom Joad, yet his final action in Ox-Bow fulfills Tom's promise to Ma Joad in existential terms, as Gil rides off into the sunset in gallant strides, ready to 'be there' in the proverbial dark for a widow who needs him. The knotty flipside to this is Gil's transparent ulterior motive: he's lost his own love, now here's a woman waiting vulnerable in the wings. Such is the challenge of this surly, haunted gem, which surveys the hazy moral landscape enshrouding a burst of violence and draws few comforting conclusions about man's inhumanity to man–everyone in Tetley's makeshift squadron appears to have been raised on the same pious principles, but one's values are not always compatible with one's ego. After slipping a downbeat movie into the system, The Ox-Bow Incident's greatest achievement might be its moody aesthetics: the flagrant artificiality of its soundstage-based sets only heightens its expressionistic flavour (somewhat unique among westerns), while a shot of Fonda reading a letter, composed in such a way as to conceal his eyes, is beyond indelible, just unspeakably perfect and devastating. Sometimes you can't look at a person. It should tell you something that this was among Orson Welles's favourite films.

THE DVD
Fox's Studio Classics issue of The Ox-Bow Incident (catalogue #13) is stupendous. The DVD features a fullscreen transfer of unflagging clarity that's all the more miraculous when you consider that the picture's negative no longer exists. Arthur C. Miller's black-and-white cinematography is of typically wide latitude (Miller also photographed How Green Was My Valley and Gentlemen's Agreement)–contrast is strong without getting hot, and the second-generation grain is never coarse. Occasional print nicks neglected during the digital part of the restoration are easily forgiven. There is, truth be told, very little differentiating the film's remastered stereo and original mono tracks, though Cyril J. Mockridge's score better prospers in the former.

Extras include a captivating commentary with separately-recorded participants Dick Eulain (a "western scholar" from the University of New Mexico) and William Wellman Jr., each of whom emphasizes The Ox-Bow Incident's fidelity to Walter Van Tilburg Clark's source novel. Although Wellman's account of the production has the edge of an intimate perspective, Eulain's observations are seldom unappreciated. Regrettably, neither commentator much probes the movie's imagistic concerns. A prototypically soft-pedal 45-minute A&E "Biography" on Henry Fonda ("Henry Fonda: Hollywood's Quiet Hero"), a brief and ho-hum gallery of production stills, The Ox-Bow Incident's theatrical trailer, and a persuasive restoration comparison round out the disc.

75 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Stereo), English DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); English and Spanish subtitles;  DVD-9; Region One; Fox