Larger-than-life cattle baron T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston, in his final role) is a restless egotist who speaks every word as though the world is listening, and who only stops moving when it’s time to get a “back rub” from his ambitious daughter Vance (Barbara Stanwyck). Stanwyck, looking like she was born on a horse, is in spitfire mode here, though not without healthy doses of wounded pride and bitter scheming. Her passion and bluster meet their match in a kinetic performance from Huston as the megalomaniacal rancher (Walter’s son John was clearly paying attention—witness his mannerisms as a similarly narcissistic mogul in 1974’s Chinatown). Among the earliest in Anthony Mann’s celebrated run of psychological noir-Westerns, The Furies is that rare treat: a female-led horse opera. The title refers not to the mythological Roman goddesses of vengeance but to the ranch itself, one of the largest in the New Mexico territory; control of “The Furies” is up for grabs, but ol’ T. C. has some pretty firm ideas about how things should be run. Mann’s surehanded, propulsive direction was a good match for bringing the sprawling Niven Busch novel to the screen; the “Succession”-ish setup is milked for maximum midcentury Freudian psychodrama, with a memorably twisted father-daughter relationship and a host of other reasons why it’s not a great idea to have kids (or parents). – Gabriel Wallace

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