Product Description

The feisty, domineering cattle baron Matt Devereaux (Tracy) rules his vast empire with a ruthless hand. Because Matt's greatest love id for his Indian wife, Princess (Jurado) and their son Joe, Matt's three sons from a previous marriage deeply resent them. After Joe agrees to go to jail for a crime his father commits, he returns three years later to a different world-his father has died and his vengeful brothers control the land.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31180 in DVD
• Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.com
Broken Lance is a noble entry in the trend of adult Westerns of the early 1950s, scoring on a couple of fronts: (1) as a multigenerational saga, with Shakespearian overtones, of a family bickering over a giant ranch, and (2) as a grown-up look at the dilemma of the Native American... its title perhaps inspired by the Indian-friendly Broken Arrow? Spencer Tracy stars as the blustery patriarch of a cattle spread, threatened by pollution from a nearby copper mine as well as the shiftiness of his older sons (Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brian, and Earl Holliman). Tracy's bluff characterization--as ever, he seems to be yanking at the script like a cat unraveling a ball of yarn--carries the film effortlessly along. The central character is actually his youngest and wisest son, played by Robert Wagner, who's not especially convincing as the mixed-race issue of Tracy's second marriage, to an Indian woman (Oscar nominee Katy Jurado). Edward Dmytryk directs in a style that could be called "intelligent," which is another way of saying "not very exciting." The early CinemaScope probably accounts for some of the static set-ups, although there are exteriors that are breathtaking (watching this film in its full-screen version would be crazy). The cast is certainly tops; Widmark is overqualified to play a third lead, but who's complaining? Most memorable is the loving relationship between Tracy's cattleman and his Indian wife, although the subject of Native Americans is secondary here (check out The Devil's Doorway and Apache for more overt Fifties looks at the topic). Veteran screenwriter Philip Yordan won an Oscar for his "original story," a curious and long-defunct Academy Award category. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Broken Lance
When it's good, BROKEN LANCE (1954) is a sprawling story about the rise and fall of cattle baron Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy), color by DeLuxe, in Stereophonic Sound, and, most important of all, it's filmed in CinemaScope. Borrowing feuding and greedy children from King Lear and a Native American wife, and half a title, from the influential James Stewart vehicle, Broken Arrow, it's an entertaining near-classic.
Matt Devereaux is one of those larger-than-life pioneers whose success makes him an anachronism. Parcels of his land, once simply a buffet board for his 50,000-head herd of cattle, is now being leased out to oil and mining concerns. There was a time when men like Devereaux would string up cattle rustlers on the spot and the local marshal, assuming he was within a hundred miles and sober, was probably glad to be rid of the bother. Back then whatever Devereaux pushed against yielded. But the successful pioneer plants the seed of his own extinction. The copper found on Devereaux's land need men to dig it, and men bring civilization and the rule of law. The unfiltered waste of a copper mine dumped into a stream pollute the water and kill cattle. Devereaux is not the type to calmly negotiate when forty of his cattle are found poisoned. Back then Devereaux's actions brought results; now they simply usher in tragedy.
While never losing sight of Devereaux's impulsive and sometimes brutal personality, Tracy is able to give the character enough warmth to maintain the audience's sympathies. Katy Jurado, who received an Oscar nomination as Señora Devereaux is little more than a minor satellite in the Great Man's orbit, stoic and ever-suffering. Frankly, I thought Señora Devereaux was a pretty one-note character, one which Jurado handles well enough but not one that seems particularly memorable or Oscar-worthy. Robert Wagner plays the pivotal role of Joe Devereaux, Matt's `half-breed' son by Señora Devereaux and clearly his favorite. Wagner, as was his wont, is painfully stiff in a role that in abler hands would have probably would have filled out the tragic qualities of the story. The other three sons from Matt's first marriage are played by Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brien, and Earl Holliman. O'Brien and Holliman aren't much more than set dressing (although Holliman would have been a better choice, a much better choice, to play Joe). Widmark, as the resentful, scheming and devious elder son ably holds his own with Tracy, and their scenes together are high points of a movie that at times dips perilously close to melodrama.
The print is in very good condition and the dvd includes the full-screen and widescreen versions of this movie. Watch the widescreen version. Cinematographer Joe MacDonald painted a beautiful movie and director Edward Dmytryk makes use of the whole screen, favoring long, unbroken scenes uninterrupted by close-up or cuts to reaction shots. Just two actors moving through space and working a scene. When it's Tracy and Spencer squaring off, it's a joy to behold. Strong recommendation, especially for fans of traditional, large scale westerns.

One of my favorite old movies finally in DVD format!
This has been one of my favorite movies for over twenty five years. Scene after scene, there's something to watch for. What I've always loved about this movie is the great, wrenching dialogue. And watching a young Robert Wagner isn't too difficult either.

But now, on DVD, I feel as though I am seeing the movie for the first time (or at least the second time!) The quality of this DVD is impressive. I also own a DVD version from a few years back that came from China, with Chinese subtitles. Comparing the two on my 55" tv is like comparing a digital picture taken with a 2 megapixel camera to a digital picture taken with a 12 megapixel camera. The quality of this Twentieth Century Fox DVD is outstanding for such an old movie. The picture is very clear, the color saturation is deep and rich, the sound is great. I've noticed nuances about the picture, and the background scenery, that I never noticed before.

This edition also features both a widescreen and a full frame version of the movie, on a double sided disc. I don't think there were any special features,aside from the original trailer, but I am happy to have this excellent version of my favorite old film.

Friendly witness to a changing West.
'Broken Lance' has many admirers, and there are many good things about this sober Western. The film has been called an updated 'King Lear' - an all-powerful, tyrannical father unwisely cedes control (land) to his children, all turning against him except for the youngest, who is the most ill-used - but the adaptation is loose and mercifully unliteral: there are no raging storm scenes or impertinently wise Fools, just a grandeur-exuding atmosphere of a great man and the power he created declining. Though filmed in Fox's ugly Technicolour - that muddy colour that would be called 'lurid' if it didn't yearn for the respectable - there is an intelligent compositional eye, filling the landscape with dramatic and symbolic imagery. The prologue is particularly striking - a moody young man, Robert Wagner, released from three years in prison, rejects a financial offer by brothers eager to be rid of him. The journey he takes into the past is one of progressive decay and danger - first he is forcibly brought to the governer, in whose building gleams an imposing portrait of his father. When he visits his father's land, with all its traces of former activity abandoned, he is shot at from a distnace by a man who turns out to be an Indian friend -- the surreal shot of a seemingly self-standing gateway in an empty plain points to the importance of this sequence, as a kind of mythical portal into another realm; when he finally enters his family home, it is a ghost house, a gothic ruin, its dereliction shrouded in shadow. Like the films noirs with which director Huac Dmytryk made his name, the movie begins with an end; a heavy air of fatalism hangs over the subsequent long flashback.

What probably most appeals to fans is the film's (relative) political sophistication - as a backdrop to the usual Oedipal structures is a portrait of the West as it moves from a mythical plane into the modern era. It especially highlights two problems that would blight the nation in the next century - race and advanced capitalism. Spencer Tracy is an Irishman whose second wife is the daughter of a Cherokee chief. He is too important a landowner to ignore, so the locals refer to her as Spanish; the wives of these friends are nevertheless terminally indisposed whenever he gives parties. Of his four sons, the elder three from his first marriage, his favourite is the youngest, Wagner, through whose eyes the film unravels, and on whom centres the crises of race (he is a half-breed who loves a WASP whose father disapproves) and property. The actual catastrophe of the film occurs when a copper company on Tracy's land dumps refuse in his river, poisoning his herd. A fight at their headquarters, in part sparked by a racist comment directed at Wagner, leads to a court case, to offset the risks of which, Tracy is advised to divide the land between his sons. The old pioneers who tamed the land have been superceded, leaving only division and hatred in their wake.

You have got to admire a Western that interweaves its themes intelligently and without sensation (although a ridiculous coda stand-off between two brothers nearly ruins the good work). The restrained use of music and the insistence on stillness (intimating burgeoning violence) adds a maturity to the action. The treatment of the Indians is sensitive for the time, with the relationship beween Tracy and Katy Jurado clearly signalled as a loving and positive thing. The title indicates the film's theme, the (1950s?) failure of authority, family and masculinity.

Still, I found the film unsatisfying. This is partly due to miscasting - Wagner is too wooden to carry the film's moral weight; his role should have gone to the nervy, brilliant Richard Widmark, riveting as his resentful older brother who finally turns against his father's abuse. But it is mostly due to the stodgy direction which often confuses the sombre with the plain slow. Compared to the similarly-themed 'Gunman's Walk', 'Lance' lacks verve or true insight.