Pursued

A superb Western film noir, with Mitchum pursued through near-epic landscapes of the mind by the indistinct demons of childhood trauma, and the narrative boldly structured around flashback insights which gradually provide both a key to his identity and the inexorable impetus for a violent catharsis. Walsh's intelligent handling of Oedipal themes here and in White Heat gives the definitive lie to his self-cultured image as merely an adventuresome Hollywood primitive, while the film proves that the late '40s noir sensibility spread way beyond the bounds of the urban crime thriller.