Silent Tongue

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Silent Tongue is a Western written and directed by Sam Shepard. It was filmed in 1991, but not released until 1994. It was filmed near Roswell, New Mexico and features Richard Harris, Shelia Tousey, Alan Bates, Dermot Mulroney and River Phoenix.

The film is about a young man named Talbot Roe (Phoenix), who's gone insane over the death of his wife. Talbot's father, Presscott Roe (Harris) feels his son's pain and wants to find him a new wife. He goes back to the place where he bought Talbot's first wife, from Earmon McCree (Bates). He finds the dead wife's sister (Tousey), who is a champion horse rider and Mr. McCree's daughter, which makes her only half-Indian. Roe asks McCree if he could have his last daughter for his son, but McCree refuses. Then, Roe kidnaps her and tries to get her to help him, and she takes the deal for gold and four horses. But Talbot isn't taking any chances for her-- he's too afraid that she'll try to take his wife's corpse from him. And for the last few nights, he sees the ghost of his dead wife, who wants him to destroy her corpse, but he won't.

This film was the last film to be released featuring a performance by River Phoenix, who died in 1993 from drug overdose. (Note: The film's release was delayed, and Phoenix continued to work on The Thing Called Love - the film he had just completed when he died - which was released before Silent Tongue).

Silent Tongue is filmed in the style of an epic western and concentrates on the theme of grief and learning how to let go.