The Ox-Bow Incident
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| The Ox-Bow Incident | |
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 original movie poster |
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| Directed by | William A. Wellman |
| Produced by | Lamar Trotti |
| Written by | Walter Van Tilburg Clark (novel) Lamar Trotti |
| Starring | Henry Fonda Dana Andrews |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | May 21, 1943 (USA) |
| Running time | 75 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Ox-Bow Incident is a 1940 western novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, in which two drifters are drawn into a posse formed to find the murderer of a local man.
The novel was adapted as a movie in 1943 directed by William A. Wellman and starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn, William Eythe, Harry Morgan and Jane Darwell. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Contents |
[edit] Story
In the year of 1885, “The Ox-Bow Incident” starts off with two riders, Art Croft and Gil Carter, who ride into the town of Bridger’s Wells one day. They go into Canby’s Saloon, expecting to find a lively, gay place with laughing and talking and such. However, they find that the atmosphere is quite subdued. The reason for this is because of the recent incidents of rustling, which is the stealing of livestock, that has happened in the town, and everyone is hoping to catch the thieves.
Immediately, Art and Gil are suspected of being rustlers simply because they were strangers. However, Canby, the owner of Canby’s Saloon, is friends with Art and Gil and therefore does not worry about them. The townspeople are still wary of them, and so they invite Art and Gil to a game of poker, which soon gets violent, due to Gil’s drunkenness.
In the midst of the ruckus, someone comes in and says that a man named Kinkaid has been murdered. The townspeople immediately plot to pursue the murderers, who they think to be the cattle rustlers, and form a posse to go after them. Art and Gil, wanting to be accepted, join the posse as well, although they feel that what they may end up doing will not be the right thing to do.
Among the people in the posse is a man named Major Tetley and his son, Gerald Tetley. The former informs everybody that three men with Drew’s cattle have just entered Bridger’s Pass, and because of this, they shouldn’t be too difficult to catch. However, the entire posse is warned that they must bring the rustlers back alive. If they try to do anything that is beyond their authority, they would be arrested.
In their journey, the posse encounters a stagecoach that is threatening to hit everyone in the darkness. They try to stop it, and it does, but the stagecoach guards thinks that it’s a stickup, and so he shoots at the nearest man he sees, but misses and accidentally hits Art, who is wounded in the left shoulder. Swanson and his wife, Rose Mapen, step out of the stagecoach and tell the posse that they saw three men in the nearby Ox-Bow Valley, and the posse goes there.
In the valley, the posse find the twice aforementioned three men, who are sleeping on the ground with was presumed to be the stolen cattle nearby. The posse interrogates the three men, who are Martin, an old, raving man named Hardwick, and a Mexican named Juan Morez who supposedly can’t speak English. Martin claims that he purchased the cow from Drew, the cattle rancher of Bridger’s Wells, but Drew could not give him a bill of sale so readily but said that it would be fine. Nobody believes him. It is therefore decided that the three men are guilty, so therefore, they will hang them at sunrise, despite the repeated warnings from townspeople back at Bridger’s Wells.
In the middle of the night, Martin, as his last wish, writes a private letter to his wife and asks Davies to deliver it, because Davies is the only member in the posse that he actually trusts. However, Davies reads the letter, and is quite moved by the beauty of it, and gives it to everyone else to read, because he thinks that because of what was written in the letter, Martin was innocent and that he does not deserve to die. However, Martin finds out and becomes angry.
In the argument between Martin and Davies, the Mexican, Juan Morez, tries to escape, and someone shoots him in the leg. Juan is then revealed to be able to speak “American,” and ten other languages. Somebody notices that Juan has Kinkaid’s gun, which only makes the decision to lynch the men even more irrefutable. Because of this attempted escape, Major Tetley wants the men to be lynched immediately, because he does not want any more of the rustlers to escape. Two men named Farnley and Gabe, along with Gerald Tetley, are chosen to cut the horses to hang the men. Farnley and Gabe do so, and old man Hardwick and Juan Morez are killed, but Gerald simply cannot do it, so his horse simply walks out from under Martin, leaving him dying a painful, suffocating death. He is, however, shot to end his misery.
After the entire ordeal is done, the posse heads back towards Bridger’s Wells. On the way there, they meet Drew, Judge Tyler, and Sheriff Risley. They also meet, much to their utter shock, surprise, bewilderment, etc., Lawrence Kinkaid, who was not killed after all. Sheriff Risley takes ten men with him to form a new posse, who will go after the real murderers of Kinkaid.
Davies is an absolute wreck, and he confesses to Art that he feels he is responsible for the deaths of three innocent men. Because of all the shame and guilt that plagues him, Davies feels he is unable to face Martin’s widow, so he asks Drew to deliver the letter to her, as well as a ring that Martin bade Davies to deliver as well.
To make things even worse, the young Gerald Tetley hangs himself in his barn. He said that if a lynching took place, he would commit suicide. Upon hearing of his son’s death, Major Tetley also commits suicide by throwing himself upon his own sword. Art and Gil, who originally planned to settle in Bridger’s Wells, and are so upset by all the recent happenings, decide to move on.
[edit] Themes
In the book and the film, a posse is formed and lynches three cattle rustlers against the protests of the local judge; the rustlers are then found to have been innocent. The novel and the movie thus criticize mob rule in favour of the proper workings of justice, even if it is slow-moving. As such, it is partly intended as a wartime defense of American values versus the Nazi Germany. However, by associating Nazi mob rule with the values of the American Old West, it implies that Americans have the potential to succumb to mob rule too. Although this moral appealed to the critics, the film did poorly at the box office in part because moviegoers were dismayed by the downbeat ending and all it implied. Producer Darryl Zanuck reportedly wanted his name on the film but knew it would fail at the box office, so he made it on a very small budget.
[edit] Trivia
- Woody Allen, in his stand-up comedy routines, referred to his marriage as "The Ox-Bow Incident."
