William A. Wellman's earnest film from Walter Van Tilburg Clark's book is more somber than moving, though it does have a good central performance by Henry Fonda, here playing a righteous man attempting to stop a small town lynch mob from acting as judge and jury with the lives of three men fingered for a murder. These unfortunate suspects don't get much of a break from the bloodthirsty group on hand--nor do they get one from this screenplay. In order to let star Fonda have the strongest scene, one of the men writes down his feelings in a letter, which Fonda's Gil Carter reads aloud. It would be a triumphant moment for any actor; however, since we never get to know the convicted trio, the immediacy (and perhaps the intensity) of the emotional situation remains closed off from us (the sequence seems designed more toward showing us what a good-hearted guy Carter is rather than underlining the evils of a mob frenzy). Considered heady stuff in 1943, the picture is less compelling today, with the stagy production design giving the picture a (perhaps deliberate) artificial appearance. Jane Darwell is hissable in a supporting role (a complete turn-about from her work in "The Grapes of Wrath"), but Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn are under-used. Wellman's direction is fluid yet unexciting. **1/2 from ****
Review of The Ox-Bow Incident
