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Sunday, Jun 8, 2025
4 PM (101 mins)
BAMPFA
Pursued
35mm Archival Print
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Introduction and Post-Screening Discussion
Imogen Sara Smith is a film critic and historian based in New York City and the author of two books, In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City and Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. She writes for Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Cineaste, Reverse Shot, and many other publications, and serves as editor in chief of NOIR CITY magazine.
Teresa Wright, Robert Mitchum, Judith Anderson, Dean Jagger,
This indisputably greatest of noir Westerns sets its dark storyline under cinematographer James Wong Howe’s oppressive clouds and menacing cliffs. Freudian psychodrama and fated family tragedy, Pursued revolves around the brooding performance of Robert Mitchum, haunted by a childhood nightmare of spurs and gunshots. The flashback structure finds Mitchum in turn-of-the-century New Mexico, beset by the return of a one-armed nemesis (Dean Jagger) and by his love-hate relations with his steely foster mother (Judith Anderson) and foster sister (Teresa Wright). The passion in Niven Busch’s script for Pursued recalls the adaptation of his novel Duel in the Sun.
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Niven Busch
Cinematographer
- James Wong Howe
Print Info
- B&W
- 35mm
- 101 mins
Source
- UCLA Film & Television Archive
Permission
- Paramount Pictures
Additional Info
- 35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by The Film Foundation and the AFI/NEA Film Preservation Grants Program.
Event Accessibility
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