Today’s Wednesday Western comes to you courtesy of a namedrop by the big man himself, Clint Eastwood. If Eastwood casually says The Ox-Bow Incident is a really good Western, you have to drop what you’re doing and watch it. (Considering it’s only one hour long, it’s pretty easy to find some time to do it!)
I can see why Eastwood likes Ox-Bow. There are shades of Hang ‘Em High and Unforgiven in it. It’s the kind of film that reminds me why I was so eager to explore this genre. We all tend to classify Westerns as rousing shoot-em-ups and masculine swagger, but there are a lot of dark, bitter stories hidden among the John Ford panoramas. Even this film is often billed as a Henry Fonda movie about cattle rustlers, giving the impression that it’ll be a classic horse opera. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is a haunting morality play that takes the glamor out of posses and deputies, emphasizes the danger of a mob, and makes you think twice about rooting for Wild West justice. While Eastwood has been credited as “killing” the Western with Unforgiven, I think The Ox-Bow Incident should have done it back in 1943.
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