Track of the Cat: William A. Wellman

[Spoilers Ahead]

William A. Wellman's Track of the Cat is an audacious Western that seems to draw from such sources as Herman Melville's Moby Dick and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. From Faulkner we have the hopelessly dysfunctional Bridges family, ranch owners in northern California in the 1880s who are led by a domineering mother with a tenuous grip on reality and an alcoholic father content to drink himself (and by extension his family) to death. Instead of a great White Whale, we have a great Black Panther, a savage beast who slaughters the family's cattle and forces their three sons into the snowy wastelands in pursuit. But the Panther (who is never shown onscreen) proves to be a formidable foe, picking off brother after brother in a kind of grotesque reflection of the in-fighting and squabbles consuming the Bridges' household. Robert Mitchum is brilliant as middle son Curt, a cruel man who openly lusts after his younger brother's fiance and takes pleasure in emasculating him in front of her. During production, Wellman collaborated with cinematographer William H. Clothier to utilize a color palette so subdued that almost the entire film seems like it was shot in black-in-white. Curt's vibrantly red coat is one of the only splashes of color in the film. Only two other things pop with such clear color: fire and blood.  My biggest problem is that Wellman's story of obsession (both violent and sexual) and madness (is there even a "black panther" to begin with) ends too neatly and sweetly. The surviving brother reunites with his belle, the panther is slain (again, off-screen), and the family line seems destined for revitalization. The emotional scope of the film is nothing short of Biblical and Wellman's ending capitulates to Hollywood conventions so violently that it could cause whiplash.

7/10