Legendary producer David O. Selznick dreamed of another magnum opus like his 1939 production of Gone with the Wind; he also purposed to make Jennifer Jones, his ladylove and eventually second Mrs. Selznick, a megastar. Accordingly, he micromanaged the making of Duel in the Sun (Lust in the Dust to some), an extravagant Technicolor epic about the collision of the old West with the new, wide-open spaces with railroads and barbed wire, and hot-blooded outlaws with civilized folk, often wimpy or unwell. Beginning among giant rocks drenched in a blood-red sunset, with velvet-voiced Orson Welles intoning the leibestod legend of doomed Pearl Chavez and her demon lover, Duel never strays far from lush romanticism, spiced with a dash of S/M. Orphaned Pearl (Jones) comes to live at Spanish Bit Ranch, where frail Laura Belle McCanles (Lillian Gish) tries to make a lady of her, despite her questionable origins and insistent voluptuousness. Sexual license versus law--Pearl's choices--are symbolized by the McCanles brothers: dark, undisciplined Lewt (a lubriciously wicked Gregory Peck) and reasonable, forward-looking, repressed Jesse (Joseph Cotten). The cast is huge (Lionel Barrymore, Walter Huston, Harry Carey, Herbert Marshall, Charles Bickford, Butterfly McQueen) and there are unforgettable set pieces: summoned by a cacophony of bells, the gathering of McCanles cowboys from the four corners of the earth; Pearl in heat, clutching Lewt's leg and being dragged across the floor as he makes his getaway to Mexico; and the lovers' final shootout among those red rocks, as orgiastic a finale as you could ask for. --Kathleen Murphy

From the acclaimed producer of Gone With the Wind comes a torrid tale of passion and romancethat's loaded with "all the sweep and panache of a giant American action movie" (The New Yorker)! "Flawlessly cast" (The Film Daily) with a bevy of film legends, including Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish, this salacious saga is "virtuallyimpossible not to love" (The Hollywood Reporter)! When her father is hanged for murdering his wife, the stunning beauty Pearl (Jones) is taken in by a wealthy Texan, his wife and their two grown sons (Peck and Cotten). But Pearl soon becomes trapped in an emotional tug-of-war between her love for one son and her lust for the other, igniting the most tempestuous triangle the West has ever seen!