King Vidor’s picture has everything in spades: shootouts, land grabs, dramatic vistas, Hollywood stars galore, a rare appearance by the great Lillian Gish, plus the most sexually charged romance ever seen in a western film. It’s as hot as the baked desert where it all ends in I’amour fou, smoking guns and blood. Herein is the fatal romance that shimmers like the coupling in Wuthering Heights: the wild half-breed (the startlingly beautiful Jones) is courted by the nice guy (Cotten) but attracted to the devil cowboy in black (the startlingly beautiful Peck). The bad guy proves irresistible and Freud reigns on the frontier, leading to that crazy, crazy finale which Martin Scorsese has obsessed about since childhood.