Wednesday | April 17, 2002 9:00 pm

Rancho Notorious

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer.
US, 1952, 35mm, color, 89 min.

Lang’s last and most personal Western is a parable of paranoia and futility played out under Technicolor skies. Anti-hero Vern (Kennedy) is a man with a single goal: to hunt down the bandit who raped and killed his fiancée. His obsession turns everyone he meets into either suspect or informant, including attractive innkeeper Altar (Dietrich), around whom Vern circles in a drama of desire and mistrust. Most of the exteriors for Rancho Notorious were shot in the studio against garish and unabashedly artificial backdrops. Lang stylized the narrative further with a Brechtian ballad whose insistent refrain is “Hate, murder, and revenge.”