William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident is a taut, economical Western on the governing principles of American law and order - something like Fritz Lang's Fury on horseback. After a farmer is murdered, apparently by cattle rustlers, his appalled community rises up one night to rope in those they believe responsible, keen to pre-empt the usual channels of justice. Standing between them and a lynching are drifter Henry Fonda and his sidekick Harry Morgan, who've gone along for the ride, and find themselves caught up in an ad hoc trial around the dying embers of a campfire.Though it's actually derived from a short story (by Walter van Tilberg Clark), it nevertheless feels one of the most theatrical of Westerns: there are obvious shades of 12 Angry Men as Fonda stands around jawing with those who want to string the rustlers up, and you can well imagine it being redone as a studio-bound TV movie years later. What lifts its just above talky inertia is the filigreed characterisation of the mob - extending beyond the usual whip-cracking yahoos to army men, doctors, pastors, even a woman, the implication being we are all susceptible to reactionary hysteria - and Wellman's stark pictorial sense, how his camera identifies and keeps distinct (usually through revealing close-up) the individuals shifting round either side of the line this crime has drawn in the sand. The narrative has a few surprises in store, even if the whole now appears a little overrated, veering between appreciable classicism and the simplicity of an elementary-school primer.
The Ox-Bow Incident is available on DVD through Optimum Home Releasing.
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