Legendary director John Huston is "at the top of his form" (Time) with this "powerful, exciting" (The Film Daily) tale of forbidden love set against America's most rugged and ruthless frontier. Starring Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn and Lillian Gish, and featuring a script by Ben Maddow (The Way West), The Unforgiven is a "tough Texas saga filled with pride, prejudiceand passion" (Video Movie Guide)! Indian by birth, but secretly adopted by whites, Rachel Zachary (Hepburn) soon becomes the target of lawless racism and brutality when her true identity is revealed. The Indians want her back, the local whites want her dead, and her only hope for survival is a man (Lancaster) who must face the most terrifying fight of his lifeto save the woman he loves!
No relation to the 1992 Clint Eastwood film of almost the same name, The Unforgiven is based--like John Ford's The Searchers--on a novel by Alan LeMay. Again the story focuses on a frontier family divided by racism. But instead of the complex, endlessly resonant demonology of the Ford picture, John Huston aims in The Unforgiven for a pat, civil-rights-era allegory of loving solidarity triumphing over societal prejudice--and, to be sure, some noble but dangerous Kiowas. Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn costar as, respectively, the eldest son of a ranching family and the beloved sister who's not his sister at all, but an Indian. However, the film's dark heart belongs to Joseph Wiseman as an avenging ghost who materializes out of the wind, and Lillian Gish as the matriarch who will do whatever she must to protect her clan. With Audie Murphy, Charles Bickford, Albert Salmi, John Saxon, and Doug McClure. --Richard T. Jameson
Theatrical release date
1960-04-06
DVD release date
2003-05-20
27384