Duel In The Sun

The film opens with 20 minutes of Dimitri Tiomkin's music against a still picture of a weird-looking rock formation in the desert under a blazing sun. This is followed by a voice announcing, "Ladies and gentlemen, the overture to Duel In The Sun." More gushing strings.

As an intro to a movie, this is a killer. Only a Tiomkin fanatic would last the course.

The DVD case is flagged with an intriguing quote from Martin Scorsese: "From the opening titles I was mesmerised." Flicking to Comment From Martin Scorsese, which turns out to be a few paragraphs from a book about his cinematic reminiscences, you discover that he saw the movie at the age of four.

The film had been dubbed Lust In The Dust by local wits and the Church had condemned it. Scorsese reckoned that the only reason he was there was because his mother wanted to see the dirty bits. "The hallucinatory quality of the imagery has never weakened for me over the years," he wrote. I felt the same about Bambi.

The rest of the extras are taken up with diplomatic quotes from Peck about Selznick ("His all encompassing enthusiasm galvanised everybody. That energy, that sense of playfulness, of rascality!") and well researched biog details of everyone concerned.