by Judy Geater
Director William Wellman made two Westerns adapted from novels by
Walter Van Tilburg Clark. The first and best-known, of course, was
‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ (1943), a devastatingly bleak drama crammed into
just 75 powerful minutes. Bleak is also the word to describe the
second film where this writer and director joined forces, ‘Track of
the Cat’.
However, rather than being short, this is a film which seems to go on
and on, like the prints of the cat which Robert Mitchum follows
through the snow. It comes as a surprise to realise that this Western
actually only 102 minutes long, because the repetitive, bitter
conversations and recriminations make it feel more drawn out. This is
a dark, psychologically turbulent movie, one of the many 1950s films
to open up a dysfunctional family and show the rivalries and hatreds
simmering under the surface.
The book and film have both been compared with ‘Moby Dick’ because of
the theme of obsession – though in this film the creature which must
be caught and killed is a black panther, which killed some of the
family’s stock, rather than a whale. If it really is a panther, that
is. Nobody sees it close up and lives to tell the tale. The decision
never to show the cat makes it all the more frightening, and hints
that it is a symbol, though, again as with the whale in ‘Moby Dick’,
that symbol’s significance constantly shifts. (more…)