A speck in the cosmos

in western
1

By

Tag Gallagher

 

Published on/by

BFI

 

Accompanying text

Often described as the first psychoanalytic western, Raoul Walsh’s 1947 Pursued plays out the traumas of Robert Mitchum’s homecoming Civil War vet as an existential maelstrom of violence, isolation and psychopathy. In this video essay Tag Gallagher offers a psychological reading of one of Hollywood’s weirdest westerns.