Track of the Cat

William Wellman's Track of the Cat has a reputation as an interesting offbeat Western -- it's a favorite of Martin Scorsese -- but it is never more than merely interesting. Wellman tries to wed a symbolic outdoor adventure to a claustrophobic dysfunctional family drama and the two equally grim halves never quite mesh. The 1954 film is based on a novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, whose best-known book, "The Ox-Bow Incident," was filmed by Wellman in 1943. While the earlier work is concerned with societal injustices, Track of the Cat looks at injustices within a family.

Brothers Curt (Robert Mitchum), Art (William Hopper), and Harold (Tab Hunter) Bridges live on an isolated mountain ranch with their sister, Grace (Teresa Wright), and parents, Ma (Beulah Bondi) and Pa (Philip Tonge). Ma and Pa probably offer the most negative portrait of parents in a Hollywood film to this point. She is an unbending, self-righteous scold, and he a weak, loud-mouthed drunk. The bitter, bullying Curt takes after Ma. He makes matters worse, lusting after Harold's intended, Gwen Williams (Diana Lynn).

The biggest immediate problems are that snow is coming down and a cougar is attacking the ranch's cattle. Even before Curt and Art venture out to track the animal everyone calls a "painter" (as in panther), the beast has been elevated to mythical status. Years earlier, a cougar killed the wife and child of the ancient hired hand, Joe Sam (Carl Switzer; yes, beneath all that makeup lurks Alfalfa of Our Gang/Little Rascals fame). The Indian ascribes mystical powers to cougars and has the family in a tizzy over a "black painter," serving the same function as the white whale in Moby Dick. Wellman intensifies the myth by never showing the cougar.

While the outdoor scenes were shot in Mt. Rainier National Park, a tight budget forced the director to film the ranch scenes on a Warner Brothers set. This artificiality, which also weakens the set-bound The Ox-Bow Incident, contrasts sharply with the cougar quest, but it does make the house of hate even more claustrophobic. Two thirds of Track of the Cat consists of the bitter backbiting of the family members with Pa's harangues growing especially tiresome (Tonge's overacting clashes with the subtlety of the other performances). It is all very gloomy, like a bad imitation of Eugene O'Neill.

There are two reasons for seeing Track of the Cat, however. Wellman fulfilled a long ambition of making a color film that looked like black-and-white. Cinematographer William H. Clothier -- who began as a cameraman on Wellman's silent classic Wings -- bleaches out most of the color from the exterior shots, making the trees loom like jagged black rocks and, except for Curt's bright red jacket, the clothing is black, white, and gray. The color scheme is fitting for the film's theme of existential despair and, except for a little dirt here and there, Paramount offers a beautiful transfer. While the sound quality is less impressive -- turn up the volume for the dialogue, turn it down for Roy Webb's thundering score -- the cougar's cry sounds bloodcurdling in Surround Sound.

The other virtue is the always reliable Mitchum, warming up for his greatest performance (the following year) in The Night of the Hunter by making Curt a sociopath who slowly falls apart when things don't go his way. Unfortunately, in their commentary, Wellman biographer Frank Thompson, veteran actor William Wellman Jr., and Hunter have nothing to say about Mitchum during his best scenes. The three chat amiably -- and occasionally interestingly -- but discuss Wellman's career as a whole more than this specific film. Thompson earns points by analyzing the unusual staging of a funeral from the perspective of a coffin, comparing the scene to the work of Carl Theodor Dryer.

The other extras include "Remembering William Wellman," which includes clips from a Mitchum interview that seems to be from the `90s, a dull look at Clark's presentation of the West, a naturalist's perspective on cougars and, best of all, Trina Mitchum on Black Diamond, the horse ridden by her father in the film. The author of "Hollywood Hoofbeats," she makes expert observations about the use of horses in films. -- Michael Adams