Some of the great films throughout history explore the complicated moral aftereffects of the collective mob mentality. There, is, of course,Fritz Lang’s masterworkM, wherePeter Lorre’s murderer of children faces a frothing-mad mob by reciting what we can now identify as one of the most iconic film monologues of all time. There is alsoSpike Lee’s timelessDo The Right Thing, where a racially divided borough erupts into cacophony, pitting neighbors and small business owners against one another when a young Black man and neighborhood fixture named Radio Raheem is murdered by the NYPD. EvenJames Whale’s 1931 Pre-CodeFrankensteinexplores the pitfalls of how a mob thinks, acts, and almost always chooses violence, particularly in its legendary final scenes.William A. Wellman’s solemn and immaculate1943 WesternThe Ox-Bow Incidentis one of the great American films about this particular subject.
Among other qualities, Wellman’sThe Ox-Bow Incidentis as lean and efficient a Western as was ever produced in the golden age of Hollywood.Yet, the film’s insights into the innate human compulsion toward tribalistic behavior are still surprisingly cut deep today.In spite of what many scholars now rightfully refer to as outdated cultural depiction — an affliction that simply cannot be ignored in the American Western, with its history of racist and regressive depictions of non-white characters—The Ox-Bow Incidentis still a great deal less dated than something like, say,John Ford’sThe Searchers, with its inexcusable treatment of indigenous characters and its curious resistance toward examining the more problematic psychological proclivities ofJohn Wayne’s disturbed Confederate, Ethan Edwards.
The Ox-Bow Incident
When a posse captures three men suspected of killing a local farmer, they become strongly divided over whether or not to lynch the men.
How Does ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ Compare to William A. Wellman’s Other Films?
For context, William A. Wellman is one of the more culturally significant directors of the Old Hollywood era. His1927 landmarkWings, for example, set more than a few new/unprecedented benchmarks. For one, the film’s $2 million budget made it the most expensive cinematic undertaking of its time. The taxing physical production set a new standard for aviation photography in flyboy pictures.Wingseven features cinema’s first-ever same-sex on-screen kiss, though it’s admittedly fairly chaste compared to what we might expect today. To top it all off,Wingswas the first film in history to win Best Picture at the very first Academy Awardsceremony in 1929.
ThoughWingsis indisputably one of Wellman’s more historically relevant works, the man directed some other, rather terrific pictures, including theJames Cagney-starring Pre-Code gangster talkieThe Public Enemy(which givesRaoul Walsh’sWhite Heata run for its money), and the first-ever version ofA Star Is Born, starringJanet GaynorandFrederic Marchand produced by Old Hollywood titanDavid O. Selznick.Even with all those great films under his belt,The Ox-Bow Incidentstands out in Wellman’s filmography — both for how uncompromisingly dark it is, and how unflinchingly modern it feels. Update the action from 1885 Nevada to the present-day and substitute horses for police squad cars, and you’ve got a terrifyingly relevant cautionary parable about the myriad ways in which human beings can abuse power and rush to judgment.
What Is ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ About?
The Ox-Bow Incidentbegins, as so manygreat Western moviesdo, with a pair of strangers arriving in a new town and paying a visit to the local saloon. One of the men, Gil Carter, is played byscreen legendHenry Fonda, who, in films likeYoung Mr. Lincolnand12 Angry Men(another milestone of mob justice cinema), was often cast as a voice of sensibility and reason. The mood in the saloon is tense, jumpy, and thick with a sense of paranoia. The inhabitants of the town appear to be visibly on edge. No small part of this, we learn, is because a rancher and beloved member of the local community has recently been murdered. Gil and his friend, naturally, look like suspects, at least at the outset. After all, they’re strangers in this inhospitable, tight-knit new environment, where everyone not only seems to know everyone else, but everyone appears to profess a nativist’s loyalty to avenging their kinfolk should they die at the hand of some wretched cattle rustlers.
The Ox-Bow Incidentkicks off in proper when the townspeople form a vigilante posse and proclaim that they are going to track down the vile scoundrels that murdered their friend before taking his life in turn. An eye for an eye, as the saying goes. This notion never seems to sit 100% right with the taciturn, soft-spoken Gil, but one of the more terrifyingly convincing narrative components ofThe Ox-Bow Incidentrelates to how quickly the mob mentality can take over a group of otherwise rational individuals, and how anyone who dares to deviate from the collective thrust towards death and savage retribution is therefore seen as a threat to the group’s goals.
Once the mob heads out in pursuit of the killer, Wellman’s film becomes a great deal more tense. With a painterly attention to framing and composition,The Ox-Bow Incidentslowly, methodically continues to tighten the noose around the viewer’s neck, until we find ourselves gasping for breath amid a complete moral cesspool. One of the movie’s most stark and unsettling passages occurs when three weary travelers (that our central posse suspects of the initial killing) are awoken at gunpoint with a murderous ultimatum. Take yourself out of the period trappings of this sequence, and it is as ugly and difficult to watch as any home-invasion set piece. Characters who we have been repeatedly told are villainous and hateful are revealed to be, in what we figure might be their last moments on earth, desperately, even pathetically human. They attempt to reason with their attackers, they defend themselves, and they make pleas for their lives — all in vain, though Wellman’s film does end on a note that is curiously upbeat, given how fatalistic this thing is on the whole.
What Makes ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’ a Classic Western Movie?
LikeHoward Hawks’Red River,anotherclassic Westernthat feels bracingly contemporary today, is ultimately a study of man’s ugliest impulses. There are no easily identifiable good guys and bad guys here, no daring escape missions where the heroes vanquish their foes and get the girl before the credits roll. There is only the cruel inevitability of man’s demise and the crushing feeling of inescapable culpability. It is a film that understands there is not necessarily any catharsis in reprisal. On the contrary, it only begets more bloodshed, more trauma, and more loss.
“Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong.” So goes a quote that Henry Fonda’s character relays in the film.Fonda, throughout his career, was often called upon to communicate such sentiments. It’s a brief, but telling element of a beautifully composed monologue that expands upon the movie’s central thesis: that any man, no matter how just and upright he fancies himself to be, has the right to take the law into his own hands. No man, in other words, has the right to play God.William A. Wellman’sThe Ox-Bow Incidentremains a classic of its time and one of the definitive American movies about the dangers of mob justice.
The Ox-Bow Incidentis available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.
