Pursued

Pursued (1947) is a dark, noir-laced western you can watch online on iFILM. Director Raoul Walsh fused the frontier story with a psychological thriller and handed the lead to a young Robert Mitchum.

Set in the 1880s, the film opens on a boy pulled from beneath the bodies of his slaughtered family and raised by neighbors. The memory of that night is gone — all that survives is a recurring nightmare of spurs, muzzle flashes and a pair of boots. He grows up, falls for his adoptive sister Thor (Teresa Wright), but his adoptive brother despises him and a secretive uncle (Dean Jagger) plainly wants him dead. To stay alive, he has to dig up who put a target on him, and why.

It's often called the first true "noir western": the anxious shadows of cinematographer James Wong Howe, a story steeped in fate and buried trauma, and an icy Judith Anderson as the family matriarch. Reach for it if you like classic westerns that run on paranoia rather than shootouts. Stream Pursued (1947) online on iFILM.