THE FURIES starring Barbara Stanwyck - 16mm Screenings at the Music Box!

Name: THE FURIES starring Barbara Stanwyck - 16mm Screenings at the Music Box!
Start: 2026-02-21T11:30:00-06:00
End: 2026-02-21T13:30:00-06:00
Location: Music Box Theatre

Schedule

Sat Feb 21 2026 at 11:30 am to 01:30 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Music Box Theatre | Chicago, IL

*2 Shows Only - Saturday February 21st & Sunday February 22nd at 11:30am*
Presented In 16mm - Part of WORKING GIRL: THE FILMS OF BARBARA STANWYCK - Visit our website for Full Schedule: https://musicboxtheatre.com/series-and-festivals/working-girl-the-films-of-barbara-stanwyck
Larger-than-life cattle baron T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston, in his final role) is a restless egotist who speaks every word as though the world is listening, and who only stops moving when it’s time to get a “back rub” from his ambitious daughter Vance (Barbara Stanwyck). Stanwyck, looking like she was born on a horse, is in spitfire mode here, though not without healthy doses of wounded pride and bitter scheming. Her passion and bluster meet their match in a kinetic performance from Huston as the megalomaniacal rancher (Walter’s son John was clearly paying attention—witness his mannerisms as a similarly narcissistic mogul in 1974’s Chinatown).
Among the earliest in Anthony Mann’s celebrated run of psychological noir-Westerns, The Furies is that rare treat: a female-led horse opera. The title refers not to the mythological Roman goddesses of vengeance but to the ranch itself, one of the largest in the New Mexico territory; control of “The Furies” is up for grabs, but ol’ T. C. has some pretty firm ideas about how things should be run. Mann’s surehanded, propulsive direction was a good match for bringing the sprawling Niven Busch novel to the screen; the “Succession”-ish setup is milked for maximum midcentury Freudian psychodrama, with a memorably twisted father-daughter relationship and a host of other reasons why it’s not a great idea to have kids (or parents).