The killing of the victim has always been justified as an act of healing, purification, strengthening, wealth creation, or empowerment.
“The Oxbow Incident” is a film about mercy and violence. In the scene where the vigilantes gather to celebrate under the gallows, the noose is always there, but there is no tension, only shadow.
The police force members, now fueled up, charge towards their victims. On hearing about the police force, the town judge gasps and says, “They're not a police force. They're a lawless lynch mob.”
And the lynch mob demands a sacrifice. They are unwittingly drawn into a ritual that is sacred.
Someone guides a horse under the hanging rope. Just before the victim is about to saddle up, the vigilantes announce a two-minute prayer. They remove their hats and bow their heads.
The cinematography of these moments is terrifying and beautiful. Otherworldly. Glorious. Gruesome. Deadly.
“The Oxbow Incident” looks, sounds and feels nothing like an early 1940s Western.
There are long periods of silence, occasionally interrupted by the blaring of a horn on the soundtrack, and sometimes the ugliest noises take over as anxiety rises.
There are a lot of long shots with very little camera movement. There are a lot of shadows. There is a lot of one-sided lighting. If you paused it at the right time and put an elaborate frame around the TV, it would look like high-end art on your wall.
“The Oxbow Incident” is a mid-1990s neo-noir western that missed out on best picture because it was won by a movie called “Casablanca.”
Attention to symbols is literal attention: the film holds your attention until you can no longer look away.
Something seems fishy
The dialogue is natural yet poetic, constantly evolving, and there are odd comedy moments, such as when a man calling himself Major Tetley is dressed in a Civil War uniform, which adds to the humor when Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and his friend Art Croft comment on it.
Gil Carter: “That rebel Tetley strutted around in his uniform and acted like he was a big shot. He never saw the South until the war was over, and only after he married the girl's mother and her parents kicked him out.”
Art Croft: “The way he was dressed, I thought something was fishy.”
Scandals and crises
Among the group of men was a large woman with an Irish accent and a gruff manner named Jenny “Ma” Greer who effortlessly blended in.
Some westerns feature sexy pin-ups firing guns at outlaws, others feature women refined by motherhood. In “Ma” Greer's case, we have a wild woman with masculine traits. Why else would she join a testosterone-fueled lynch mob?
Then there's Rose Maypen, the statue of Venus. When she glances out at the lynch mob, the men all raise their hats in salute. Such is her power. Let's not forget that Venus caused the Trojan War.
Imitative violence
Many Westerns depict violence. Instead, The Oxbow Incident depicts
Cause It's about violence and how it becomes reality. The film doesn't show the initial murder or violent act that set off the cycle of scapegoating, but only the discord that sparked it and the explosive, primal reaction.
This in-between moment is interesting to me. It's a place of uncertainty, a place where people work together, or should work together. It's the moment before the hangman pulls the lever, while everyone is still alive, and the situation is
Might be Suddenly change direction.
When violence is involved, this chaos becomes even more destabilizing: one foolish comment can set off an irreversible crisis.
“The Ox-Bow Incident” finds its home in the conflict between tragedies, so that the brutality is never shown directly, but is felt, and becomes a noose for those who instigate the scapegoating.
“The Oxbow Incident” captures every stage of this process.
All Against One
At the beginning of the film, the vigilante group is not yet organized. One by one, the men gather outside a saloon to discuss the murder of a man they all know.
It escalates slowly — at first, everyone is pragmatic except for one — then they start threatening each other as a defense — but nothing makes a lynch mob stronger than each person's unspoken fear of becoming a victim.
Then the situation changes and a violent contagion spreads to all but one of them, and suddenly they all develop a desire to kill.
This collective fanatical spirit transforms them into an organism, ready to sacrifice the criminal. In these situations, sacrifice is positioned as the realization of justice, with equal emphasis on mercy.
The police force members, now fueled up, charge towards their victims. On hearing about the police force, the town judge gasps and says, “They're not a police force. They're a lawless lynch mob.”
In response, the deputy sheriff said he would appoint the men as deputy sheriffs.
The judge hesitated. “That would be illegal. It would not be allowed.”
But the violent contagion spreads throughout the town and the lynch mob grows.
With a little persuasion from the judge and the bartender, the lynch mob broke up, except for one of the men, who was able to get the lynch mob back together.
To make matters worse, the deputy sheriffs appointed rioters as deputy sheriffs, allowing the rioters to use their positions as sheriffs to make exceptions to the law.
The legal nature of this dilemma is no coincidence. At multiple times the film offers commentary on the meaning and value of law. The film's tension arises from its brutal dismissal of law. The fact that self-acquired sovereignty doesn't work, scapegoating doesn't work, and semantics and force have not changed the nature of the law is evidence of the God-given nature of rights and freedoms.
But stopping the frenzy is hard because it usually reverts to majority rule, and lynch mobs are filled with people eager to enforce punishment and eager to cede responsibility for their actions to the mob leaders.
Sacrifice
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus proposes killing Caesar “for the good of Rome.” He incites and persuades his co-conspirators by calling them “tender friends,” in a twist of phrase.
He tells them, “Men, let us be victims, not slaughterers. We will not kill Caesar. We 'stand against the spirit of Caesar / And there is no blood in the spirit of man,' that is to say, we will kill him boldly, but not in rage.”
Unfortunately, he tells them that they need to dismantle Caesar.
literallythat's not the point. And the most disturbing line in his speech is, “Let us carve him up as a plate fit for God, / Instead of chopping him up as a corpse fit for the hounds.”
This distinction is important. There are two definitions of sacrificial murder. First, the victim is sanctified by his death, becoming holy and acceptable to God. Second, the victim is far from being holy, and is not even considered human.
Neither is right. Both are murder. Scapegoating is never about hoping that an angry crowd will calm down and realize this. Anyone who tries to appeal to rationality and mercy is ostracized and becomes a candidate for sacrifice.
Between these extremes we find humanity, which leads us to communities where people choose law over violence. The challenge is to maintain a foothold in the middle.
“The Oxbow Incident” captures this conflict that each member of the lynch mob experiences. It's a moral stress test. Everything is moving so fast that no one can think clearly. It becomes a question of instinct, and hoping that your instincts don't lead to tragedy, that you're actually a good person.
Nobody wants to see their reflection in a tree with a noose hanging from it.
