Raoul Walsh's Along the Great Divide 1951

Although the script, particularly at the denouement, lacks the cutting edge of, say, Pursued (1947) the spectacular desert locations and the strong performances, from Mayo and Douglas especially, give a resonance to the mood of romantic tragedy that Walsh creates.
--Phil Hardy, The Western (William Morrow and Company, 1983)

While Walsh gives power to the psychological battles at hand -- including the complex issue of justice and living up to the law -- the battles of man against nature are the ones Walsh favors in almost every frame.
--Marilyn Ann Moss, Raoul Walsh:  The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director (University Press of Kentucky, 2011)

Kirk Douglas plays in his first Western with characteristic intensity, helped immensely by Virginia Mayo's feistiness and an impressive cast of supporting cowboys.  Douglas has to bring in Mayo's father (Walter Brennan) across the desert after rescuing him from a lynching, while being pursued by the landowner whose son was allegedly killed by Brennan.  Like most of Walsh's films the story works on multiple levels and themes, including the clash of generations, man's relationship with nature and the tension between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. It is filmed in beautiful black-and-white by cinematographer Sid Hickcox, as he and Walsh capture the textures of the rocks, the blowing and shifting of the sand and the heat of the sun in the desert in August.