River of No Return

California, 1875, at the height of the Gold Rush. A taciturn widower, former convict, and father to a ten-year-old boy dreams of building a new family home somewhere in the desolate frontier. Along the way, he rescues a saloon singer from ruin and draws her, almost against her will, into a perilous journey across the wilderness. To realize their love, the hardened man and fiercely independent woman must each surrender more than they ever imagined. Otto Preminger, one of the most compelling filmmakers of 1940s and ’50s Hollywood, brings to the western not only the power of his stars and the genre’s mythic conventions, but also the sweeping grandeur of the CinemaScope frame.