This celebrated indictment of lynching remains a brave and unorthodox piece of film-making, based on the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and pushed through the studio system by director William A Wellman as a personal project. It is a western only in setting (the exteriors are largely created on studio sound stages) and its grim tale lacks any heroes - Henry Fonda and Henry "Harry" Morgan are passing cattlemen who observe rather than intervene. The lynch mob mentality is tellingly explored but the letter so beautifully read out by Fonda is far too literate and philosophical to be the last testament of a humble cowboy.

A posse discovers a trio of men they suspect of murder and cow theft and are split between handing them over to the law or lynching them on the spot.