Winchester '73 (1950) - Westerns Collection 2011 [DVD]

"Winchester 73"(50) is the first western in director Anthony Mann's fine series of westerns all made in the fifties, and all starring the affable James Stewart. This was followed by "Where the River Bends"(52),"The Naked Spur"(53),"The Far Country"(54) and finally "The Man from Laramie"(55). Unfortunately the pair fell out during the making of "Night Passage"(58) which ended this fruitful collaboration. The only other bodies of western films that bear comparison are John Ford's cavalry trilogy and Budd Boetticher's magisterial series with Randolph Scott. All these films were made in that halcyon western period of the fifties.

The story involves Stewart attempting to track down the murderer of his father. The story starts off with a rifle shooting competition in Dodge city, where Marshall Wyatt Earp played by a portly Will Geer rules the roost. Stewart wins the prize which is a one in a thousand Winchester 73 repeating rifle. Shortly after winning his prize it is stolen from him by bank robber Stephen McNally. The gun then passes through a rogues gallery of owners for whom it brings rather bad luck. This includes a gun runner, an Indian chief and a rather psychotic gunman. Will Stewart get his prized possession back? Will he finally catch up with his father's murderer? We head to a blazing finale with a final twist to the story.

The film was made in very stark black and white which does not detract from the film. It was the only film in the series to be made in this format. In this film Stewart plays a more traditional western hero. In the later films Mann develops Stewart's roles into the more vulnerable and angst ridden hero we become more familiar with. The films plot device where we follow the guns bloody history through a series of unfortunate owners bears remarkable similarities to Francois Girard's "The Red Violin"(98), where the violin replaces the Winchester as the object that brings much bad luck to its many owners. Winchester 73 has an unusually fine cast. That charismatic actor Dan Duryea plays the psychotic gunman with casual aplomb. He was to reprise this role a number of times, most memorably perhaps in "Night Passage". Rock Hudson plays a young Indian chief. He later played an Indian in "Taza son of Cochise". I have to agree with the previous reviewer who thought his role was the weakest one! Tony Curtis also appears very briefly in one of his earlier roles as a cavalryman. Shelley Winters is the guns rival for Stewart's affections. This was in the days before she ate too many doughnuts!

Whilst this is a very fine film indeed, it is perhaps one of the weaker films in the series. Stewart's character matures into a more complex hero in the later films. In "The Naked Spur" he teeters on the verge of a mental breakdown and in "The Man from Laramie" he becomes the bitter vengeance seeking nemesis of Arthur Kennedy. These roles demanded that little bit more of Stewart's considerable acting abilities. Stephen McNally as the chief villain is perhaps a little lightweight compared to the likes of Kennedy and Robert Ryan who also appeared later. Perhaps Duryea would have been better in this role? But overall these are minor flaws and this is a fine start to a very fine series of westerns. Highly recommended. Four and a half stars really.

Winchester `73 was the film that moved director Anthony Mann from the b-movies to the big league, rescuing James Stewart's floundering post-war career in the process by casting him as a conflicted hero (although since he inherited the project from Fritz Lang, maybe Lang deserves the credit for that). Both men would go to much darker places - Mann already had with the remarkably bleak Devil's Doorway, which remained shelved by MGM until the success of Broken Arrow convinced them to release it - but a movie about a man hunting down his own brother as the rifle of the title is handed from person to person along the trail before it ends up in one of the director's beloved mountainside shootouts is still stronger meat than you'd expect from the studio system. Great dialog, an impressive supporting cast - Dan Duryea, Will Geer, Millard Mitchell, Stephen McNally, Shelley Winters, Charles Drake, Tim McIntire, Jay C. Flippen, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson among them - and Mann's outstanding visual sense raise the bar with this one.

Sadly, the print used for the DVD could stand some restoration, although there is an interesting audio interview with Stewart on the disc.

This was, as many have mentioned here, the first pairing of director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart in what would become their `psychological Western' sequence. This first collaboration is a fine film, but better was to come.

Stewart had built up an on screen persona of affability, likeableness and general do gooding. It must have been a bit of a surprise to the film goers of the time to see him here, playing much the same character but with the added dimension of being hell bent on a mission of vengeance. Lin McAdam is a generally nice guy, but he has a mission to complete, he must find and kill the man who shot his father. He is almost blind to all else. It's a step away from Stewart's usual character, and even bigger steps into the dark side of the human soul would follow in later films.

As well as the story of McAdam's mission of vengeance this film also follows a gun, the Wnchester 73 of the title. One in a thousand, this is a special gun and everyone covets it. By rights it belongs to McAdam after he won it in a shooting contest, but it gets stolen and passes through many hands until it is used against him in the final shootout. This allows the director to give us a series of vignettes built around the people that have the gun, giving us some fascinating characterisations.

There is a generally fine supporting cast to lift this another notch (the weak link is Rock Hudson's Apache warrior). Millard Mitchell puts in another great turn as the solid and dependable companion of McAdam (why he never became a leading man I'll never know, he provided many memorable supporting performances), Dan Duryea is a charming unhinged wildman and Shelley Winters is perfect as the lady of the piece. The scene where she explains she knows what the last bullet is for is very memorable.

A great study of human nature, a thrilling story as the heroes deal with various Indian attacks and gunslingers, topped with an unexpected twist right at the end and one of the bust shoot-outs ever filmed, this is an out and out classic. But because better films followed it I am only going to give 4 stars.