Winchester '73

Winchester '73 (1950) is Anthony Mann's first Western, and his first collaboration with James Stewart, with whom he would make a total of eight films. Far from the character-driven, pseudo-Shakespearean ambition of The Furies and The Man From Laramie, Winchester '73 is a fairly straightforward action spectacular, with an ingenious MacGuffin, intricate plotting and a lot of rousing shootouts.

Gunslinger Lin McAdam (James Stewart) wins a prized Winchester '73 rifle in a shooting contest in Dodge City, Kansas. Before he can enjoy his prize, he's jumped by Dutch Henry (Stephen McNally) and his gang of thugs, who make off with the weapon. The film follows the adventures of the gun, which ends up in the hands of a shady gunrunner (John McIntire), a bloodthirsty Indian chief (Rock Hudson), a wimpy homesteader (Charles Drake) and his pretty wife (Shelley Winters), psychotic outlaw Waco Dean (Dan Duryea), and back to Dutch Henry, leading to the final showdown between Lin and Dutch, who have an old score to settle.

Despite some slower passages early on (the shooting contest in Dodge seems to take forever), Winchester '73 is, for most of its length, a briskly-paced, perfectly-designed crowd pleaser. There are tough heroes, hateful bad guys, shootouts, cool guns, Indians, romance, Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) - everything a non-discerning film goer expects from a Western. The film is largely episodic in nature, with the titular weapon - a harbinger of Manifest Destiny, civilizing the frontier through violence - connecting vignettes of frontier life and mayhem. Characters are mostly sketched in: besides the brotherly competition between Lin and Dutch, a pale precursor of Mann's future, marginal characters - the psychotic Waco, the amusingly-shifty gun-runner - register the strongest.

Mann ties these vignettes together wonderfully, maintaining a mostly brisk pace throughout. He already shows a fine handle on the Western landscape, and deftly stages most of the film's set-pieces - particularly the final showdown, with bullets ricochetting off boulders. William H. Daniels' fine cinematography and a biting script by Robert L. Richards and Borden Chase help things along.

James Stewart had already hardened his pre-WWII "aw shucks" persona with It's a Wonderful Life and Rope, but his work with Mann provided the most radical departure. Lin is a basically good guy, albeit with a shady past and a tough side, but he presages Stewart's neurotic, violent characters in The Naked Spur and The Man From Laramie: Jefferson Smith would never beat a suspected accomplice for information, as Lin does here.

The supporting cast is mostly good: Dan Duryea (Night Passage) and Stephen McNally (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo) are hateful bad guys, Millard Mitchell (The Naked Spur) is solid as Lin's buddy, and John McIntire's (Psycho) gunrunner is amusingly cynical. Shelley Winters (Lolita) is pretty but mostly colorless. A young Rock Hudson (All That Heaven Allows) is amusingly cast as an Indian chief, and Tony Curtis (Spartacus) can be seen as a cavalry trooper.

Whatever thematic significance Jim Kitses wants to read into it, Winchester '73 is best appreciated as a well-crafted shoot-'em-up. It's not Mann's best or most interesting film, but as entertainment, it's a solid piece of work.