Winchester '73

The visual force of this movie alone is guaranteed to make it stay with you for a long time. On top of that the film has some very powerful acting. My current favourite is Dan Duryea as Waco Johnny Dean. He gives an overwhelmingly strong (and much more nuanced) version of a character like Lee Marvin's Liberty Valance in John Ford's film from 1962 - right down to forcing a man to serve for him dressed with an apron and forcing him to clean up when he trips him. However, Winchester '73 suffers severely from the heavy-handed and highly moralistic writing of Borden Chase. Much has been said about the fact that James Stewarts character is at the verge of madness and some see this as a sign of complex morality. The logic seems to be that the presence of a mentally unstable hero surely must express an attempt to deconstruct the myth of the hero. However, this view overlooks the simple fact, that the extreme emotions of the hero are not first and foremost expressions of his own disposition but caused by the severity of the crime committed by the bad guy. It is true that one could imagine less extreme reactions to this crime - but that is just what makes Lin McAdam a hero: his sensitiveness and his deep moral integrity. A Western Hamlet, so to speak. In other words, the morality of the movie is disturbingly primitive. We have a sensitive and highly moral hero on hand and an extremely slimy bad guy on the other. The effect is that the movie is a dangerously powerful endorsement of revenge.

Winchester '73 is for sure one of the best Western movies made ever and was till the arrival of the great classics of the Spaghetti Western movies with a guy called Clint Eastwood unchallenged by most movies of the genre. A fine performance by James Steward and the rest of the cast supports a great story. Winchester '73: belongs still to the best of the genre, like the two years later published High Noon with Gary Cooper, unforgettable.

Anthony Mann made more than 40 films with his well known, The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Men in War (1957) and El Cid (1961) but made more as westerns, and most will agree his best was Winchester 73, named after the famous rifle. I saw the Shaun of the Dead (2004) just the other night where, surely the pub named after the Winchester, which has the rifle set about the bar. Back to the film I have to say that it is certainly one of my favourites. There is, of course, James Stewart and a bubbly Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea, whilst way down a young Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. It is an extraordinary western with splendid dialogue and wonderful action especially the gun fight in the rugged Arizona rocks. There is also time for action with Indians which is really thrilling although I have to say that it is throughout the film and not a dull moment.