The best of the Stewart-Mann Westerns
Of all the Stewart-Mann Westerns, I believe that Winchester '73 (1950) is the best because of its raw edginess and because it keeps its romanticism under wraps. The film does feature a romantic angle, but it's especially restrained, more so than in the other Stewart-Mann Westerns. Stewart is at his best here, at once cooler and more psychotic than in their other collaborations. The stark, shadowy black-and-white cinematography casts a noir-like light on these rugged, boldly captured desert landscapes, and the film rides on a sense of tense suspicion that periodically explodes in violence. Filled with gritty acting and dynamic action, Mann takes the Western to the edge in Winchester '73, granting it a sense of harsh austerity, omnipresent danger, and reluctantly rewarded morality. Having gone right up to the edge in this film, Stewart and Mann inevitably seemed to back off slightly in their future Westerns, probably realizing that the dark power that they could summon had to be handled carefully. Indeed, by explicitly revealing the firearm fetish that fueled the genre, and by imparting a latent, lurking sensuality that was not without menacing undertones, Stewart and Mann brought the desperation and paranoia of the early Cold War years to the Old West. Winchester '73 gives the sense of a moral universe on the edge, in danger of exploding. Indeed, it seemed to reflect the newfangled specter of global Armageddon and bipolar madness.
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