Bend of the River (1952)

Bend of the River, released by Universal-International in 1952, was the second of the Anthony Mann westerns starring James Stewart, following the success of the superb Winchester ’73.

This time Stewart plays Glyn McLyntock. He’s acting as guide to a party of about a hundred settlers setting off into the wilderness in Oregon to establish farms. McLyntock figures he might take up farming itself.

Then comes a chance encounter. A man accused of horse stealing is about to be hanged by a Lynch mob. McLyntock saves him. The man tells McLyntock that he didn’t steal the horse. McLyntock says he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t like to see a man get hanged.

The man is Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy). Cole decides to ride along with the settlers for a while. He might eventually decide to head for California. McLyntock and Cole strike up a friendship which is solidified after Cole saves McLyntock’s life in a clash with a Shoshone raiding party.

When these two men meet we get our first inkling that McLyntock may have a colourful past. Cole has heard of him, and is surprised that the legendary Glyn McLyntock would want to take up farming. When Cole tells McLyntock his name there’s an interesting flicker of recognition in Glyn McLyntock’s eyes.

The leader of the settlers is Jeremy Baile (Jay C. Flippen). He has two beautiful daughters, Laura (Julia Adams) and Marjie (Lori Nelson). Cole senses that there’s something between McLyntock and Laura and asks McLyntock outright if Laura is his girl. McLyntock says that no, she isn’t.

The settlers have bought food supplies and cattle from Tom Hendricks (Howard Petrie), a trader in Portland, and they’re rather worried when the supplies don’t arrive. McLyntock and Cole ride into Portland and discover why. Portland is in the grip of gold fever. Hendricks has resold the shipment of supplies to gold miners, for ten times its value. McLyntock and Cole take steps to get those supplies back, which leads to a series of wild action scenes. In Portland they pick up another mysterious stranger, the smooth gambler Trey Wilson (Rock Hudson).

They also pick up half a dozen men to help with the loading and unloading and with the wagons. These men seem like a bunch of cut-throats but there’s no alternative to hiring them.

McLyntock and co set off down the river in a steamer but they can only go as far as he rapids and they can be sure that Hendricks will be waiting for them with a bunch of gunmen. Setting off cross-country seems like a better option. But Hendricks in is hot pursuit.

There’s plenty of action in store, and plenty of opportunities for betrayal.

Mann handled spectacle particularly well and this is a visually very impressive movie. The action scenes (of which there are many) are expertly staged.

James Stewart gives the sort of performance he was starting to become known for - there’s an edge to it and there are hints of inner darkness. Arthur Kennedy is splendid. Rock Hudson’s rôle is strictly a supporting one but he’s fine. Julia Adams makes a spirited heroine. I like Chubby Johnson as the riverboat captain, Mello. He just knows he should never have left the Mississippi.

There are critics who like to see the Anthony Mann-James Stewart westerns as noir westerns. I see this as representing a kind of condescending attitude towards the western genre. It’s as if a western can only be treated seriously if you can see it as a film noir with six-guns and horses. By the late 40s westerns were starting to become more ambitious and more thematically complex but the thematic complexity came from exploring the potential of the western genre itself. The westerns of the 1950s can stand on their own merits. They’re best understood on their own terms. I don’t see any film noir elements in this movie. Approaching Anthony Mann’s westerns as noir westerns sets up misleading expectations.

Major themes which recur during the golden age of the western (from the late 40s to the early 60s) are revenge and redemption. There’s a bit of both in Bend of the River.

We have three central male characters in this film, and all three are nicely ambiguous. McLyntock is clearly a good and honourable man but we have reason to believe that maybe there are things in his past that he’d really like to forget. Possibly things that aren’t so good and honourable.

We have no idea for most of the movie what makes Emerson Cole tick. He obviously has a very shady past but he seems like he’s a reformed character. Jeremy Baile doesn’t believe that a man can change. He thinks Cole is still a wrong ’un. McLyntock wants to believe that Jeremy is wrong. He has to believe that Jeremy is wrong. He has to believe that a man can change.

This is clearly the core of the movie. Can a man really escape his past?

McLyntock needs to believe that Cole can achieve redemption because if he can’t then McLyntock might start doubting whether his own redemption is possible.

Trey Wilson seems like the kind of character who will turn out to be a ruthless crooked gambler and a generally bad type but his behaviour doesn’t seem consistent with superficial appearances.

The plot is fairly straightforward. The suspense in this movie lies not in wondering what will happen next but rather in wondering how the major characters will react. It’s suspense that is character-driven.

Bend of the River was shot in Technicolor in the Academy ratio and it looks terrific.

Bend of the River is not a noir western but it is a grown-up serious western and an intelligent one. It’s also very exciting. Highly recommended.

Umbrella Entertainment in Australia have released this movie on DVD in their remarkably good-value Six Shooter Classics range. The transfer is extremely good.

The Far Country (1954)

The Far Country was the fourth of the five westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. These movies, starting with Winchester ’73, established Mann as a director of A-features and totally revitalised Stewart’s career. These movies gave Stewart the chance to demonstrate that he could play much darker roles and play them very well indeed.

Within the first few minutes it’s obvious that Stewart has by now well and truly shed his Aw, shucks persona. He might turn out to be the hero but if so he’s going to be a very dark sort of hero.

Jeff Webster (James Stewart) arrives in Seattle in 1896 with a herd of cattle. That’s what he does for a living. He drives cattle. There was trouble on this last drive and now Jeff has a possible murder charge hanging over his head. He is almost arrested but a woman on whom he has never set eyes hides him in her cabin. The woman is Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman) and they immediately recognise each other as kindred spirits. They’re both cynical and they both believe in looking after Number One.

Jeff, Ronda and those steers are off to Alaska on a steamship. They arrive in Skagway in Alaska and we quickly find out that Skagway is not exactly a civilised community.

Skagway is run by Gannon (John McIntire). He seems to be judge, sheriff, mayor and public hangman all at the same time, as well as being the town’s leading businessman.

Jeff escapes the hangman’s noose. Gannon takes a liking to him. He thinks Jeff is his kind of man - a cynic who understands that might makes right. He figures that Jeff might eventually cause him problems in which case he’ll have to hang him but in the meantime he likes Jeff. While Gannon does acquit Jeff of murder he seizes his cattle.

Jeff needs a job and Ronda provides one. Ronda is the other big wheel in Skagway. She runs the local saloon, a very prosperous establishment which provides the kinds of entertainment that frontier men crave. This clearly includes whores although this being Hollywood in 1954 that part of her business is glossed over.

The job Ronda has in mind for Jeff is taking a supply train to Dawson, over the border in Canada. Jeff’s pals Ben (Walter Brennan) and Rube (Jay C. Flippen) will go with him.

Gold fever has struck Dawson. It infects everybody. Including Jeff. Fortunes can be made quickly and easily.

The lawlessness of the frontier has never been a major problem in Dawson. THere’s never been enough crime to worry about. But the gold has changed all that. When you add greed to lawlessness you’re certain to get robbery and murder and that’s what Dawson gets.

There is no law and order in this movie. There’s just power. In theory Gannon represents the law. Gannon has no interest in the law. In Skagway he is the law. He is the law because he is willing and able to use naked force to enforce his will. As far as Gannon is concerned whatever makes Gannon richer is lawful.

Jeff understands this. He is a realist. He believes those steers rightfully belong to him but he understands that his ownership does not depend on a piece of paper but on his willingness to use his gun to assert his ownership. Jeff takes it for granted that this is the way the world works and there’s no use complaining about it. If you’re strong enough and ruthless enough you’ll do OK. If you’re not, that’s your problem. Jeff doesn’t worry about other people’s problem. Insofar as he has any loyalties or human ties at all he’s fond of Ben and Rube.

This is the purest distillation of the Wild West (although in this case it’s the Wild North). The law doesn’t matter. Power matters. Power rests on force. If you own something and want to keep it you’d better be prepared to use your gun to defend it. This is rugged individualism taken to its logical conclusion. You worry about yourself and you let other worry about themselves.

If you’re a woman then you have to be as ruthless as Ronda. If that means manipulating men then that’s what you do.

Lying and cheating don’t matter unless you get caught and you’re not quick enough with a gun.

Of course Jeff will eventually have to decide whether he can simply ignore other people’s problems or whether he’ll have to start being a responsible member of a society. So this is a movie about the transition from frontier barbarism to civilisation. It’s not a dazzling central idea but it works here because Mann keeps us waiting so long for Jeff to make his choice, and it works because of James Stewart’s brilliantly edgy performance. Ruth Roman and John McIntire are excellent as well, plus the cinematography is impressive.

A great western. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three other Anthony Mann-James Stewart westerns - The Naked Spur (1953), Winchester ’73 (1950) and The Man from Laramie (1955).

Mr Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr Smith Goes To Washington is very very similar to his 1936 Mr Deeds Goes To Town. The plot is incredibly similar, the main difference is that this time Capra gets explicitly political. But as with Mr Deeds Goes To Town what is really interesting is that he deals heads-on with the failures of the political system and the failures of democracy without actually committing himself politically. You can watch this movie and at the end of it not be sure whether it’s a movie made by someone who is a registered Democrat or a registered Republican (in fact Capra was a lifelong registered Republican).

It’s a movie that exposes Washington as a cesspit of lies and corruption but it’s pretty obvious that as far as this movie is concerned it doesn’t matter which party they belong to, they’re all crooks.

It starts with the death of a U.S. Senator. A replacement needs to be found. The entire political machine of the state in question is corrupt and the only question is whether the deceased senator should be replaced by an obvious crook or by an incompetent time-server who can be trusted not to ask questions. Then the governor gets a brainwave. Why not appoint a man with popular appeal but who is so dumb that he can be manipulated with ease? He has a man in mind, the leader of a youth organisation called the Boy Rangers.

Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) is the man in question and he’s almost a carbon copy of Mr Deeds. He’s incredibly naïve and he actually believes everything he was taught at school about freedom and democracy and the Constitution and he’s so innocent that he thinks the U.S. Senate is a body of honourable men serving their country. But he’s like Mr Deeds in that his innocence is balanced by a certain clear-eyed common sense. When Jefferson Smith thinks he’s been lied to he starts to ask awkward questions and to think awkward thoughts. He puts two and two together and even when his senior colleague and mentor Senator Paine (Claude Rains) assures him that it makes five (and that it would be very much to his advantage to believe that it makes five) he knows it makes four and it’s always made four.

Senator Jefferson Smith has no ideological barrow to push, he has no ambitions, as the junior senator from his state he really is content just to do what the senior senator, Senator Paine (Claude Rains), tells him to do. Senator Paine and Jefferson’s dad had been crusading newspapermen years ago and Jefferson hero-worships Paine.

To keep Smith happy he is given a bill of his own to present. It’s a thoroughly harmless bill to set aside a very small amount of money to establish boys’ camps, this being one of Smith’s harmless obsessions. The bill is so innocuous and so unimportant that no-one would ever have noticed it except for one unfortunate accident - the boys’ camps are to be established on land that has been earmarked by Senator Paine and his crooked cronies for a dam that will divert a large amount of taxpayers’ money into their own pockets.

Suddenly Senator Jefferson Smith is a very real danger that must be eliminated. He’s such an innocent chump that destroying him politically should be child’s play, except that Smith has a useful ally in his private secretary Saunders (Jean Arthur) who happens to be a shrewd political operator. However the main reason Smith is so hard to destroy is that he’s absurdly determined and doesn’t know when he’s beaten.

The scenes in the senate, with Smith facing removal from office, are an exact parallel to the sanity hearing endured by Mr Deeds in Mr Deeds Goes To Town. Once again it’s the underdog fighting for survival against overwhelming odds.

One of the things that is intriguing about Capra is that according to his son (as related on the audio commentary to Mr Deeds Goes To Town) he was obsessed with editing and with what he saw as the excessively slow pacing of American movies. This is intriguing because the pacing of Capra’s movies is atrocious. They are much much too long and scenes just go on and on and on. Frank Capra Jr does make the point that his father was not interested in the established rules of film-making and preferred to make his own rules. This can be a dangerous practice. Sometimes the rules exist for a reason. If you ignore the rules you can fall prey to self-indulgence and Frank Capra was perhaps the most self-indulgent of all the major directors of golden age Hollywood (although he was self-indulgent in an interesting and even fruitful way). The senate scenes are very effective but the effect is dissipated a little since they go too long. Overall there’s not really enough plot to just a running time of 129 minutes.

Capra’s idea in both Mr Deeds Goes To Town and Mr Smith Goes To Washington was to combine good-natured comedy with social commentary. This was hardly an original idea but what makes it interesting is that Capra’s social commentary has unexpected oddities and subtleties.

In Mr Deeds he has a hero who is a rich man and he’s also the only truly virtuous man in a corrupt town. There’s nothing startling about hero-worshipping the rich but in an American film you’d expect the rich man to be a self-made man, one who earned his wealth in a manner demonstrating the truth of the American Dream. But Mr Deeds did nothing whatever to deserve his wealth. He represents inherited wealth. He also represents the virtuous man as a paternalistic figure. This is pretty much anathema to true believers in the American Dream.

Capra does something very similar in Mr Smith Goes To Washington. Senator Smith is the honest folksy down-home hero who takes on the task of confronting corruption in Washington. This should surely play out as a triumphant vindication of American democracy. There’s just one little problem. Senator Smith was not democratically elected. He was not elected at all. He was simply chosen by a thoroughly crooked state political machine to fill a casual vacancy. The senator who really was elected democratically, Senator Paine, is the crook. So the movie can just as easily be seen as suggesting that democracy simply doesn’t work.

What makes it intriguing of course is that Capra did believe in democracy. But he obviously didn't believe in it in a naïve way. In this movie the people chose wrongly in choosing Senator Paine. The people were hoodwinked by the press. The manipulation of public opinion by the media is a major theme of the film. When ruthless cliques control the media and corrupt machine control the electoral process democracy can be in really big trouble. When the movie came out the Washington press corps was enraged. Many powerful political figures were enraged as well. This is clearly a movie that successfully hit its targets.

The trouble with political movies is that almost invariably they try to bludgeon the viewer into accepting a particular political program or political ideology. That’s what makes Mr Smith Goes To Washington so refreshing. It isn’t trying to convert the viewer to a political position, it’s simply trying to provoke the viewer into thinking about weaknesses in the system.

Capra was a director who had zero interest in making realistic movies. The plots are contrived and they’re deliberately contrived and that’s the only way the outrageous stories could work. In spite of this though his movies are very very realistic in portraying the psychological realities of power, or corruption, of ambition and of avarice. While you’re not going to believe for one second that a man like Jefferson Smith could exist and could get to Washington, he’s more an allegorical figure than a human being, you will believe absolutely that this is the way political corruption works, this is the way ideals get corroded, this is the way once honest men get compromised.

Mr Smith Goes To Washington is a movie that even someone like myself, with an absolutely deadly loathing for message films, can enjoy. It’s a strange movie by one of Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic directors but it’s fascinating and entertaining and it’s highly recommended.

Winchester ’73 (1950)

I used not to be a great fan of Hollywood westerns although I have been gradually developing a resect for the genre as I get older. Anthony Mann’s westerns have a certain reputation, a very high reputation, especially this one, and his entries in the film noir genre are pretty good, so Winchester ’73 sounded like it might be worth a watch. It was made at Universal in 1950.

Lin McAdam (James Stewart) and Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally) both find themselves in Dodge City competing in a shooting competition. The prize is a Winchester Model 1873 rifle. But not just any Winchester rifle - this is a kind of Special Edition Winchester. President Ulysses S. Grant owns one of these very special Winchesters, and the Marshall of Dodge City (a guy by the name of Wyatt Earp) expresses the view that any man would give his right arm for this rifle.

Wyatt Earp has other problems on his hands - keeping Lin and Dutch Henry from killing each other. These two are obviously nursing grudges against each other of stupendous proportions. After the competition Dutch Henry steals the rifle and heads off out of Dodge City with Lin in hot pursuit.

There are a number of sub-plots involving some rather colourful characters. Lola Manners (Shelley Winters) is a saloon entertainer who is being run out of Dodge City at the time Lin arrives. Lin tries to do the gentlemanly thing and intervene to help a lady but to no avail.

Lola reappears slightly later, on her way to her new ranch with her new husband. Unfortunately the Sioux are on the warpath and having just wiped out Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn they’re in an aggressive mood. Lola and her husband are pursued by a war band and husband Steve abandons Lola to her fate. Luckily Lin and his buddy and faithful companion turn up at this moment and Lola is rescued. Well sort of. The three take refuge with a small troop of US Cavalry but this troop is about to be wiped out by an even bigger Sioux war party. But all is not lost and the cavalry now have three extra fighters (including Lola who is a feisty kind of gal and knows how to handle a gun).

The destinies of Lola and Lin seem to be strangely entwined. Soon after Lola hooks up with notorious outlaw Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), who just happens to be planning a bank robbery with none other than Dutch Henry. In fact the fates of all the major characters will converge as events move towards the final showdown between Lin and Dutch Henry.

This was one of the earliest appearances of the dark and obsessed side to Jimmy Stewart, a side that would be used to brilliant effect by Hitchcock in Rear Window and Vertigo. Like the characters he played in those films Lin is neither a simple hero nor an actual villain, but he’s definitely dangerously obsessed. Stewart always shone in these darker roles and this is no exception. All the actors are good, with Dan Duryea being (as you’d expect) a chilling but highly entertaining bad guy.

As she so often did Shelley Winters goes very close to stealing the picture from Stewart. And like Stewart’s character Lola is rather ambiguous. She seems to be a woman of dubious moral reputation but she has considerable strength of character. She’s no shrinking violet but she’s no mere femme fatale either.

The Winchester rifle itself becomes a character in the movie, changing hands many times and somehow leading everyone who possesses it to their destiny, for good or ill.

Anthony Mann directs with the energy and flair that he brought to his best movies in the film noir genre.

Winchester ’73 is a classic revenge western with some twists, superbly acted and it’s worth a look even if you’re not a big western fan. Highly recommended.

The Naked Spur (1953)

The Naked Spur was the third of the much-admired westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart. Mann had made his initial reputation with film noir (including the excellent Raw Deal) and his westerns had a decidedly dark edge to them. They also provided James Stewart with the opportunity to show what he could do in rather unsympathetic roles.

Howard Kemp (James Stewart) meets up with grizzled old prospector Jesse Tate (Milard Mitchell). Kemp is tracking an outlaw and Jesse may have picked up his trail. Kemp offers Jesse $20 to help him find that trail. Jesse could use the $20 and he figures it’s not a bad thing to help a lawman catch a killer. At least Jesse assumes Kemp is a lawman - why else would be be hunting an outlaw?

Kemp is also soon joined by Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker) although he’s not overly pleased about finding himself with such an assistant, Anderson having been dishonourably discharged from the army and being obviously (as his discharge papers state) a man of very dubious moral character.

Catching up with convicted killer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) proves to be easier than expected. Hanging on to him and getting him all the way back to Abilene may be considerably more difficult.

Kemp now has a party of five to get to Abilene, the fifth member being Ben’s girl Lina Patch (Janet Leigh). Except that she isn’t Ben’s girl. Well, not exactly. Roy Anderson clearly figures that if she’s not Ben’s girl she might as well be his girl. That idea doesn’t go over too well with Lina and it’s obvious that Howard Kemp is not oblivious to her charms either. There are no prizes for guessing this this is going to be a rather tense situation.

The situation is made even more tense by the revelation that Howard Kemp is not a lawman. He’s a bounty hunter. Not a professional bounty hunter but an amateur who has a very good reason for wanting the five thousand dollar reward for bringing in Ben Vandergroat. It’s a long sad story. Howard had been in love with this really swell girl and they had made plans to get married but then he marched off to the war and when he returned he was in for a very unpleasant surprise. Whether the five thousand dollars will overcome his pain and sense of betrayal might be debatable but it will allow him to buy back his ranch.

Howard Kemp is not exactly your classic hero from the golden age of the western although he is in some ways a precursor of the anti-heroes that would populate the genre so tediously from the late 1960s onwards. He is a man driven by a sense of having been wronged but mostly he is driven by greed. He thinks money will heal his wounds.

In fact the whole movie is about greed since Kemp is certainly not the only character motivated by the lust for money. A group of five people that includes a ruthless but resourceful killer with nothing to lose (he has only the hangman’s rope to look forward to in Abilene), an attractive young woman in whom three members of the party are taking a very close interest and a $5,000 reward that would be desirable if shared three ways but even more desirable if it didn’t have to be shared at all provides a perfect setup for some intense interactions.

It doesn’t quite pan out that way, largely because most of the characters are mere stereotypes. Robert Ryan is entertaining but Ben is your standard movie villain without a single redeeming characteristic and with zero depth. Jesse is a character who could have stepped straight out of a hundred other westerns. Lina is the feisty but fundamentally decent girl whose every action can be predicted. Janet Leigh’s performance is fine but Lina just isn’t very interesting. Roy Anderson is the cynical drifter who will do anything if there’s a profit in it for him although he’s made slightly more interesting by Ralph Meeker’s spirited performance.

That leaves it up to Jimmy Stewart to do most of the heavy lifting in the acting department. Fortunately he’s equal to the task and Howard Kemp really is a genuinely fascinating character. He’s rather unsympathetic but we admire his doggedness and Stewart gradually reveals some of the hidden depths of the man.

The script, by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, is very good at setting up interesting human dynamics but it’s a bit too obvious that this is a movie with a Moral Lesson to teach us. Which is a pity because mostly it’s a fine story.

Anthony Mann’s films are always stylish and visually impressive and this is no exception. The film was shot in Technicolor and looks terrific even if the TCM print has a few blemishes and looks just a tiny bit washed out.

The Naked Spur is an attempt to do a complex and intelligent western and it’s an attempt that succeeds reasonably well largely due to James Stewart’s powerful performance. Recommended.