Category: Anthony Mann

Winchester ’73 (1950)

Psychological darkness underpins this dark and exciting Western from Mann and Stewart

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: James Stewart (Lin McAdam), Shelley Winters (Lola Manners), Dan Duryea (‘Waco’ Johnny Dean), Stephen McNally (‘Dutch’ Henry Brown), Millard Mitchell (Frankie ‘High Spade’ Wilson), Charles Drake (Steve Miller), John McIntire (Joe Lamont), Will Geer (Wyatt Earp), Jay C Flippen (Sergeant Wilkes), Rock Hudson (Young Bull), Tony Curtis (Private)

“The Gun That Won the West” was the proud boast of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of its rifle ((it can fire several shots before reloading unlike normal rifles). As Winchester 73 puts it, such guns built the West and any Indian would give his soul for one. In Anthony Mann’s complex psychological western, it’s also an instrument of death defining a whole era. Winchester 73 follows the path of one ‘perfect’ repeating rifle, won in a shooting competition by Lin McAdam (James Stewart) but stolen from him and passed from hand-to-hand, seeming to curse everyone who touches it to death.

McAdam has his own mission, searching for the man who killed his father, ruthless criminal ‘Dutch’ Henry Brown (Stephen McNally). These two compete for the rifle, in a Tombstone shooting content refereed by legendary Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) whose orders to keep the peace in this town stop the two of them turning guns on each other from the off. Defeated, Dutch steals the rifle (after getting the jump on McAdam), but he doesn’t keep it long as it moves from owner-to-owner. Meanwhile, McAdam purses Dutch, with faithful friend High Space (Millard Mitchell) in tow, encountering war bands, cavalry troops and Lola Manners (Shelley Winters), a luckless woman tied to a string of undeserving men.

Winchester 73 unspools across 90 lean, pacey minutes and gives you all the action you could desire, directed with taut, masterful tension by Mann. It opens with a cracking Hawkesian shooting contest, with the equally matched McAdam and Dutch moving from shooting bullseyes, to dimes out of the sky to through the hoops of tossed rings. Among what follows is a tense face-off between cavalry and Indians, a burning house siege of Dutch’s ruthless ally ‘Waco’ Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), a high noon shoot-out and a final, deadly, rifle shooting wilderness cat-and-mouse shoot-out between McAdam and Dutch. It’s all pulled together superbly, mixing little touches of humour with genuine excitement.

However, what makes Winchester 73 really stand out is the psychological depth it finds. Audiences were sceptical of James Stewart – George Bailey himself – as a hard-bitten sharp-shooter out for revenge. But Stewart – deeply affected by his war service – wanted a change and Mann knew there was darkness bubbling just under the surface. McAdam is frequently surly, moody and struggles to express warmth and kindness. He can only confess his fondness for High Spade while glancing down at the rifle he’s cleaning and the most romantic gesture he can give Lola is a gun when they are caught up in a cavalry siege, wordlessly suggesting she save the final bullet for herself. McAdam is driven and obsessively focused, stopping for nothing and no-one on his manhunt, a manhunt High Spade worries he is starting to enjoy too much.

And he’s right to worry. In hand-to-hand combat, Stewart lets wildness and savagery cross his face, his teeth gritted, eyes wild. Scuffling for the rifle with Dutch, there is a mania in his eyes that tells us he is capable of killing with his own hands, a look that returns when he later savagely beats the cocky Waco (it’s even more shocking, as Waco’s ruthless skill is well established, before McAdam whoops him like an errant child). Stewart plays a man deeply scarred by the loss of his father, his emotional hinterland laid waste by a burning need for revenge to fill his soul.

This is the West Winchester 73 sees, one of anger, self-obsession and lies. Seemingly charming trader Joe Lamont (John McIntire, very good) is a shameless card sharp who cheats everyone left-right-and-centre. Waco is perfectly happy to sacrifice his own gang so that he can escape the law – just as he’s perfectly happy to use women and children as human shields and provoke a hapless Steve Miller (Charles Drake), Lola’s luckless lover, into out-matched violence. Steve is hard to sympathise for, having left Lola in the lurch without a second thought when they are caught in the open by a war band (he rides off shouting ‘I’ll get help’ and only returns after finding it by complete fluke).

In this West, a gun is the ultimate symbol. Mann opens every section of the film with a close-up shot of the gun itself, this most prized of possessions, each time in the hands of a new owner. Earp keeps his town strictly gun-free, and both McAdam and Dutch instinctively reach for their holster-less waists when they first meet. (Will Geer does a fine line in avuncular authority as Earp, treated with affectionate patience which becomes quiet fear when he smilingly reveals who he is). The cursed rifle, like Sauron’s ring, seems to tempt everyone and then betray anyone who touches it. Of all its owners, only Dutch and McAdam seem to understand how to use it: and of course, McAdam is the only man with the determination to truly master it.

There isn’t much room for women in all this. Much like the rifle, Lola herself is passed from man-to-man. Played with a gutsy determination by Shelley Winters, she’s first seen thrown out of Tombstone on suspicion of being a shameless floozy, before passing from the useless Steve (who Winters wonderfully balances both affection and a feeling of contempt for) to the psychopathic Waco (few people did grinning black hats better than Dan Duryea). It’s been argued that Lola fills all the traditional female Western roles in one go – hooker, faithful wife, independent women, damsel-in-distress, redemptive girlfriend – and there’s a lot to be said for that. So masculine and violent is this world, women constantly need to re-shape and re-form themselves for new situations.

Fascinating ideas around violence, obsession and sexuality underpin a frontier world where, it’s made clear repeatedly, life is cheap make Winchester 73 really stand out. Led by a bravura performance by James Stewart (who negotiated the first ever ‘points deal’ for this film and made a fortune), with striking early appearances from Rock Hudson (awkwardly as a native chief) and Tony Curtis (as a possibly too pretty cavalry private), it’s both exciting and thought-provoking in its dark Western under-currents

El Cid (1961)

Epic history with just the right amount of seriousness among the scale and thrills

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Charlton Heston (Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar/El Cid), Sophia Loren (Doña Ximena), Herbert Lom (Ben Yusuf), Raf Vallone (García Ordóñez), Geneviève Page (Doña Urraca), John Fraser (Alfonso VI), Douglas Wilmer (Al-Mu’tamin), Frank Thring (Al-Kadir), Michael Hordern (Don Diego), Andrew Cruickshank (Count Gormaz), Gary Raymond (Prince Sancho), Ralph Truman (King Ferdinand), Massimo Serato (Fañez), Hurd Hatfield (Arias)

Its 11^th century Spain, and the country is a mass of feuding Christian and Muslim kingdoms. All that could end if the invasion plans of warlord Ben Yusof (Herbert Lom) come to fruition. To defeat him, the Christians will need Muslim allies in Spain. But of course, none of their leaders have the vision to imagine such a thing: except Don Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (Charlton Heston) who, after releasing rather than executing two Emirs, is known as “El Cid”. Problem is Don Rodrigo falls continually in and out of favour at court, not helped by his unbending principles. These principles even alienate the woman he loves, Doña Ximena (Sophia Loren), when Don Rodrigo regretfully kills her father in a duel. Will El Cid be able to unite the forces of Castille and his Muslim allies to defeat Ben Yusof?

El Cid was shot on location in Spain, and no expense was spared. Its location footage is beautiful and combined with some impressive sets. Producer Samuel Bronstein was determined to get the best money can buy. The ancient city of Valencia was rebuilt and thousands of soldiers from the Spanish army recruited into the two opposing sides. Thousands of costumes, pieces of armour and weapons were made. Bronstein’s dream cast was assembled (hilariously of course not a Spaniard or Arab among them), led by Hollywood’s biggest stars Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.

What we get is an at times rather po-faced, sombre even slow epic that still succeeds because it is delivered with such absolute commitment and luscious beauty. Anthony Mann is not the most inventive of directors – and so much of this sort of film is really about producing rather than visionary direction – but he pulls together a collection of visual styles into something that feels wonderfully coherent and suitably dramatic. The castle interiors could have stepped out of Adventures of Robin Hood (Heston and Cruickshank even fight their duel on a winding staircase), the Spanish exteriors rival Ben-Hur and the medieval pageantry brings back memories of Ivanhoe.

It’s pulled together in a script that manages to juggle just about enough action – duels, fights to the death, ambushes, battles, sieges, murders – to sit alongside its earnest attempts to plead for a little love and understanding. Heston’s El Cid is radically ahead of his time, preaching messages of equality and arguing that anyone can kill but only a leader can grant mercy. It’s a film that refreshingly urges that there is more that unites us, than divides us. Yes, it casts Arab characters in most of the villainous roles – while the Christian opponents of El Cid all eventually see the error of their ways – but it still makes several Arab characters (especially Douglas Wilmer’s wonderful Al-Mu’tamin) pinnacles of honour and decency, far more so than most of the bitter and feuding Christians.

At the heart of the film is Charlton Heston, in possibly his most interesting and intelligent ‘epic’ performance. His El Cid is principled to the point of self-harming, but there is a little boy innocence to him that can’t seem to understand why he keeps landing himself in the shit. Duelling with his fiancée’s father, he genuinely can’t understand why he won’t stand down and let the matter rest. Later he marries Ximena with the sad-sack hope that she might remember why she loved him in the first place. He vainly tries to support both sides in the feud to succeed King Ferdinand, because he swore to support all the King’s children. It never occurs to him that Castille might turn down the assistance of the Muslim Emirs he’s recruited. He can understand military nuances, but can’t seem to find the way to translate this effectiveness into courtly politics. And he seems to know it.

But we know he’s a good guy – so it’s also why we know Sophia Loren’s hatred for him won’t really last. To be honest the chemistry isn’t quite there between them – the two of them famously didn’t get on (Heston famously refused to look at her in many of the romance scenes, hence the odd side-to-side faces in several shots) – and the part of Ximena is incredibly thinly written (she changes her mind about Rodrigo seemingly on a sixpence). But you can’t argue with Loren’s charisma (and she looks ravishingly stunning here) or the force which she can act the hell out of these straightforward scenes (all shot in a few weeks, due to Loren’s availability and Borstein’s determination to get her for the role).

Besides she needed to be the goodie so we could have a dynamic Geraldine Page as the scheming villainous, the Princess of Castille scheming to support her brother Alfonso (a wonderfully fecklessly weak John Fraser), to whom she’s offering more than sisterly love. What chance does headstrong but not-so-bright Gary Raymond’s Sancho have against them? Elsewhere in the cast, Herbert Lom’s voice is used to superb effect as Ben Yusof (like all the actors playing Arabs he’s browned up) and Douglas Wilmer strikes up a wonderful bromance with Heston as an Arabic version of El Cid.

The film is long an often gets slightly bogged down in questions of politics and questions of succession that, at the end of the day, are less interesting than whether Loren will forgive Chuck or our long wait for that Muslim invasion. It is a very long wait: the film opens with Rodrigo a young man – by the time Ben Yusof arrives he’s an old one with two children. Enough events occur sprinkled through the story that it never feels too slow – and you have to admire its attempt at even-handed justice to all.

It culminates as well in a superb sequence covering the siege of Valencia, where all narrative threads are skilfully bought together towards a satisfying conclusion. Mann stages a handsome beach battle here and culminates the film in a long night of the soul that ends with El Cid riding into history in an ironically unique way. The film’s final act is an outstanding mix of epic themes and personal tragedy and loss, that brings the film to a superb finish.

El Cid takes itself seriously – I’m pretty sure there isn’t a joke in it – but it’s well made and acted with a great deal of flair, looks fabulous and never squeezes the life out of itself. As an example of Hollywood’s late epics, there are few that can match it.

The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Kirk Douglas runs rings around the Germans in The Heroes of Telemark

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Kirk Douglas (Dr Rolf Pedersen), Richard Harris (Knut Straud), Ulla Jacobsson (Anna Pedersen), Michael Redgrave (Uncle), David Weston (Arne), Roy Dotrice (Jensen), Anton Diffring (Major Frick), Ralph Michael (Nilssen), Eric Porter (Josef Terboven), Sebastian Breaks (Gunnar), John Golightly (Freddy), Alan Howard (Oli), Patrick Jordan (Henrik), William Marlowe (Claus), Brook Williams (Einar)

During the Second World War, Telemark in Norway was the main production factory for Heavy Water, a key component for the German nuclear programme. Norwegian commandoes were ordered to destroy the factory, which they did with a cunning plan. This film dramatizes the story – adding more guns and violence – but does at least make the lead characters Norwegian. Knut Straud (Richard Harris) is the leader of the resistance, Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas) the professor who identifies what the factory is churning out. Parachuted back into Norway after secretly travelling to Britain to discuss issues with the allies, they start to plan a raid.

The Heroes of Telemark is sub-par boys-own action stuff, a sort of cross between Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone but nowhere near as good as either. Despite being crammed with derring-do, it’s strangely unmemorable, and although the stakes are really high, you never feel like you care. Everything in the film, bizarrely, feels a little bit easy. Our heroes are not particularly challenged (Nazi bigwig Terboven even berates his guards at the base for letting our heroes walk in and blow up the factory all while wearing British uniforms) but there isn’t any real price paid. The only heroes who bite the bullet are so heavily signposted for death, you actually spend most the film waiting for them to cop it.

Part of the problem is both Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris feel miscast in the lead roles. It’s also pretty clear (alleged) on-set tensions carried across into shooting – not only do the two characters not really seem to like each other, you don’t get any feeling of a growing bond between them as the film goes on. You end up not really caring about either of them – and since virtually everyone else on the team is hardly defined at all as a human being, that’s quite a big loss.

Douglas plays a bizarre professor of physics whose character varies wildly from scene to scene depending on the plot. Introduced making out with a student in a dark room, Pedersen initially denounces the boys-own heroics of the resistance. No sooner is a gun placed in his hand though, than he starts turning into a regular “ends justify the means” superman. Marry his new-found ruthlessness with his regular horn-dog attitude to women, and he’s a hard guy to like. I’m not sure a hero today would climb into bed with his estranged wife (a glamourous and pretty good Ulla Jaconssen) and then get shirty when she fails to put out. The part feels like an anti-hero role, reworked to give the Hollywood mega-star some action.

Richard Harris is similarly out-of-place as Knut Straud (a character based on the real commando who carried out the raid). He spends the whole film looking sullen and furious – he’s going for intense devotion to duty, but instead he looks like the whole thing is a tedious chore. Harris isn’t really anyone’s idea of an action star, and he’s an odd choice for the film altogether. For different reasons, just like Douglas, his stubborn touchiness makes him hard to like.

Following these rather disengaging figures means the derring-do constantly falls flat. It doesn’t help that Anthony Mann’s direction lacks thrust, drive and energy and never really gets the pulse going. Even during the most daring commando sequences, it never feels particularly thrilling. It’s a very easy film to drift away from, never managing to be as taut or tight as it should. The world-shattering stakes of the German nuclear programme are never clearly explained, or kept at the forefront. Chuck in some rather obvious doubles work (no way is Douglas that good a skier) and a few wonky model shots (the boulder Harris and co roll down the hill to try and take out Terboven’s car is all too clearly made of papier mache) and you’ve got a film that never gets going.

It also lacks an antagonist. Eric Porter has a couple of decent scenes here and there as Reichskommisar for Norway Josef Terboven, but he disappears from the film for ages. The Nazis end up as a faceless bunch of German soldiers, and are so easily overcome or fooled that they hardly count as challenges. As such, the clashes and arguments really come within the commando organisation itself, but since Harris and Douglas so clearly don’t like each other, even their brief reconciliation doesn’t ring that true.

The Heroes of Telemark will pass the time on a bank holiday afternoon. You get some decent performances – Roy Dotrice is very good as a possible quisling – and the odd good scene (Redgrave gets a good death scene) but it never really comes to life like it should. Mann’s direction is too plodding, and the pacing of the film so slack that it never becomes exciting or engaging. There are so many better movies on a similar theme you could be watching.