Stephen McNally – Movie Musings

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

Small-town drama is a beautifully done exploration of prejudice with excellent performances

Director: Jean Negulesco

Cast: Jane Wyman (Belinda MacDonald), Lew Ayres (Dr Robert Richardson), Charles Bickford (Blackie MacDonald), Agnes Moorehead (Aggie MacDonald), Stephen McNally (Locky McCormick), Jan Sterling (Stella), Rosalind Ivey (Mrs Poggerty), Dan Seymour (Pacquet), Mabel Paige (Mrs Lutz), Alan Napier (Defence Attorney)

Small towns. Sometimes they’re safe, cosy little havens of the familiar. And sometimes they’re bitchy places of resentment and suspicion where everyone judges everyone else’s business. In an environment like that, it doesn’t pay to be different. Belinda MacDonald (Jane Wyman) is as different as they come: a deaf and dumb young woman, who (despite her intelligence and warmth) everyone assumes is a mentally deficient. Just as different, in a way, is Dr Richardson (Lew Ayres), a compassionate, well-educated man who forms his own opinions and is oblivious to other’s prejudices. Life’s going to be tough for this pair.

Dr Richardson is the only person in this small Canadian fishing town who can see the bright, vivacious young woman Belinda is. With his support, her father Blackie (Charles Bickford) rediscovers his love for a daughter, who he always blamed for her mother’s death in childbirth, while her austere aunt Aggie (Agnes Moorehead) thaws and proves her loyalty. Belinda will need them when she is raped by the popular Lucky (Stephen McNally) and trauma leaves her unable to remember who is responsible for the resulting child. The town, of course, blames Dr Richardson.

Johnny Belinda has all the ingredients of a melodrama: but it surprises as a mature, sensitive and moving story about real people. It’s amazing to see a 40s film this frank about rape and an illegitimate child, that lays not a finger of reproach on the victim, instead turning its fire on the small-minded judgements of those around her. It’s also striking it doesn’t define Belinda solely as a victim, either of deafness or rape. She gives birth to a child she dearly loves, refuses to let what’s happened haunt her and sees her life as one with blessings rather than curses. But neither is she an angelic character, being at times as capable of mistakes and quick judgements as the rest of us.

It helps that Jane Wyman (in an Oscar-winning turn) gives a perfectly judged performance. She’s never winsome or cloying, but fills Belinda with an uncomplaining grit to make the best of things, matched with a growing joy as her opportunities expand, from her discovery of sign language to the birth of her child. In complete silence (Wyman intensively learned sign), Wyman employs her expressive eyes to communicate a range of emotions from wonder to joy to fear to pain and grief (including a wordless rendition of the Lord’s Prayer). Belinda is a character we deeply empathise with, but never we nor the film treat her as an object of charity.

That also springs from Ayres’ Dr Richardson, a genial, kindly man whose inability to see the worst in people makes him a target-in-waiting for gossip. His less than regular attendance at Church has already raised question. Add his academic earnestness – and Ayres wonderfully embodies a man quietly passionate about making a difference – and you’ve got someone who doesn’t fit in a town that respects manly ruggedness. Richardson doesn’t pick up on this at all – just as he doesn’t even notice the clearly besotted devotion of his housekeeper Stella (an excellent portrait of quiet desperation by Jan Sterling).

Gossip is soon flying that Richardson is too close to Belinda. A trio of judgemental old woman, like Irish banshees, frequently stand on street corners to share little tit-bits of meanness. The town punches down on outsiders, fitting people into insultingly simple brackets. It’s partly why immigrant shop-owner Pacquet (Dan Seymour) becomes the ringleader of a morality lynch mob: he’s all too aware it otherwise won’t be long before he’s the target again. No one, of course, can imagine for a moment that the carefree, rugged Lucky (Stephen McNally, a wonderful portrait of utterly smackable shallow vileness) could be the sort of cruel, cowardly cad he is.

A cad who takes notice of a newly confident Belinda – and not in a good way. Part of Johnny Belinda’s power is you can sense the latent danger in those eyes on a newly radiant and confident Belinda at a town shindig, the shy wallflower turned smiling young woman enjoying the music through feeling the vibrations of a violin string (a lovely moment, played with a real burgeoning wonder by Wyman). It’s a mark of the cruelty of the world that this confidence just makes Belinda a target for the vile Lucky.

Again, it’s a mark of Johnny Belinda’s success that the cruelty of what happens hits so hard. Rarely have I despised a film villain as much as Lucky, perhaps because he’s so weak, snivelling and arrogant – the sort of guy so arrogant and stupid he crows over the good-looks of his illegitimate son. He’s a picture of the real villains out there: the weak, stupid and shallow who always get passes from those around them.

Johnny Belinda creates deep, engaging characters. Charles Bickford’s Blackie is presented as first as a gruff, careless father. But the film – and Bickford’s performance – slowly unpeels him as a tender, caring and decent man. The sort of man whose first instinct is to protect, who delights in his unexpected grandson and is thrilled with the excitement of sign language. Similarly, Agnes Moorehead gives a terrific performance as a woman who seems at first a bullying harridan, but becomes a pillar of familial strength. (Both of them and Ayres were Oscar nominated, Johnny Belinda one of the few films to get nominations in every acting category).

This affecting story of people who feel real and three-dimensional, is well directed with restraint and care by Jean Negulesco (easily his finest film) and shot with a real beauty in its rugged Canadian sea-town visuals by Ted McCord. Max Steiner’s excellent score mixes emotional melody with sea shanty influences. It’s a world where intense but very real emotions help ground a story of rape, murder, scarlet letters and court cases into something that feels real and relatable.

Johnny Belinda feels like an overlooked gem, a sort of perfect example of Hollywood issue film where the ‘issue’ isn’t pounded over our head but built organically into the plot. One where characters surprise us with developments that feel real, embodied by a series of excellent actors at the top of their game. It’s a small gem that deserves to be better known.