Winchester '73. 1950. USA. Directed by Anthony Mann. Screenplay by Robert L. Richards and Borden Chase, based on a story by Stuart N. Lake. With James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Millard Mitchell. DCP. Restored by Universal Pictures and The Film Foundation. 92 min.
The first of the five Westerns Anthony Mann made with James Stewart at Universal, Winchester ’73 established the template for everything that followed: a protagonist driven by something darker than civic duty, a landscape rendered as psychological pressure rather than scenic backdrop, violence that carries genuine consequence. Stewart’s Lin McAdam pursues the man who killed his father across the picture’s episodic structure, the prize Winchester he won in a Dodge City shooting contest passing from hand to hand through a succession of episodes that constitute a moral inventory of the frontier.
The casting against type was a gamble for Stewart, as this was his first independent production. In 1950, he still carried the weight of his MGM romantic comedies and prewar Frank Capra pictures, and Mann put that residual goodwill into the service of a character capable of real hatred. The scene in which McAdam has the man he’s hunted at gunpoint and cannot immediately pull the trigger is more complex than it looks—it’s not hesitation but something closer to satiation, the pleasure of anticipation held a moment longer. Dan Duryea does his reliable, slightly reptilian work as a hired gun, while Shelley Winters, a graduate of the New School’s acting program, brings depth to an underwritten role. The film’s success, which was considerable, gave Mann and Stewart the latitude to go further in each successive picture.