Mann of the West
Having
on this blog reviewed, individually, all the Westerns of Anthony Mann (and
films directed by him which are possibly Westerns), it is perhaps now time to
do a retrospective, to have an overall look at his œuvre (posh people call it
an œuvre).
The
first thing to say is that Mann was one of the very greatest directors of
Western movies. In anybody’s top twenty Western films ever, Mann movies will
figure, maybe even more than once. Winchester
’73, The Naked Spur, The Man from
Laramie, these were great Westerns by any standard. Mann is up there
certainly with Delmer Daves, Budd Boetticher, Clint Eastwood, William A Wellman, but also with John Ford, Howard Hawks or
Sam Peckinpah. Anyone remotely interested in the Western genre has to watch Mann
movies.
Mann’s
Westerns were released from 1950 to 1960. This was the golden age of the oater.
No era has ever produced more, or better cowboy films. And if Anthony Mann
could shine in this decade, he must have had something extra.
Of
course, part of it was his leading men, notably James Stewart (who starred in
five of the eleven) but he also had none other than Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper
(gasp), not to mention solid lesser Western lights such as Glenn Ford and Robert Taylor. These were all good, if not great Western actors. But
it wasn’t luck. When Mann first came to Hollywood from Broadway, at the behest
of David O Selznick, he was tasked with doing screen tests (for huge pictures
like Gone with the Wind) and as a
casting director. Then he served his time as an assistant director on B-movies
for Paramount. He learned his trade. He knew what he was doing. And he
was an artist.
He made
his name, in the late 1940s, as a director of gritty films noirs. He first came to notice with pictures like Desperate, T-Men and Raw Deal. They
were low-budget B-movies which he learned how to improve, with picture
composition, camera angles, lighting and pictorial story-telling, until they
were far better than their budgets, screenplays or (often) cast warranted. And
when in 1949 he moved over to that even more American of genres, the Western,
he brought all those film noir techniques
to bear.
Early life
Relatively
little is known of Mann's early life. He was born, possibly Anton Bundsman, son of
two schoolteachers, in California c 1907. His family moved to New York when he
was about 10. He became fascinated with theater and when Anton was at high school his
father died and Anton sought work there, as an actor, production assistant and
director. The name Anton Mann can be found on Broadway cast lists in the late
1920s. In 1938 or ‘39 Selznick invited him to Hollywood to be a talent scout.
His film career started there. Straight away, he understood that movies were
not a case of filming stage plays; they were a different game altogether.
For each of the Westerns below, click the link
for a more detailed review.
Devil’s Doorway
His
first Western received little critical or box-office success. It was superb,
though, and later audiences and Western fans have appreciated its quality. It
was Devil’s Doorway, a black &
white, noirish tale of racial
prejudice and violence set in Wyoming (but shot in stunning Colorado
locations).
It starred an excellent Robert Taylor, in possibly his best Western
role. It also, interestingly, had a woman in a strong, central part – Paula
Raymond as the lawyer who, herself having been discriminated against, bonds
with the Shoshone war hero (Taylor) who is struggling to hold on to his land
because he is not, officially, a US citizen. It’s a fine, powerful film, and
redolent with almost Greek tragedy.
The Furies
The same
was true of his second Western, The Furies, based on a successful novel by Duel
in the Sun-author Niven Busch. This one starred Mrs. Robert Taylor (Barbara
Stanwyck) and though something of a torrid ‘family saga’, was
stunning in its power. Once again the luminous black & white
cinematography, this time in Arizona locations, the odd camera angles, the
compositions, the silhouettes on skylines, the night scenes and the dark,
oppressive interiors all combined to make the sinister, brooding
atmosphere at which Mann excelled.
Devil’s
Doorway had been photographed by old Mann hand John Alton; The Furies was shot by Victor Milner,
who had worked on The Plainsman and Union Pacific, and, uncredited, Lee
Garmes, who had done the film version of Duel in the Sun and would soon do The Lusty Men.
Winchester ’73
But it
was really Winchester ’73, made after
Devil’s Doorway and The Furies but released first, that made
Mann’s name in the Western genre.
This was
the first Western Mann made with James Stewart. Stewart actually helped get him
the job because Fritz Lang was slated to do it but pulled out at the last
moment and Stewart had seen and been impressed by Devil’s
Doorway. Stewart was looking to redefine himself as a tough-guy hero. He
had in fact already made Broken Arrow
with Delmer Daves but Fox were holding back on release until after Winchester had tested the waters. No one
was quite sure how Mr. Smith or Elwood P Dowd (or Destry come to that) would
play in a hard-as-nails adult Western. They should have had more confidence. Winchester was a smash.
It is in
fact one of the great Westerns of all time. It was way more than a ‘gun biopic’
such as Warners’ juvenile Colt .45 of
the same year. It was a gritty, violent, adult film with superlative acting,
exciting plot and, above all, Mann’s visual and pictorial power. And it made
Stewart one of the Western stars,
to rival Wayne, Peck or Fonda.
Bend of the River
Mann’s
fourth essay in the genre (unless you consider The Tall Target a Western, an excellent 1951 noir with Dick Powell about the
thwarting of a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln) was Bend of the River in 1952, again for Universal and again with Stewart. Already,
Mannish Western themes were beginning to establish themselves. Once again
Stewart is a man with a secret, a man with a past, this time slightly shady,
and once again he is more than determined: he is driven.
This time the scenery
is not the baking South-Western terrain but the cold and
mountainous North-West, and in color, yet still the harsh land is a
backdrop for the harsh realities the hero faces. And once again there is the
notion of a journey: a journey through space and time but also one in which the
central character develops and changes. It’s a fine Western, well written and
acted, and equally well photographed and staged.
The Naked Spur
And
then, the year after, came The Naked Spur.
This time Stewart is more than driven, he is manic, borderline psychotic. Mann’s
villains were often anti-heroes, bound to the central character by blood or
history and representing ‘the dark side’ of (usually) Stewart. In The Naked Spur Mann had the huge good
fortune to have Robert Ryan in that role and Ryan is absolutely magnificent as
the charismatic, almost charming, yet manipulative and even sadistic figure.
Is Spur is the greatest of all the Mann Westerns? It's tempting to think so. Certainly the almost
100% location shooting, in rugged San Juan Mountains locations (and a very
small cast set in this vast wilderness) give us a remarkable and memorable
picture.
The Far Country
There
was a brief pause then, for Thunder Bay
and The Glenn Miller Story (both
still with Stewart), before returning to the Western in 1955 with The Far Country. Almost Bend of the River 2 in some ways, this
one too was set in the cold North-West – even more so, in fact, because we have
moved over the border into Canada. Just as Bend
of the River told of a man at a turning point on his journey, so The Far Country featured a cold, hard
man who is distanced from society. All Mann’s Western titles had inner
significance of this kind.
There
are differences now. There are more interiors and studio work. The tone is slightly lighter, the hero less psychotic, and
there is even a dash of humor, especially with Walter Brennan doing his cranky
old sidekick act. And the three elderly saloon ‘gals’ singing to the new piano
are positively hilarious. Still, though, it’s a tough story of an outsider, a
story Camus might have recognized (I wonder if he saw it? I wouldn’t be surprised).
In this
one too the villain is splendid – different, but splendid. It’s John McIntire
as a faux-charmant crooked hanging
judge in a silk hat, in a stunningly good performance.
The Man from Laramie
Another
pause, this time for Strategic Air Command
(with guess who) and then, later in the year, what many (and I may be one of
them) regard as Mann’s masterpiece, The Man from Laramie.
Back in
the South-West (New Mexico), it was the first in CinemaScope, which suited Mann
very well. He was able to do mega-close-ups and isolate characters in vast
landscapes (the salt flats are especially well done). It was also the first
with Columbia (the other Stewart pictures had been with Universal) and that meant a
slightly weaker cast. But it was the last with Stewart, although neither Mann
nor Stewart knew this at the time. Mann in fact later said of the movie, “I wanted to recapitulate somehow my five years of collaboration with
Jimmy Stewart: that work distilled our relationship,” and in many ways Laramie is the sum of all the parts.
It is a
powerful, intense drama. Stewart was never better. Written by Philip Yordan and
Frank Burt from a TT Flynn short story in the Saturday Evening Post, and photographed by the talented Charles
Lang, with Mann ‘composing’, it was one of the best Westerns ever made. Only
the support acting let it down: Alex Nicols overacted as the spoilt-brat son,
Donald Crisp was too ‘English’ to be convincing as a rancher (he couldn’t
manage a Western ain’t for the life of him)
and even Arthur Kennedy as the adopted son wasn’t nearly the villain that the
other movies had featured. Cathy O’Donnell was also too ‘tame’, quiet and
domestic to be of serious interest.
But it’s
a perfectly splendid film nonetheless.
The Last Frontier
As if
two big Westerns in one year were not enough, Mann now made another, the
second for Columbia, The Last Frontier.
Actually, though, this one, in my view anyway, was one of Mann’s weaker efforts
– in fact with the last, Cimarron, I
think it not a patch on the others.
This was
despite the fact that it starred an excellent Victor Mature – an unlikely
Western hero perhaps but his Doc Holliday in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine had shown that he was very, very good in the
genre. He was also fine in a 1948 B-Western, Fury at Furnace Creek. And Robert Preston was there too, always
reliably good, as a martinet US Army colonel. But both Mann and Yordan (it’s a
Yordan screenplay again) had been slighting of cavalry Westerns and you feel
that when they finally decided to do one, that showed.
It
doesn’t really work. It’s the tale of a wild frontiersman (Mature) who seeks to
enter civilized society, by joining the Army. He falls for Colonel Preston’s
wife (Anne Bancroft, not so good this time). There was a cloying happy-ending,
which Mann said was imposed on him and which doesn’t fit.
There is
much to praise in the film, notably the pictorial composition and
cinematography by William Mellor in Puebla, Mexico locations. It was not the
“trashy big-budget junk” that the (usually impeccably right) Brian Garfield
called it. But it wasn’t very good either.
Night Passage
Well,
that was the end of the affair as far as the Mann/Stewart partnership was
concerned. Mann was slated to direct Night Passage in 1957 but the two fell out. Stewart wanted to include all sorts
of hokey bits (awful accordion playing, for instance) and Mann thought the
script too weak overall.
There are fans of this movie (who include some readers
of this blog) but I’m not one of them. Mann said he did in fact direct the
opening scenes but there is no trace of his hand that I can see and the whole
thing was rather a dud.
The Tin Star
Instead,
Mann made a Western with Stewart’s pal, Henry Fonda, The Tin Star. Several of Mann’s Westerns unjustly drew unfavorable
comparisons with other movies – Devil’s
Doorway and Broken Arrow, for
example – and perhaps because of the title, the short story it was based on by
a man named Kane, the theme of a sheriff not backed up by his town, whatever
the reason, it was talked of as a High Noon-lite. This is quite wrong. The
Tin Star, this time for Paramount, is an excellent Western in its own right
and in no sense a copy or a political allegory or anything like that.
It
features, guess what, a man with a ‘past’, an alienated outsider (Fonda) on a
journey, who passes through a town, and finds a green young sheriff (Anthony
Perkins) whom he takes on as a kind of apprentice. It is pretty classic stuff
for a Western. There is a town bully who wants to be sheriff (Neville Brand)
and who whips up a mob to lynch two brothers accused of murdering the loved old
doc (John McIntire again but this time in a benign role). Fonda teaches Perkins
how to handle a gun and how, in effect, to be a man.
Several
of Mann’s Westerns made an attempt, sometimes only a token one, to
re-integrate the outsider into society in the final reel. This time, though,
you feel he has really succeeded. Fonda forms a family unit with other social
outcasts, a woman (Betsy Palmer) and her young son by an Indian father. At the
end, they leave the town to a now capable sheriff Perkins and set off for that
classic Western destination, California, which represents a new pioneering
start, now that the present frontier has become ‘civilized’. They are still
outcasts, perhaps, but will settle down, you are sure, as quiet farmers
somewhere to the West.
Man of the West
Anthony
Mann’s penultimate Western (indeed, by some standards his last) was also one of
his finest. It was Man of the West
(1958).
Robert
Taylor, John Huston, Victor Mature, Henry Fonda, James Stewart of course: Mann
had enjoyed the great Western abilities of all these. But none of his stars was
greater than Gary Cooper. Cooper was, in my view, the greatest ever Western actor
and although he did not always get roles in great pictures (some of them were
actually pretty poor) he always lifted the mediocre ones, and made the good
ones great. He is the man of the West of the title of this picture and
absolutely magisterial in it. It may be his greatest Western role after High Noon.
Anthony
Mann made a violent, hard-as-rocks Western, keeping Lee J Cobb’s scenery-chewing
in check, eliciting fine performances from the likes of Julie London and John
Dehner (he didn’t have to elicit anything from Coop; that went without saying)
and making what was really a Greek tragedy in three acts.
Here,
Cooper’s Link Jones doesn’t just have a slightly shady, alluded-to past; his
former life as vicious outlaw is graphically described. Yet he clearly isn’t
just longing to put it behind him, he is working, hard, to do that and utterly
determined to succeed. It’s a story of redemption, against the odds, more so,
far more so than Bend of the River.
Each
time I watch an Anthony Mann Western (The
Last Frontier and Cimarron aside)
I think, no, this one is the best, definitely. OK, yes, probably The Man from Laramie was Mann at his
peak, but you know, Man of the West
comes close, it comes very close indeed.
Cimarron
Two
years passed. Anthony Mann was becoming interested in other things. Perhaps he
thought that he had said all he wanted to say as far as the Western was concerned.
What could top what he had done?
But
epics were now the thing. Probably in a last-ditch effort to combat
TV, studios were throwing budgetary cares to the wind, impressing casts of
thousands and trying to give the public what TV couldn't - big-screen
spectacle. Anthony Mann had moved from noirs to Westerns in 1950 and now in 1960 moved from
Westerns to widescreen epics (El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire were to come). Perhaps MGM
thought that a big color remake of a box-office and critical hit like Cimarron was a sure-fire hit, and Mann a banker's bet. If so, they were wrong. It was a
dud.
Mann did
his best to interpret Edna Ferber’s pot-boiler novel into a big Western, notably
by placing more emphasis on Glenn Ford’s part as Yancey, trying to make him the
hero rather than just Sabra’s husband. But he was hamstrung at every turn.
Despite the big budget, producer Edmund Grainger kept insisting on more and
more studio settings, anathema to Mann who wanted an all-location epic picture.
In the end, Mann walked off the set and the movie was finished by a more
obedient and uncredited Charles Waters, famous for Easter Parade. The film was a critical and box-office flop.
It’s a
pity because it went down as Anthony Mann’s last Western. It was never a
Western at all, really, more a dreaded ‘family saga’ that was only Western at
the start. Yes, the land rush in widescreen was impressive but as a Western it
never got better than that early scene. Let’s consider Man of the West as Mann’s last Western and go out on a high note.
Farewell
Anthony
Mann in the 1960s moved on to epics and spy movies and passes out of our
Western ken. In 1967 in Berlin, aged only 60, he died suddenly from a massive
heart attack while on the set of A Dandy
in Aspic.
But any
Western lover will rank him as one of the greats of the genre, and he is
doubtless now presiding over us all somewhere high on the Western Mount
Olympus, probably up somewhere in the Rockies. So long and thank you.
Love all of Mann's work, but include me in on those who really like Night Passage. It just seems sweeter than his usual work, and that's a good thing. But all of them (well... not Cimarron) are winners!
ReplyDeleteFair enough. I agree that there are good points about it. It cretainly isn't Mann though!
DeleteI'm now thinking of a comparative piece about Delmer Daves...
Jeff
Winchester '73 and The Man from Laramie are at the top of the list. In '72 I met Jimmy Stewart for a few moments at the National Film Theatre in London. He was just as you'd expect - gentle and charming. I asked him a question about the Laramie shot through the hand scene and was so nervous I can't remember what he said!
ReplyDeleteI think I would agree with your choice. I know what you mean about being flustered: I met Bob Dylan once in Terminal 4 of Heathrow Airport and also couldn't remember his answer to my question!
DeleteJeff
A true author and artist but always entertaining! Interesting to note Mann made Devil's Doorway at the peak of maccarthysm with Robert Taylor who was not especially known as a leftist. There is an interesting, brilliant and maybe over intellectual book about Mann written by 2 belgian researchers at a Brussels university
ReplyDeleteAnthony Mann, arpenter l'image
Natacha Pfeiffer et Laurent Van Eynde
Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2019
JM