MADE IN AMERICA: EXPLORING THE HOLLYWOOD WESTERN WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950) – INTRODUCTORY LECTURE

TRANSCRIPT Winchester ‘73 (1950): Introductory Lecture

Welcome to the Western. I’m glad that you could join me today. Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director he often collaborated with cinematographer John Alton and with actor Jimmy Stewart.

Winchester ’73, the movie we’ll be examining in this unit, was so successful that it promoted Anthony Mann to being an A-level director. As a director of Westerns, Man is best known for Winchester ’73, released in 1950, with Jimmy Stewart; Bend of the River, released in 1952, with Jimmy Stewart; The Naked Spur, released in 1953, with Jimmy Stewart; The Far Country, released in 1955, with Jimmy Stewart; and The Man From Laramie, released in 1955, with Jimmy Stewart.

Mann’s other Westerns include The Furies, released in 1950, with Barbara Stanwyck; Devil’s Doorway, released in 1950, with Robert Taylor, The Tin Star, released in 1957, with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins; and Man of the West, released in 1958 with Gary Cooper.

Winchester ’73 is an outstanding film because it reinvented the Western genre. It ushered in what is known as the “adult” Westerns of the 1950s in which protagonists are focused on revenge, redemption, or complex family problems. In the “adult” Western of the 1950s, sweeping vistas seem to overwhelm the human element. You find a much grittier West than the frontier located in the classical Western. The “adult” Western contains cowboy hats stained with sweat and run-down desert bars, predators and existentially alienated individuals.

Winchester ‘73 was released by Universal International Pictures in the United States and Europe in 1950. It was a very successful picture. Winchester ’73 grossed $4.5 million domestically at the box office, and it remains popular. In the U.S. alone it has collected $2.25 million in rentals. And this is a movie that was once project for director Fritz Lang who walked away from it.

It was actor Jimmy Stewart who suggested that Anthony Mann direct it. Winchester ’73 was the first collaboration between Anthony Mann and actor Jimmy Stewart. It’s considered to be the first MADE IN AMERICA: EXPLORING THE HOLLYWOOD WESTERN WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950) – INTRODUCTORY LECTURE

of the psychological Westerns. And it launched a series of “adult’ Westerns directed by Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.

It is the film that re-established Jimmy Stewart who was suffering a decline in his career as one of Hollywood’s top leading men. In Winchester ’73, Stewart plays a hero who’s driven by the forces of his past. It’s a perfect venue for such material. “Adult” Westerns reflect the influence of film noir on the traditional oater and explore the corruption inherent in settler society. Winchester ’73 unites the Western, film noir, and Greek tragedy. Let’s take a look at the connection between Winchester ’73 and Greek tragedy first.

Lin McAdam is a Western protagonist who’s pursued by the furies of his past. The movie opens with McAdam pursuing an outlaw. He rides into Dodge City, Kansas, one of those cattle towns that I was talking about in the Red River (1948) unit, and participates in a shooting contest. He wins a perfect Winchester rifle that everyone wants to have.

Dutch Henry, the outlaw he was pursing, steals the rifle, and then an Indian trader acquires it. Young Bull, an Indian chief, wants the rifle and steals it from the trader. When Young Bull dies, a cavalryman named Doan finds it. It is passed from Doan to Steve, Lola Manners’ husband, who is then forced to give it back to Dutch Henry. Lin shoots Dutch Henry and kills him and acquires the rifle which he had won at the beginning of the movie.

It turns out that Lin had been pursuing Henry because Henry had shot his father in the back. Winchester ‘73’s complicated revenge plot is one that could only be found in either a Greek tragedy or the American West. Henry’s father is also Lin’s father, so Lin exacted revenge for his father’s death by killing his own brother.

There are a number of connections between film noir and the Western in this movie. I’d like to examine just one today, that being the femme fatale. The femme fatale is a stock character. She is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers often leading them into compromising, dangerous and deadly situations. The term femme fatale literally means killer or deadly woman.

Femme fatales are trouble. They are mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, predatory, tough, manipulative, desperate women. They cannot be trusted and they attempt to bring the protagonist to his downfall by attracting and corrupting him. Above all, femme fatales are MADE IN AMERICA: EXPLORING THE HOLLYWOOD WESTERN WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950) – INTRODUCTORY LECTURE

irresistible. Gender issues in the Western invite film noir treatments for in Westerns women seem to either domesticate men or destroy them.

As Jane Tomkins points out, “the Western answers the nineteenth century domestic novel. It is the antithesis of the cult of domesticity that dominated American Victorian culture. The Western hero who seems to ride in out of nowhere in fact comes riding in out of the nineteenth century.”

“The Western hero is confronted by two options when it comes to women: he might avoid the ‘feminine sphere,’ and thus continue his free ranging existence, or he might enter that sphere, at the expense of giving up his status as Westerner.”

The femme fatale in the Western is “the female exception to the ‘feminine sphere’” is “the saloon girl and her variants,” described by Philip French as being “reasonably plentiful, sexually available, and community property.”

In Winchester ’73 Lola Manners fits this description to a tee. But is she a femme fatale? Mann plays with this problem throughout the movie. In the “adult’ Western, the saloon girl is often portrayed as a fatal woman, an irresistibly attractive woman who leads men to destruction so when watching Winchester ’73 be sure to keep your eye on Lola Manners, who’s played by Shelly Winters. We’ll have to talk about her in the forum.