Winchester '73 (1950)
Anthony Mann, US 1950
Print source: Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA
Running time: 93 minutes
About the print
This print displays light, recurrent vertical base scratching, but it does not detract from the lovely Arizona landscape. There is some warpage, which causes the print to wander at times in the film path and can affect focus, making the projectionists’ job even more difficult. Shrinkage: 0.65%
About the film
“The rifle Winchester ’73 is a beauty, and so is the picture about it. I use the word, however, in admiration of the picture’s cinematic feel and not of the story it tells and the emotions it engenders, which are ugly. For the bad men of this movie at Ritz, United Artists, Vogue, Culver and Studio City theaters are really evil men, and even its hero, James Stewart, is spurred by an old blood feud to kill. The technique employed by Stuart N. Lake, author, Robert L. Richards and Borden Chase, scenarists, and Anthony Mann, director, has the same lean-ribbed, debunking quality as the recent Gunfighter. The men in Winchester ’73 seem to be the product of the hard land and a parlous time; everything conspires against their chances for survival, and they are ringed by hostile forces, tangible and intangible.”
– Philip K. Scheuer, Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1950
“The famous Winchester repeating rifle, ‘the gun that won the West,’ is celebrated in a lively and noisy western at the Paramount. Winchester ’73 has the redoubtable James Stewart wearing a dirty ten gallon hat and six-shooters and avenging his father’s death back in the 1870s. It also has enough action to carry several horse operas and still have some to spare. There is a rifle match in Dodge City, followed by a successful repulse of Sioux Indians on the warpath just after Custer’s last stand. Stage coach holdups and killings in cold blood punctuate the proceedings. All in all, it is quite a melodrama of frontier days. . . . Of chief importance is the fact that Anthony Mann has kept the action violent and progressive, winding up with a wild Winchester duel on a craggy ridge.”
– Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, June 8, 1950