Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950)

The first of five Westerns from director Anthony Mann & James Stewart not only reinvigorated the genre (on screens big & small), but also paved the way for big-time profit-participation by movie stars. If only the film were as interesting as it was influential. It’s a fairly standard revenge tale with the eponymous rifle setting up a portmanteau of episodes as we follow a doomed line-up of temporary rifle owners. Meanwhile, Stewart (who opened the film by winning the prized Winchester fair & square) moves ever onward in his obsessive hunt for a killer, and the accumulating pressure is relieved at regular intervals thanks to the Winchester ‘73 trickle-down theory. The secret behind Stewart’s quest is conveniently held for the last two reels, but you’ll be neither satisfied nor surprised. You will get to see a set of youthful turns from rising stars like Shelley Winters, Tony Curtis & Rock Hudson (all seriously miscast), and a grandly scaled perf from slimy Dan Duryea as a scaldingly amoral killer. He’s worth all the fuss.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Two years on, with BEND IN THE RIVER/’52, Mann became Stewart’s go-to director; seven films in four years, thru THE MAN FROM LARAMIE/’55 which may well be best of the lot.

No comments: