Spartacus

SPARTACUS              C+                  

USA  (184 mi)  1960  ‘Scope  d:  Stanley Kubrick    uncredited director:  Anthony Mann  1967 re-release (161 mi)     1991 Restored version (197 mi)

The only Kubrick film that disappoints, as it was after this film, which Stanley Kubrick thought was a personal disaster, that he left the United States and took up permanent residence in Hertfordshire north of London in England.  It remains the only film directed by Kubrick where he did not have complete artistic control.  While Kubrick disowned the film and did not include it as part of his own original work, it grossed $60 million dollars for a $12 million dollar picture (one of the costliest movies of its era), becoming the biggest moneymaking hit in Universal Studio history until surpassed by AIRPORT (1970), and remains the third highest grossing Kubrick picture after 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), nearly $200 million, and EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) at $160 million.  According to Kubrick afterwards, “Then I did Spartacus, which was the only film that I did not have control over, and which I feel was not enhanced by that fact.  It all really just came down to the fact that there are thousands of decisions that have to be made, and that if you don’t make them yourself, and if you’re not on the same wavelength as the people who are making them, it becomes a very painful experience, which it was.”  Biblical epics, also known as sword and sandal movies, were extremely popular in the 50’s, including Mervyn LeRoy’s QUO VADIS (1951), which includes uncredited direction from Anthony Mann, Henry Koster’s THE ROBE (1953), Cecil B. DeMille’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), and William Wyler’s BEN-HUR (1959), which went on to win 11 Academy Awards.  SPARTACUS came about largely from Wyler’s refusal to hire Kirk Douglas in the title role, a part he passionately craved, hiring Charlton Heston instead as the noble hero, while offering Douglas the role of the villainous enemy Messala, a part he refused, instead forming his own production company to make his own Roman epic, admitting “That was what spurred me to do it, in a childish way—the ‘I’ll-show-them’ sort of thing.”  Initially turned down by David Lean, veteran director Anthony Mann, best known for his tense, psychological westerns like Winchester '73 (1950), The Naked Spur (1953), and Man of the West (1958), but also noir films like T-MEN (1947), RAW DEAL (1948), and Side Street (1950), a man with a predilection for shooting outdoors, was hired for the film.  Supposedly after shooting the opening quarry sequence of slaves crushing rocks under the brutal hot sun while under the whip of Roman guards, filmed in Death Valley, Nevada, Douglas fired him, citing artistic differences during the shooting of scenes at the gladiator school, hiring the young 31-year old Stanley Kubrick to take over, a director he had worked with previously in PATHS OF GLORY (1957).  To show how quickly this came about, Mann was fired on Friday, Kubrick read the script over the weekend, and was called in to begin shooting on Monday.

A Biblical epic with no religious overtones, the film about an early Roman slave revolt was based on the 1951 novel by Howard Fast, a former communist who began writing it as a reaction to his own imprisonment during the era of McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting, where he was imprisoned for 3-months for contempt of Congress after refusing to disclose the names of contributors to fund a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War.  While Douglas optioned the book, he also took on the dual responsibilities of executive producer and star of the film.  Ironically, after receiving 60 pages of script from Fast, Douglas turned to another blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten who defied the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and was sentenced to a year in jail for refusing to cooperate.  After a decade of writing scripts under pseudonyms, Douglas helped destroy the Hollywood blacklist by using Trumbo’s own name in the credits.  There are interesting parallels with the McCarthy Hearings demanding witnesses “name names” of supposed communist sympathizers and a climactic scene near the end of the film after the revolt is crushed, where the tyrannical Roman General Crassus demands the captured slaves identify their leader, where each one stands up and proclaims “I am Spartacus,” leading Crassus to make the ominous proclamation, “In every city and province, lists of the disloyal have been compiled,” where every one on the list is cruelly put to death.  Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper denounced the film, claiming “The story was sold to Universal from a book written by a commie and the screen script was written by a commie, so don’t go to see it.”  Apparently nobody listened.  This is truly a Hollywood spectacle, with 10,000 extras used in the climactic battle sequence between slaves and Roman legions, but much of the film has little or no dialogue (where Kubrick reported having the most artistic freedom), accentuating the visual composition, often featuring the grandeur of an immense landscape, much of which were painted sets used as backdrops.  While the opening shots of the final battle sequence between Spartacus’s army of slaves and the geometrically arranged Roman army were actually shot in Madrid with Kubrick directing the armies from the top of specially constructed towers, the battle sequences were shot on a Hollywood soundstage, where the vast visual design recalls similar uses of perfectly choreographed battle formations set in giant landscapes from Miklós Jancscó’s THE RED AND THE WHITE (1967) and Kurosawa’s RAN (1985).  This was Kubrick’s first film in color and the first shot in widescreen, using 35 mm Super 70 Technirama which was then blown up to 70 mm film.  The cinematographer Russell Metty often complained about Kubrick’s unusually precise and detailed instructions for the film’s camerawork, but never complained about winning the Oscar for Best Cinematography. 

Despite hiring a visionary director like Kubrick, he was little more than a hired hand, unfortunately straddled by the suffocating restrictions of the era, where the film is basically a traditional “sword and sandal” costume drama with little or no character development, accentuating the heroic nature of the noble hero Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), while all the other Roman characters couldn’t be more despicable in their plotting attempts to continually manipulate and outmaneuver others for power or money.  According to Kubrick, the film “had everything but a good story,” as there’s a lack of identification with anyone onscreen, where Kubrick complained the character of Spartacus was depicted as a saint, with no human faults, which has a way of dating the film, unlike the timelessness of Kubrick’s other films, but this was the typical Hollywood formula that continued unabated throughout the 50’s and 60’s until they broke the bank with CLEOPATRA (1963), where by the end of the decade studios had completely lost their autocratic power.  Kubrick distanced himself from the film afterwards, continually at odds with the writer Trumbo over conflicting visions, where the working relationship with Douglas soured as well.  Douglas notes in his autobiography, “You can be a shit and be talented and, conversely, you can be the nicest guy in the world and not have any talent.  Stanley Kubrick is a talented shit.”  Despite all the troubles on the set, SPARTACUS was a critical and commercial success, winning four Academy Awards, and established Kubrick as a director of note, though many of the violent battle scenes were eventually cut due to negative audience reactions at preview screenings.  Also excluded in the original release was a bath scene (filmed at William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon estate) where Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis with his completely out of place Brooklyn accent), claiming sexual preference is all a matter of taste, like “eating oysters” or “eating snails,” rather than a reflection of morality.  The film was re-released in 1967 in a version 23-minutes shorter, and again in 1991 with the same 23-minutes restored while also adding an additional 14-minutes cut from the original release.  Due to the death of Olivier two years earlier, when the film was restored in 1991, the original audio recording of the bath scene was missing, so it had to be redubbed by Tony Curtis, and with the permission of Olivier’s widow, actress Joan Plowright, she recommended Anthony Hopkins, a protégé of Olivier from the Royal National Theater, to impersonate Olivier’s voice in the scene.  Also missing is a scene where Roman Senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton) commits suicide, though the act is certainly implied due to the dramatic power shift.  

It was actually during the making of this movie that Kubrick discovered a preference for filming in the controlled environment of a studio, as there were fewer outside distractions or acts of nature to contend with, believing actors could better concentrate working on a sound stage.  Douglas assembled a powerful cast, starting with Laurence Olivier, who read the book and felt he’d be perfect playing the part of Spartacus, then afterwards suggested he’d consider the part of Crassus if it was improved upon.  Laurence Olivier playing one of the first bisexual characters in a major Hollywood film, you’d think this would be noteworthy, but according to Douglas, the scene was “very subtle, nothing explicit.  The censors weren’t sure it was about homosexuality, but just in case they wanted it out.”  Douglas fought for the scene, claiming it was significant because it “showed another way the Romans abused the slaves.”  For the role of Varinia, Spartacus’s love interest, initially the role was given to German actress Sabina Bethmann, but once shooting got underway, it was decided she was not right for the part, so Douglas quickly replaced her with Jean Simmons, who had just finished shooting ELMER GANTRY (1960), eventually marrying the director Richard Brooks.  Peter Ustinov quickly signed on as Batiatus, a major slave trader and the operator of the gladiator training school, winning the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, but it was harder to convince Charles Laughton, who took one look at the script and reportedly uttered, “Really, a piece of shit.”  In the end he took the role as he needed the money, earning $41,000 for 13 days of shooting that he claimed was far from a pleasant experience, though Laughton stole most every scene he was in.  Rounding out the cast was Woody Strode, part of the John Ford stable of actors who played one of the strongest gladiators, matching Douglas blow for blow in the ring, among the better scenes in the film, becoming the spark that led the slave revolt at the training camp in Capua, quickly overrunning the guards, leading to an uprising that soon spread across the Italian Peninsula freeing tens of thousands of slaves, expressed as a utopian vision of freedom, where they quickly overrun the initial Roman army dispatched to rout them, causing a great deal of embarrassment and dissatisfaction in the Roman Senate, where John Gavin as Julius Caesar is promoted as Commander of the garrison of Rome, while General Crassus and his own army takes it upon himself to quell the rebellion. 

The historical era of the slave revolt was the two year period from 73 – 71 B.C., a time when slavery accounted for roughly every third person in Italy, where Spartacus and his ragtag army that included the elderly, women and children, actually defeated the Roman army on several occasions, even threatening Rome itself, eventually hoping to escape through the purchase of pirate ships awaiting them in the Eastern seaport of Brundisium, where the slaves could return to the lands of their origins where they had originally been sold to the Romans.  In the film Spartacus improbably announces their intentions, disclosing the exact location where they are heading, all but guaranteeing a massive Roman army would be there waiting for them.  While this strategy appears doomed from the outset, had they not been double crossed by Crassus, the ships bought out from underneath them, they might have gotten away with it.  Instead, after a long march to the sea, they have to turn and face the enemy, unwittingly moving his forces into a historical trap that the Romans were well acquainted with, having the time to bring in legions of troops from abroad, leaving Spartacus pinned between armies in what turns into a gory spectacle with tens of thousands slaughtered and a few thousand survivors left for capture.  When they refuse to identify which one is their leader Spartacus in exchange for leniency, Crassus decrees they all forfeit their right to live, stringing up all 6000 of his followers along with Spartacus on wooden crosses where they are crucified along the Appian Way, a 120 mile corridor between Capua and Rome.  For Trumbo, the barely hidden allegory of Joseph McCarthy’s fascist destruction of left-wing dissent in the 50’s was paramount, where the scene was meant to dramatize the solidarity of those accused of being Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy Era, glorifying the heroism of those who refused to implicate others, but there’s little evidence Kubrick held similar interests or motivation.  There’s no hint of any revolutionary spirit, or any sense of sacrifice for a greater good, instead there is a rush to doom where each one is left to an inglorious fate, dying an agonizing death, left isolated and alone, where they end up pawns in somebody else’s game.  Like most costume dramas, especially one based in antiquity, actors rarely give their best performances as they tend to overact and overdramatize, where the human element along with subtlety is diminished in order to emphasize the dazzling spectacle and pageantry.  Kubrick remedied that situation when he made his own historical costume drama, BARRY LYNDON (1975), one of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever made, where the contemplative pace balanced with plenty of sardonic wit and humor on display are a welcome change to these dreadfully pompous Hollywood presentations, where Kubrick’s later film is an advanced experiment in cinematic structure and design, one of his most worthy masterpieces. 

On Dangerous Ground

ON DANGEROUS GROUND         A-                                                                                    aka:  Dark Highway                                                                                                                    USA  (82 mi)  1952  d:  Nicholas Ray

Guy Maddin, transcribed from a 2009 introduction of the film at the IFC Center:                        Has there ever been a face—rugged and manfully handsome yet fragile with inner agonies promising to explode into volcanic rage—like Robert Ryan’s? Nick Ray harnesses the violent force of this face as Ryan pounds his beat, and every face on it, to Bernard Hermann’s greatest score. Ward Bond has never been more precipitous or more startling—his grief and stupidity as powerful and natural as a mountain cataract.

Actually filmed before his previous film FLYING LEATHERNECKS (1951), this feels like a natural extension of an earlier character, Humphrey Bogart’s Dix Steele at the end of In a Lonely Place (1950), an outsider with a penchant for violence who can’t conform to the rules of society, perhaps the template for John Ford’s Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) character in THE SEARCHERS (1956) or even Scorsese’s Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) character in Taxi Driver (1975).  While the arc of their lives is decidedly different, when we are introduced to all these characters, their propensity for violence is key to understanding their pent up, out of control inner rage, where these men are defined by the jagged edges of their soul, always irritable and dissatisfied, railing at the world around them, but usually it’s a personal disgust with themselves, how ineffectual they are at preventing the sick and twisted perverts of the world from ruining so many people’s lives.  The opening half hour of this film is textbook film noir, On Dangerous Ground -- (Movie Clip) Cop Killers YouTube (3:32), introducing Robert Ryan as a New York City cop Jim Wilson, a guy living alone in a depressingly tiny tenement apartment, who’s been on the force 11 years and seen it all, growing sick of continually dealing with the lowlifes and scum of the earth, “garbage, that’s all we handle,” always having to see the worst side of human nature, growing increasingly rough and physical when making arrests, perhaps crossing the line of police brutality, which he justifies by making the collar, but he’s turned into a loose cannon where his partners think he’s losing it and may crack under the pressure.  Nonetheless, he always starts out cool and collected before something drives him over the edge, as we see in two interrogation scenes here On Dangerous Ground (1952) - Video Dailymotion (5:42). 

Adapted by Ray and A.I. Bezzerides from Gerald Butler’s novel Mad With Much Heart, this is not as well known as other Ray films (though believed to be his favorite), partly because the release was delayed for a year while Howard Hughes tinkered with the editing, adding a new scene condemning police brutality, dropping a posse subplot in the snow, and adding a lushly romantic ending that Ray and film noir devotees disavowed.  By the time it was released, it followed William Wyler’s DETECTIVE STORY (1951), making this feel like a copycat movie.  Structurally, it’s also quite unique, as it breaks formula, starting out as a straight film noir, good cops doing the city’s dirty business but at a psychological price, but in the second half of the film they get out of the city into the snowy expanse of the mountain country, where it feels more like an Anthony Mann western that certainly had its influence on the Coen brother’s Fargo (1996).  Bezzerides’ novel Long Haul was used for Raoul Walsh’s They Drive By Night (1940), while also co-writing William Wellman’s TRACK OF THE CAT (1954) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), all highly influential projects.  Bezzerides is actually seen early in the film as a corrupt bar owner attempting to bribe Ryan while he’s making the rounds attempting to collect information about a local cop killer on the loose.  When the police chief (Ed Begley) informs Wilson that the police force is being sued for his excessive use of brutality, the chief decides to send him upstate, to get him out into the country where he’ll have a new start and perhaps a fresh attitude.  Little did he know that’s exactly what happens, making this actually feel like two entirely different films.  Perhaps the film’s biggest influence is the outstanding Bernard Herrmann music, very pronounced from the opening credits, then all but disappears as the cops make their rounds in searing realism, before becoming perfectly integrated into the film again, where the Los Angeles Philharmonic plays a brief excerpt ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951) - Death Hunt ... (2:26) and Herrmann himself can be heard in brief audio clips of highly demanding rehearsal sessions On Dangerous Ground - Scoring Outtakes - YouTube (2:21). 

As soon as Wilson arrives upstate and hears the particulars, we hear a young girl’s been killed, where her father, Ward Bond at his angry best, is on a vigilante rampage, shotgun in hand and ready to shoot at the first thing that looks like the killer.  Bond drives this second half with his near psychotic rage, which tempers Wilson, seeing himself in the old man, becoming a more restrained police investigator instead of utilizing the heavy handed brute techniques of vigilantism.  Interestingly, Bond was politically to the right of John Wayne and likely Attila the Hun, where he led the Red Scare witch hunt to publicly identify and castigate communists from under every rock in America, where here he plays someone very close to his real character, as much like Wayne’s Ethan Edwards, he’s driven to mercilessly track down and find the killer.  This psychological shift from one psychopath to another can be heard in Hermann’s remarkable score which pulsates with mad energy in wordless sequences as they follow the footprints in the snow, Bond leading at a brisk pace, stomping through the snow, rifle in hand, one following right behind the other until they come upon a cabin in an open meadow On Dangerous Ground -- (Movie Clip) Scared People  (4:13, followed by the trailer).  Entering carefully, they discover a quietly polite blind woman inside, Ida Lupino, playing against type, becoming the calming voice of a gentle woman who is largely dependent on others, due to her condition, changing the tone of the film from wrath to reason On Dangerous Ground : The Blind And The Cop ... (3:22).  But Bond is hell bent and will not be dissuaded until the killer is caught, where the struggle is as much Ryan against Bond as the two of them trying to find the killer.  An interior melancholic mood established through the quiet of a wintry night turns into a psychologically riveting chase scene during the light of day, as by morning, the escapee leads them on a hunt through an open expanse into the rocky cliffs nearby, very similar to the ending in Mann’s Winchester '73 (1950), where a tense struggle leads to an enduring tragedy, where a film noir turns into a film blanc due to the heavy cover of snow.  The music really makes this film, as there are rapidly changing moods that are only accentuated by the score, adding interior depth to what turns into a glorified depiction of fullblown romanticism by the end, as Wilson finally discovers his humanity, where the earlier violence and anger shifts to forgiveness and love, where the close-up image of the embrace of hands is a transcendent Bressonian moment.     

Winchester '73

WINCHESTER ’73              A-                   

USA  (92 mi)  1950  d:  Anthony Mann 

From films like T-MEN (1947) and RAW DEAL (1948), Anthony Mann brought his textbook film noir stylization to the American western, bringing along Frank Capra’s American everyman Jimmy Stewart to boot, the first of five westerns they would make together, giving him a piece of the take in lieu of a salary that he could not afford to pay, turning the lovable Stewart into a man with a tortured past, obsessed, angry and bitter at having spent the last few years of his life chasing after his nemesis, the man who shot his father in the back.  Along with a more hard-edged, psychological view, Mann also preferred to shoot on location, which adds an element of realism and authenticity to the look of the film, while still carrying over insulting American stereotypes about Indians, where none other than Rock Hudson makes an early appearance as an Indian chief, uttering that stupifying “Injun” lingo to add insult to injury, not to mention that exact same portrayal of Indians in battle that John Ford initiated in STAGECOACH (1939), sending wave after wave of Indians on horseback senselessly to meet their deaths while few if any whites get shot, actions that by any standards would be considered sheer idiocy.  Nonetheless, this film helped bring about a new wave of westerns that once again took another stab at re-inventing the West, this time at least making an attempt at being more truthful.  

A unique twist in this film is introducing the actual weapon, a Winchester 1873 repeating rifle, that the opening title credits indicate “won the West,” as Indians were never able to match weapons with a repeating rifle that did not need to be reloaded after a single shot, their ultimate undoing, and then turning one such rifle into a character in the film, as the story seems to follow whoever’s carrying the gun.  Set on the 4th of July in Dodge City, Kansas in 1876, Marshal Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) holds a shooting contest where the winner is awarded a rare "One of One Thousand" edition of the rifle, a valued weapon that draws together Stewart as Lin McAdams, along with his loyal sidekick High Spade Frankie Wilson, the always low key Millard Mitchell, and the volatile Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally), the man McAdams has been trailing.  When they spot each other, their reaction says it all.  But they can’t kill each other, as the law disarms everyone entering town in order to keep the peace, so they go through the motions of simply hating one another.  The shooting contest is interesting, as it goes into what’s ironically called sudden death overtime to determine the winner, McAdams—was there ever a doubt?  But within minutes, Brown and his gang have bushwacked McAdams and stolen his gun.  A pursuit follows, where the gun is at the heart of plenty of action, which takes them to a legendary card game between Brown and an Indian trader, John McIntire, full of swagger and especially creepy at outsmarting others, a gun deal gone wrong between the trader and Young Bull (Hudson), an eventful buggy ride between saloon girl Lola Manners, one of Shelley Winters best roles, sensuous and tough at the same time, never seen with a speck of dirt on her, her hair never out of place, seen earlier being unsolicitously thrown out of town by the Marshal in order to give the town an appearance of being clean and orderly for the festivities, and her fiancé (Charles Drake) just as they are attacked by Indians.  This buggy chase is memorable when the guy confoundingly halts the buggy and bolts away on a horse leaving Winters to fend for herself, a stupifyingly cowardly act, only to discover a small group of Cavalry around the bend, so he returns and brings her to temporary shelter, though as they soon discover, they are surrounded by Indians.   

One clever sound device is listening to the singing of the Indians, who make eerie, highly distinctive animal calls in the night, while also getting the sound of the rifles right.  McAdams and his partner join this little party as well, telling war stories about the Civil War, where incredulously, McAdams is not only aware of the Custer defeat while riding out on the range, which happened in late June of the same year, but he’s also well informed on the Indian’s military strategy on how to attack repeating rifles, which one would have to conclude would be impossible since there were no witnesses.  Again, this is typical of American mythmaking in westerns, which continues through John Wayne’s portrayal in John Ford’s legendary THE SEARCHERS (1956), considered by many to be the best western ever made, where the lead whites (Wayne and Stewart) are not only the most skilled marksmen, but they’re also the wisest military tacticians on the planet, offering a mythologically superior view of whites contrasted against Indians who can’t hit the broad side of a barn.  This exact same scenario has played out in dime store novels, comic books, newspapers, books, as well as movies, always the same, where Indians are just plain dumb, where westerns established the seeds of historic racism that may never be rectified.  Since this is one of the iconic westerns, and seen as a turning point towards more realism, this is painfully hard to swallow.  Nonetheless, the whites are attacked at first light (perpetuating another myth that Indians never attack at night) and wave after wave of Indians are slaughtered before our eyes, including Young Bull and his infamous rifle.  Discovered on the battlefield, the rifle is ironically turned over to Drake for his courage under fire, but he soon loses it as well. 

Enter Waco Johnny Dean, Dan Duryea as a preening lunatic playing his part in the physically exaggerated style of Brando, where his theatricality seems amusing even to Lola whom he abducts and abhors everything that he stands for, but she’s caught by his unorthodox, near caricature of a psychotic outlaw.  He joins up with Dutch Henry Brown, as outlaws always seem to do, and the rest is history.  McAdams stands down Waco Johnny in a manic scene of pure madness, where Stewart had never been seen before savagely fuming with such venom, before he and Brown hightail it out of town for the inevitable final showdown.  We soon discover in a Cain and Abel story that Brown is the bad seed brother to McAdams, whose been tracking him down ever since he shot their father in the back.  They end up in a shootout just between the two of them in a rocky canyon with bullets flying off the rocks, a delirious gunfight that is all about family honor and personal vengeance.  In the end, despite a nicely crafted edginess to a movie that delivers the goods with plenty of action, taut editing, crisp dialogue, some interesting characterizations, and exquisite location photography by cinematographer William Daniels, especially the silhouettes on horseback riding at the top of the hills, copied by none other than Ingmar Bergman for the finale to THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957), the resolution comes all too quickly as the moral lines are drawn hard and fast in this movie.

Postscript:
Largely a response to the extensive comments left below by Andrea Ostrov Letania who has her own website here:  ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA

I'm afraid this response may not do justice to your stated concerns, as differing views may be just that, but it's an attempt to clarify possible misconceptions.  Racial depictions are prevalent in Westerns, along with societal inequities and historical injustices, so they need to be evaluated along with the film.

“John Ford initiated in STAGECOACH (1939), sending wave after wave of Indians on horseback senselessly to meet their deaths while few if any whites get shot, actions that by any standards would be considered sheer idiocy.”

To clarify, the idiocy isn't what happened, that Indians (or Chinese Boxers in one of your examples) were shot down in droves, but the way this was portrayed onscreen, where the whites not only shoot the Indians, but also their horses out from under them - - all in a single shot.  This is utter lunacy, yet it is the key to understanding John Ford's mythical creation of a continually escalating visceral thrill onscreen, where the camera is placed low to the ground looking up at the Indian on the horse as they both die, falling simultaneously to the ground, all from a single bullet.  This happens repeatedly, as the fast-paced movement actually creates tension and drives the action.  Why few critics have questioned this outrageously racist depiction is beyond me, as whites are always depicted as not only militarily, but morally and intellectually superior, as if this is a known and undisputed fact, continually portraying Indians as savages and never as the culturally developed people that they were, who did not ravage and destroy the earth, understanding they were dependent upon it to survive.  These images degrade the viewer's understanding and appreciation for Indians and their place in American history, as they were more often the victim of genocide and untold atrocities by the U.S. Cavalry and Defense Department that attempted to wipe them off the face of the earth in order to make way for the white settlers.  It is this fictitious and mythical view of supposed white superiority, as projected in the movies, that continues to plague this nation, reflected by the equally hostile and racist attitudes of many misinformed American soldiers when they are sent to foreign lands.    

I'm not suggesting the Indians (or the Boxers) were stupid, only the invented version of Indians as savages as created by whites in movies, which shows no understanding whatsoever of Indians or Indian culture, something altogether missing in these films.  My point here is to clarify how Mann at least attempted to add a look of realism, including psychological depth and complexity to the Western, but continued to project the same racist "Indian as savages" viewpoint depicted by Ford.  Both added to the common misconceptions, yet both are revered for their supposed authenticity and historic attention to detail in their depiction of the West.  Someone needs to point out how racist and degrading their supposed portrait of authenticity really is.  They allowed white characters to be psychologically complex, but never Indians.

When looking at John Ford, he is a man whose cinematic visualizations are renowned, but his hatchet job of American history is equally legendary, as he insists on perpetrating the same racist myths about Indians that have been in effect for the past 100 years, which makes his historic vision as a filmmaker no better than the dime store novelist that originated these misconceptions.  Ford has always portrayed Indians in the least desirable light, showing them to be less than human, vicious savages, terrible shots, poor military strategists, and little more than pathetic wretches of humanity, so little sympathy is ever shown when a gazillion Indians are killed onscreen, such as in STAGECOACH (1939). 

Compare that to the elevated sympathy offered to two white women escorted by a cavalry troop through hostile Indian territory in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), an overreaching drama that opens in 1876 just as news is spreading about the defeat of General Custer at the hands of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahoe, sending waves of anxiety and fear throughout the West, where a newsreel style narrator misinforms the audience straightaway, probably exactly as the newspapers speculated in that era, believing various Indian tribes were gathering together in great numbers to purge the West of white settlers.  In reality, Indians were gathering in record numbers to defend themselves against the inevitable advance of the whites into their territory.  After the Custer debacle, however, rather than remain a fighting force of multiple tribes united in opposition, as is suggested here, they split back up into smaller tribes, each going their own separate way, as they had always lived, reflective of their nomadic lifestyle of living off the land.  But that’s not the way the movies tell the story, instead projecting a view of the white settlers as victims of random and indiscriminate Indian violence, overlooking the genocide initiated against Indians by the U.S. cavalry throughout the West, ordered to militarily defeat one tribe after another, rounding up all free Indians in a form of ethnic cleansing, eventually forcing them into submission, legally requiring that they live away from their traditional hunting grounds, forcing them to live in isolation on desolate reservations, subject to rampant disease and the rotted food of government rations where more than half died within the first few years.  Ford conveniently leaves out all references to the true story of “American” history and instead recounts the same mythological racist lore that turns Indians into savages while the whites are noble heroes. 

While you may perceive Indians as clever in THE SEARCHERS (1956), this is a film about a racist and bitterly hateful man, perhaps the most racist film ever made, where Wayne's character is the ultimate Indian hater who rides for years harboring the racist view that whites raised by Indians are better off dead, as his captive niece has been irredeemably "soiled" by the experience, a view he reluctantly revises when he later rescues the daughter of the one woman he loves.  But this view recurs in Barbara Stanwyck's role in yet another Western portrayal, TROOPER HOOK (1957), where she is so scorned by the townsfolk just for having been an Indian's woman, her fall from grace is so severe that she is forced to live outside any society, white or Indian, much like Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS.  Wayne would also rather kill buffalo and leave it to rot on the plains than allow Indians to have food to eat, while the director Ford includes a despicable scene, also Aldrich in ULZANA'S RAID (1972), where whites raised by Indians are depicted as having been raped into insanity.  With Wayne typically the hero that audiences always root for, they are NOT apt to question this horrendous depiction of Indians and the generational harm these images cause both in planting the seed of ignorance in the brain and then having to re-learn how to reject such negative stereotypes, not when there is near unanimous praise for the film and the filmmaker. 

There is no question that in any John Ford/John Wayne movie, but in particular STAGECOACH (1939), SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), and THE SEARCHERS (1956), together they forged a tough guy persona as the good guy, a lone man who harbors private secrets from a life filled with experience, adding a touch of intrigue and mystery, not to mention power to his character, personifying the freedom that is associated with the West.  In each, Wayne is viewed as the hero and will inevitably be the most skilled practitioner with a gun or rifle, but also in devising strategy whenever he and/or his men get caught in a tight situation.  It's also safe to say that James Stewart was known for his likeability which continued throughout his career, becoming one of the most beloved figures in American cinema, and that Mann used this trait against type in several of his Westerns, starting with this one. 

Indian strategy is at least mentioned in WINCHESTER '73, but the Jimmy Stewart character is already, in just a matter of weeks, well informed on the Indian military strategy in defeating Custer, displaying a kind of superhuman intelligence.  Again, what's racist is the demeaning and racially restricted view that only whites have a capacity for intelligence, as Indians are never depicted as having knowledge and skill, or powers of analysis, or exhibit a sense of humor or a concern for others, or any capability for being human. These qualities, in both Ford and Mann films, are only allowed for whites, just like a white-only neighborhood, or a drinking fountain, or a rest room.   

I'm not suggesting all Westerns need to be revisionist, this was the 50's after all, a time when Americans found Communists lurking under every rock, and call me an anti-racist if you will (I've been called worse!), but I will call them out on their misrepresented portrayal of Indians, as enough is enough, and Westerns are among the worst offenders of a culture plagued by race and culture hatred, so it's about time someone sought to eradicate some of the harm done by these damaging and misconceived historical perceptions which only cloud and distort reality, further leading to an ill-informed populace.