Review of The Naked Spur (1953) by Arthur M — 23 Sep 2011

Ably pairing western tropes with elements more commonly found in psychological thrillers, "The Naked Spur" transplants internal turmoil with the majesty and danger of frontier exteriors. Though the third act stumbles somewhat, the majority of the film manages to draw the viewer in with its first-rate setpieces, unimpeachable acting and taut script.

Howard Kemp (Jimmy Stewart) is an embittered bounty hunter tracking down outlaw Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) in the Rocky Mountains. Enlisting the help of itinerant prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and disgraced cavalry Lt. Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), Kemp soon comes upon his prey. After braving rockslides the quarry created to stop his captors, Kemp and company capture Vandergroat and his companion, the lovely and naive but feisty Lina (Janet Leigh).

Capturing the outlaw proves to be the easy part as Kemp, Tate and Anderson must transport their captives through the wilderness. Forced to contend not only with the elements and hostile natives, the biggest threat turns out to be the shackled Ben, who begins preying on fissures within the group, each bounty hunter's personal flaws and their sexual desires (via Lina) to fracture the bunch and hopefully fashion an opportunity for escape.

The characters in "Spur" are at their strongest when we know nothing about them. Apart from Lina, who seems far too young and beautiful to be mixed up with a manipulative rogue like Vandergroat, everyone seems to have a past largely comprising of harming others and possibly themselves into a life of dissolution or questionable worth. Director Anthony Mann and his leading man cleverly play with western conventions, abandoning the good vs. evil conflict so common in the genre with a sense of uneasy moral ambiguity.

Years before John Ford started his revisionist phase with "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (the latter also starring Stewart), Mann pioneered westerns where the heroes didn't act like heroes and the villains were more victims of circumstance and their own failings than any implicit evil. Stewart enjoyed a five-film collaboration with Mann that entered the genre into a more "mature" phase, Stewart commonly playing characters with a muddy, haunted history.

In "Spur," Kemp's history makes him both a more well-rounded protagonist than most bounty hunter characters yet also makes the psychological element significantly weaker. Kemp used to have a wife and ranch before losing both upon returning from the Civil War, when his bride ran off with another man and abandoned the farm. Determined to buy back the ranch, Kemp hopes to use the reward money from Vandergroat's capture to get the necessary funds.

This is ostensibly the trait the outlaw exploits and Mann and the script (by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, both Oscar-nominated for their work) attempt to present as Kemp's primary flaw. However, it's not clear how his desire to buy something specific makes Kemp any different from garden-variety western bounty hunters, or any characters from films before and since that craved money. Because Kemp's desire for cash is a means to a very specific end, somehow that makes the filmmakers suggest he is vulnerable. Though greedy characters rarely fare well in westerns -- as well as any genre, really -- Kemp's particular goal doesn't seem compelling enough to qualify as a fatal flaw.

This makes the penultimate scene all the stranger. After a second half with notably less engrossing psycho-drama than the former part of the movie and a legitimately gripping final showdown that takes place on a series of rocks overlooking a raging river, Kemp is forced to bring Vandergroat dead rather than alive. As he loads the corpse on his horse, Lina pleads with him not to start life anew on blood money.

This precipitates a breakdown from the otherwise stoic Kemp, who strangely seems to understand the price of both the journey and the bounty have had on him physically, mentally and emotionally. This begs the question, though: What exactly did Kemp think was going to happen if he successfully brought the outlaw back to Abilene alive? Would he refuse money for services rendered there as well when he discovered the delivery of a wanted man differs significantly from transporting an order of groceries?

The Old West might have provided refuge for as many or more cutthroats, badmen and scoundrels as it did decent people hoping to fashion a new life by the sweat of their brows and the skill of their hands, but it seems to me the nature of bounty hunting was well-known back in those days -- a crisis of conscience seems unlikely to stem from capturing someone who's worse than you, no matter how bad you think you are. And it seems even less likely to prove a boon to a scofflaw adept at psychological warfare looking to escape prison and possibly the noose.