Review of Winchester '73 (1950) by Adam W — 10 Aug 2008

Even though I've loved several Westerns - including Destry Rides Again, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Tombstone - I still wouldn't consider myself a fan of the genre. And Winchester '73 has done little to change that.

The story's simple enough. James Stewart plays a man hunting a murderer, and after bumping into him in Dodge City, the two have a shooting competition to win a much-ballyhooed "One in a Thousand" Winchester rifle. Lin (Stewart) wins it, Dutch Henry (Stephen McNally) steals it, and the gun then changes hands a number of times, the film following its path. Eventually Dutch gets the gun again and the two of them fight it out.

Trouble is, all the various scenes of people buying, stealing and killing for the gun in between are irrelevant. By the end of the film, it's as though everything that happened after Dodge City didn't, or didn't *need* to happen. It's not as if the various set-pieces are boring: there's a battle between some cavalrymen and Siouxie, which has an extra edge because Custer's just lost at Little Big Horn and the Indians want a repeat success (spot Rock Hudson as their leader); and there's a tense stand-off between psychopath Waco Johnny Dean and the authorities, with Lola - a character who, like the gun, has briefly met Lin - at stake. It's all reasonably exciting. It just also happens to be redundant.

How interested are we, really, in following a gun rather than a character? Just because everyone in the film treats the Winchester like the Holy Grail - which gets repetitive and annoying, especially with the ludicrously childish Dutch Henry practically tantruming "Mine! Mine! Mine!" - doesn't mean the audience will. We're here for James Stewart, who pops in and out of the narrative a little too seldom.

On the plus side, this has got James Stewart in it, and the rest of the cast is great, too. The script is often diverting (particularly when Lin talks to his long-suffering companion, High Spade) and, although frustratingly superfluous, the various set-pieces surrounding the One in a Thousand are very watchable indeed. They are, at least, the best kind of pointless.

Once the ending rolls around it's a little flat, and since the film's been veering all over the place it doesn't feel as though it ties everything up. (Although everyone who's had the gun between Dutch Henry and, er, Dutch Henry, has died.) It's watchable and rarely dull, even tossing in a few scenes with a supremely not-like-you'd-expect-him-to-be Wyatt Earp for good cameo measure. So it gets a passing grade.