The Man from Laramie is often said to be the best of the Anthony Mann-James Stewart Westerns. With ground-breaking violance that would inspire Spaghetti Western’s like Django, this dark, Nor-tinted revenge Western is among the very best of its kind, with excellent performences from Arthur Kennedy and Alex Nicol. A movie not to be missed.
Great film. I don’t think it’s the best example of the Mann-Stewart partnership (although I have the same problem with them as I do with the Ranown Westerns, in that I find it practically impossible to pick a favourite), but the integration of Stewart’s revenge quest with the quasi-King Lear goings on at landowner Donald Crisp’s ranch is achieved with consummate skill, and the performances are, as JW points out, spot-on.
The wounding of Stewart’s character by Nicol ranks among the hardest-hitting scenes of violence in any American Western.
Yes, Django picked up on the mangaling of Stewart’s hand. I love Alex Nicol’s performence. He plays one of the screens great psychopaths.
The only part of the film I truly dislike is some of the day-for-night shots.
For me it was always the least of the 5, with The Naked Spur being clearly the best.
But all 5 are good.
This is my favorite Mann-Stewart film. I can watch this one over and over and always enjoy it. I like the other Westerns Mann and Stewart did together; but, this one stands quite a bit above the others, in my opinion. My least favorite of the bunch is easily THE FAR COUNTRY.
[quote=“Stanton, post:4, topic:2208”]For me it was always the least of the 5, with The Naked Spur being clearly the best.
But all 5 are good.[/quote]
I would have to agree on this.
I gave it 4-stars. I think it’s on-air today and I’ll try to watch it. The lack of motivation for Crisp’s kid, and Kennedy’s evil-doings, wasn’t brought-forward enough by the script. And the viewer doesn’t get a hint of the size of Crisp’s ranch… Other films make the same mistake. Somebody leaves the ranch-house and arrives in-town with the sun being in the same sky-proximation. That makes Crisp’s ranch the-size-of-a small farm, ballooning his ego-machinations in speeches about ‘nobody’s going to take this land which I fought-and-worked hard to accumulate’.
Other than that, it’s a brilliant Stewart-vehicle. -And includes one of Jack Elam’s most devilish character-manifestations.
Had some extra free time today so I gave this one a watch. Quite good as a whole, I gave it 3 stars. The only thing that didn’t seem to fit very well was that Kennedy was supposed to be the root of all evil in this film and while this is revealed in the end it’s not very believable as the story unfolds since the kid (Nicol) was quite rotten as well. Stewart on the other hand is a clean/moral/honest kind of guy and this might get a tad irritating at some points for me, but from the moment I finished the movie and enjoyed it to a certain degree as well I guess it wasnt a very big problem this time around.