Anthony Mann, master director of noirs and westerns in the '40s and '50s

A series on his noirs here:

http://notcoming.com/features/noirmann/

Can't go wrong with The Naked Spur.

The Great Flamarion has the most fascinating von Stroheim talkie performance I've seen, even moreso than Sunset Blvd.

love all the Stewart westerns.

i've seen Side Street & Border Incident in the last few years, both well worth a look.

(luscious young Ricardo Montalban's first starring role in BI)

great topographical director, and the first to see a more sinister side to james stewart

I'd argue that was Frank Capra, but no matter.

In It's a Wonderful Life, you mean? i know revisionist opinion holds it as a darker film than the Capracorn it's perceived to be...but how is Stewart sinister in it? (he's maybe more sinister in Harvey!)

well, he also plays a killer in one of his pre-stardom roles (no spoiler)

OK you got me there... but I'm right in thinking that the Mann westerns predate things like Rear Window and Vertigo?

4 of them predate RW, yes. and he did The Glenn Miller Story w/ Mann too!

Mann also made two better-than avg epics in the early '60s, El Cid and Fall of the Roman Empire.

unlike the french, i don't find charlton heston to be an axiom of cinema, so he's always been a sticking point for me w/ El Cid - a film that used to be screened VERY regularly on britishes tv, for some reason. is there some nicholas ray/sam bronson(sp) crossover here?

yeah Montalban is impressive in BI (saw it right after he died).

Bronston produced those two epics, I haven't read that Mann inherited Ray's job on them tho.

yeah googling i find that i'm getting confused - Ray was replaced as director on 55 day in Peking, produced by Bronston, but he wasn't replaced by Mann

Morbius otm, The Great Flamarion is slept on.

Classic miscast that works: Rock Hudson as a young indian chief in Winchester '73.

i've seen his Lincoln movie too! (in which Abe barely appears)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044105/combined

yeah "The Tall Target" is a fantastic Mann historical "noir". "The Black Book" lots of fun, too. John Alton is God.

yikes I meant " Reign Of Terror" not TBB

Is The Tall Target the one with Sterling Hayden and the harpoon?

Dick Powell, Ruby Dee and a plot against Honest Abe.

Sorry, I was thinking of Terror in a Texas Town, directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

My grade 7 art classes have been doing black-and-white value sketches, and instead of showing them related paintings and drawings, I used a couple of noir clips from YouTube to support the lesson. One was from Night of the Hunter, the other from Mann's Raw Deal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mINFj0hSweo

When I started looking for the latter online, I realized that a) I already had it (part of a Sony budget box of crime films) and b) I'd already seen it, though I'm not sure when. (Before I bought the DVD, I think.) It's an amazing looking film--John Alton, who I remember got prominent play in Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography. You can freeze the film throughout and you've got one stunningly lit composition after another. The clip above is the highlight, I think. (T-Men--also Mann and Alton, one year earlier--great too.)

watched Bend of the River last night. It's a pretty wild flick, a whole stew of betrayals and double-crosses and revenge. It's a pretty brutal film; while the violence is strictly 1952 level what acts of violence do occur are pretty quick and harsh and merciless. cf our protagonist and his pals luring some pursuers into a clearing and then they subsequently massacre them from the high position, another guy using an argument over cards as an excuse to kill someone who is about to ID him as a border raider from the past, etc. Stewart is exceptionally good here.

Watched The Furies last night. I think I came across it after googling "noir westerns"? Sounds about right. If you don't mind Stanwyck's fairly stiff, antiquated acting stlye, I'd recommend it. More of a drama than a typical western. Some pretty good writing for that era. Walter Huston is p good in his last role. Think this was Mann's 1st "A" movie as director.

"antiquated"?

I much prefer his B flicks.

old timey? pre-Methody? Broadwayvian?

i fear Mann will forever be underrated in film history, if only because he isn't regarded as an "auteur" or also because his personality as a filmmaker was not front-and-center, he just seems like a guy who showed up and did his job and went home. but after seeing a large number of his films now i'm just so impressed w/him overall. here's a guy who could make a series of moody, dimly lit, eerie small-scale B&W noir films and then turn around and master the western genre in terms of character, use of color, and scope in ways that should have made John Ford envious.

Anyone ever seen his French Revolution film? It looks good even if this portrayal of Robespierre, by Richard Basehart, doesn't seem the most historically accurate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2BIwh4yVvs

I have and love it. And Danton is pronounced "Dan Tin" throughout. Sort of like "Tar-zin".
xpost The French considered him an auteur. Or at least the Cahiers crew did from what I recall. They published a long interview soon after he died.

He’s not? Since when?
(xxp)

like i think compared to the usual grade-A auteurs he seems to be regarded widely as a step below, not due to the quality of his work but due to simply not being one of the outsized giants, but i think his body of work should elevate him even more. i certainly don't think he's ignored completely but this dude deserves the Ford/Welles/Kubrick treatment imo.

I've seen and liked close to 20 of his films, and I wouldn't put him in that class.

I agree. He's excellent but nowhere near Ford or Welles imho

First comparable I thought of was Pollack. Reliably good in concept and execution, but not top tier.

then again, he never got to operate w/ the relative independence of a Welles or Kubrick

his peaks aren't as peaky(?) as some of the others in the top tier but i think his execution was reliably on-point across a number of genres in a very unflashy manner. in thinking he should be receiving the same treatment as some of the usual giants, i don't necessarily mean he's on an absolute equal level, but his body of work similarly deserves a closer study.

In the aggregate he may be sound and solid, but he has several great films.

Full length academic study appeared in 2007, seems to have gotten retrospectives from TCM, Film Forum, Tarantino, etc. so not sure who is overlooking him these days.

he's your favorite director's 3rd favorite director

https://filmforum.org/do-not-enter-or-modify-or-erase/client-uploads/pdf/ff2_cal87_FINAL_rev.pdf

Sorry, not 2007, that was a reprint/paperback date, book was published in 1979.

https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0704-Winter-2007-08/Books-Anthony-Mann.aspx

Yeah his stock has definitely gone up in the last decade no question

Happy to be corrected if he’s finally breaking into the top tier and I don’t think he’s completely ignored or anything, I recognize his rep has risen yeah. Maybe more than I figured. I do think though he’s never had the one or two films someone can immediately point to as singular masterpieces, which isn’t to say he didn’t make any. They were just never those types of pictures, they didn’t have that critical reputation up to a point. I don’t know that one ever broke away from the pack in that sense either.

He had some mainstream success, I imagine his most noted film in terms of public awareness was maybe Winchester ‘73? Or El Cid?

Those are the only 2 I heard of as a kid

There’s a really nice-looking Blu-ray release of The Far Country from Arrow that I’ve been eyeballing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WJ6YGP7/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_k0e3DbV7S4GG0

There’s a really nice-looking Blu-ray release of The Far Country from Arrow that I’ve been eyeballing.

Subject of that epic, legendary digression in Manny Farber's 1977 interview. I always had the impression that it's not ranked as highly as Mann's other Westerns, but it's always been my favorite. Something about the surreal colors of the landscape (studio set? actually filmed in Canada?), John McIntire's jovial villain, and that final shot of a devastated Jimmy Stewart surrounded by all those grinning yokels.

It was filmed in Alberta — it really looks amazing and I was quite struck by it as well, in terms of story and visuals and character.

Anyone ever seen his French Revolution film? It looks good even if this portrayal of Robespierre, by Richard Basehart, doesn't seem the most historically accurate.

The noir elements somewhat pulled me out of suspension of disbelief. And the obvious parable of de-Nazified countries in danger of falling into the Soviet sphere of influence grated. But the whole is a good watch.

Here's the noir westerns article that alerted me to The Furies
http://www.criminalelement.com/a-darkness-on-the-plains-jake-hinkson-noir-western-film-robert-mitchum-barbara-stanwyck/

Watched The Man From Laramie last night and enjoyed it.
I was lil distracted at times so maybe I missed the explanation but why did Vic act disgusted and surprised that Dave was going to sell 200 rifles to the Apache, when it turns out he was the one who was behind both that sale and the previous one??

On TV just now: THE FAR COUNTRY (1954). Curious that I'd never seen it before. A standard Western? But with James Stewart surly and suspicious in the lead, and a far NW / Seattle / Yukon setting. At the end the whole town comes together against the villains - but they leave it pretty late, till after the hero has shot the boss. I'm struck by how expendable life is in these films - no-one, even close friends, is really mourned; life seems to be very cheap in this wild (North-)Western world.

Saw his first western Devil's Doorway on Criterion Channel yesterday, surely the first from a big studio (1950) where you're rooting for the Indians to slaughter the Cavalry at the climax. Robert Taylor is excellent as the doomed Civil War vet Native, if you can overlook the redface, and it's got B&W lensing by John Alton.

the gritty af T-Men is on Mubi, some brilliant cinematography and clunky dialogue, but sometimes you just have to get down with the undercover feds and enjoy the ride.

Men In War - Korean war film with Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. The Pentagon refused to support it because it portrayed too much indiscipline in the ranks, so Mann got no access to army resources in terms of tanks and such. The result is a weirdly poetic film, soldiers trudging through these huge fields, dots in a landscape. The enemy is mostly invisible too. Even the Bernstein soundtrack has a lot of solo flute, final result is almost folk horror.

There is zero flag waving and actually no discussion whatsoever of why they're there, it's all about grunts just trying to make it through. Lots of racial slurs lobbed at the Koreans, one of whom surrenders and is treated horribly in a way that I'm not sure I know whether the film realises or not. The only time enemy troops are humanised is when the soldiers loot their bodies and find family pictures. Which is probably pretty true to life!

Man of the West is great--streaming on criterion's color noir series. Lee Cobb is something else. Not sure I've seen a more "noir" western than that one

Cool. Always amazed when Lee Marvin turns up in yet another classic western I had somehow forgotten about him being in.

The Tin Star, anyone? One of only appetizing 50%-off Arrow blus at the B&N I was just in.

Haven't seem but c'mon, it's an Anthony Mann western you're not gonna get disappointed.