Winchester ‘73 (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Apr 09, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Anthony MannRelease Date(s)
1953 (January 28, 2025)Studio(s)
Universal Pictures (The Criterion Collection – Spine #1248)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
Anthony Mann’s 1950 Western Winchester ’73 opens with the following title card:
“This is the story of the Winchester Model 1873, ‘The gun that won the West.’ To cowmen, outlaw, peace officer or soldier, the Winchester ’73 was a treasured possession. An Indian would sell his soul to own one...”
All of which is true enough, at least when taking the story at its most simplistic level. Yet the story in Winchester ’73 isn’t really the story of Winchester ’73, which turned out to be a landmark Western for reasons having little to do with its basic narrative structure. No, the real story of Winchester ’73 is external to the film itself. Fate can be a fickle mistress, but the gods smiled on the making of this film since it ended up bringing together three collaborators who would end up leaving an indelible mark on the Western genre: Anthony Mann, James Stewart, and writer Borden Chase. If the Winchester Model 1873 really was “The gun that won the West,” then this triumvirate was the team that won Hollywood’s west, at least during the Fifties.
There have been many noteworthy pairings of director and leading actor in the Western genre, like John Ford with John Wayne, Bud Boetticher with Randolph Scott, and Sergio Leone with Clint Eastwood. Still, all of those directors and actors made noteworthy Westerns with other collaborators, and to be fair, so did Mann and Stewart. Yet the five Westerns that they made together during the Fifties helped to transform the entire genre, and they also transformed Stewart’s career. While Borden Chase only wrote three of those five, he established the template that informed the other two, and the complex dramatic characters that he created for Stewart were a key element that proved Stewart could do so much more than the light comedies and sentimental dramas with which he had previously been associated. And together, the three of them would help to usher in the greater psychological depth that marked the Westerns of that decade.
It might not have happened that way. Winchester ’73 actually started out as part of a two-picture deal that Stewart had made with Universal (with the other film, Harvey, falling more securely into his bailiwick at that time). Winchester ’73 was to be his first foray into the Western genre, with veteran director Fritz Lang originally at the helm. Lang dropped out during pre-production, and Stewart suggested Mann as a replacement. Mann had made a name for himself in the Forties with a string of relatively low-budget film noir projects, but he had recently dipped his toes into Western waters with The Furies (although that film wouldn’t actually be released until after Winchester ’73). Mann agreed on the condition that he could bring in Bordon Chase to rework the screenplay by Robert L. Richards (which was based on a story by Stuart N. Lake), and that proved to be the crucial piece of the puzzle that pulled the whole project together. While the titular gun still provided a framework to structure the narrative, the engine that drove the story became the obsessive desire for revenge exhibited by Stewart’s character.
Winchester ’73 opens with Lin McAdam (Stewart) and his friend High-Spade Frankie Wilson (Millard Mitchell) on the hunt for Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally). They end up in Dodge City, where Sheriff Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) is presiding over a shooting contest that has a Winchester 1873 rifle as its prize. Brown is in town as well, and the two rivals end up vying for the gun while waiting for an opportunity to get the jump on each other. McAdam wins the contest but loses the gun after getting bushwhacked by Brown, and that’s just the start of the journey that the gun will end up taking. As the story progresses, it ends up passing through the hands of Brown, Indian agent Joe Lamont (John McIntire), Native American chief Young Bull (Rock Hudson), Sergeant Wilkes (Jay C. Flippen), Waco Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), and more. Yet while the gun follows its own journey, McAdam never loses sight of his real goal: finding Brown and avenging the death of his father. Winchester ’73 also stars Shelly Winters (who passes through a few hands of her own), Charles Drake, James Best, and Tony Curtis (still credited as Anthony Curtis here).
Lang saw the rifle as being the source of McAdam’s strength, with the quest for the rifle being a way of regaining his lost masculinity. As reworked by Mann and Chase, the rifle never defines McAdam’s personality, and it ends up being nearly irrelevant to his personal journey. There’s an interesting The Monkey’s Paw element to Winchester ’73, with the rifle being the object of men’s wishes but the source of a curse that seals their respective fates. Yet that’s still secondary to McAdam’s story, which is entirely driven by his wish for revenge with or without having this particular rifle in his hands. Mann’s Western heroes were all violent men driven by the need to avenge some kind of betrayal, with only a fine line separating them from the men that they were after. If anything, the only real difference is that the villains in Mann’s Westerns were all perfectly content to be what they were, while his heroes/antiheroes were tormented souls. Lin McAdam became the archetype for that kind of character, shaping all of Mann’s Westerns that followed.
Yet Winchester ’73 was just a step on Mann’s own journey, not the final destination. The gun itself is a distraction that takes away from the focus on McAdam’s personal quest for revenge, and Shelly Winter’s character Lola is completely irrelevant to it (an issue that Winters recognized all too well, as she later questioned why she was even in the picture). Mann also had yet to develop the connection between his rugged heroes and the equally rugged landscapes that surrounded them. The modestly budgeted Winchester ’73 was largely filmed on the Universal backlot, with limited location footage that was shot nearby. As a result, it lacks the visual power that drove films like The Naked Spur, where the landscapes became wilder and more jagged as the main character’s mental state deteriorated. Still, baby steps. Winchester ’73 may lack the power and focus of Mann’s later Westerns, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a landmark film that helped to redefine the Western genre for generations to come.
Cinematographer Williams Daniels shot Winchester ’73 on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at 1.37:1 for its theatrical release. This version is based on a 4K scan of the original nitrate camera negative, with digital cleanup performed by Universal in collaboration with The Film Foundation (according to Criterion, it’s actually framed at 1.35:1 here). No HDR grade has been applied, but SDR in 4K can still take advantage of 10-bit color, which quadruples the gradations between pure white and pure black compared to what’s available with the 8-bit color of Blu-ray. At a minimum, that means that there’s less chance of banding being visible on some displays, but it can also offer more detail to the grayscale.
Needless to say, the grayscale for this 4K version of Winchester ’73 is essentially perfect, as are the contrast and black levels. (There are a few day-for-night sequences that almost look underexposed, but that’s due to the way that Daniels created the effect.) Fine details are beautifully resolved, as is the ultra-fine sheen of grain—whatever stocks that Daniels may have used, they hold up impressively in 4K. There isn’t even a trace of damage visible, and the optical transitions appear to have been cut in, so the leading and trailing edges of the shots involved don’t display any image degradation. There’s nothing to criticize here, and while an HDR grade might have strengthened the contrast range a bit more, it also might have exaggerated the grain. This is more accurate to how theatrical prints would have appeared in 1950—it’s the same basic look, only better.
Audio is offered in English 1.0 mono LPCM, with optional English subtitles. This track was derived from the optical soundtrack on the original nitrate elements. Like the video, there’s nothing to criticize here, with any deficiencies being due to the inherent limitations of the technologies involved. There isn’t any noteworthy distortion, pops, or other artifacts remaining, and the dialogue is always crystal-clear. The dynamic range is naturally somewhat constrained, but there’s still a decent amount of heft to sound effects like the gunfire.
Criterion’s 4K Ultra HD release of Winchester ‘73 is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. There’s also a 12-page foldout booklet featuring an essay by Imogen Sara Smith and restoration notes. The following extras are included, all of them in HD:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Audio Commentary by James Stewart and Paul Lindenschmidt
DISC TWO: BD
- Audio Commentary by James Stewart and Paul Lindenschmidt
- Adam Piron: What Is an Indian? (17:50)
- Forces of Nature: Anthony Mann at Universal (47:07)
- Lux Radio Theatre (60:39)
- Trailer (2:10)
The commentary with James Stewart and publicist Paul Lindenschmidt was originally recorded for Universal’s LaserDisc release of Winchester ’73 (while Criterion says that it was recorded in 1989, every source that I could find lists the disc as having been released in 1987 instead). That was still the early days of audio commentaries (Criterion had just recorded the first one for their King Kong LaserDisc in 1984), and Universal didn’t even describe it as a commentary—they just noted it as being an interview with Stewart. Yet while it isn’t really a scene-specific commentary, Stewart and Lindenschmidt were definitely sitting down together while watching the film, and they do occasionally discuss what’s happening onscreen. They discuss how Stewart’s deal with Universal happened; his career at the time; how Winchester ’73 came together; his relationship with Mann; his preference for the studio contract system; the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation; and much more. Stewart also discusses his own development as an actor, and says that the only right way for an actor to feel is that you can never stop learning—keep working and working to better understand your craft. The whole thing is a bit meandering (we are talking about Jimmy Stewart here), and there are a few gaps throughout, but it’s still wonderful to be able to hear from an actual participant in the making of Winchester ’73.
What Is an Indian? is a new interview with Adam Piron, filmmaker and director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program. Piron discusses the representation of indigenous peoples in the Western genre, with a natural emphasis on Winchester ’73. He opens by noting the fact that Rock Hudson was wearing a prosthetic nose, feathers, and generic war paint as Young Bull, but those were as much due to Hollywood tradition as any kind of real interest in historicity. From there, he compares the Hollywood version to reality, noting how diverse tribes and cultures ended up being homogenized into the generic “Indians” that were prevalent for most of the history of the Western genre. He also demonstrates how the use of real Native Americans in the silent and early sound eras quickly devolved into the use of “redface” makeup on non-Native actors.
Forces of Nature: Anthony Mann at Universal is an outstanding new documentary covering this period of Anthony Mann’s career, produced and directed by Daniel Griffith for his Ballyhoo Motion Pictures. (More Daniel Griffith from Criterion, please!) It includes interviews with Western film historian Rob Word; authors Alan K. Rode and C. Courtney Joyner; Mann’s script supervisor Michael Preece; and the late lamented man for all seasons, Michael Schlesinger. They provide an overview of the 19 films that Mann made during the Fifties, 11 of them Westerns, and most of them produced at Universal. They analyze the ethos of these Westerns, most of which carried a thematic and visual continuity, and they also discuss the importance of Mann’s collaborators like Stewart, Borden Chase, and producer Aaron Rosenberg. Mann wasn’t really a contract director at Universal, but he kept coming back because of his relationship with Stewart (he also ended up directing films like Thunder Bay and The Glenn Miller Story purely for the sake of that friendship). That didn’t last, however, and their conflict over the script for Night Passage resulted in the two of them never speaking again for the rest of their lives.
Finally, Criterion has also included the aforementioned 1951 Lux Radio Theatre version of Winchester ’73. While Stewart and Stephen McNally returned, Julia Adams took over the role of Lola, and she also ends up serving as narrator. Winchester ’73 actually condenses surprisingly well into the one-hour radio format since the narrations is able to cover over the missing visual elements from the film.
While it’s not the most extensive collection of extras, this is one case where quality definitely outweighs quantity—and considering that the commentary/interview with Stewart is the only extra for the film that’s been widely available elsewhere, it’s a major upgrade. (The 2018 Region B Blu-ray from Sidonis Calysta in France did include interviews with Bertrand Tavernier and Patrick Brion, but that’s about it.) It’s also a noticeable upgrade in terms of video quality regardless of the lack of an HDR grade. Criterion’s 4K release of Winchester ’73 is pretty much an essential purchase for fans of Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart, and if you’re not already a fan of their collaborations together, it’s arguably the best place to start your own journey to becoming one. Make it so.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).