Week in Review
It’s Anthony Mann week! Strap yourself to the couch and get ready for a parade of double-crossing cowboys, gold digging (literally) rednecks, Rock Hudson playing an Indian Chief who speaks broken English, town drunks, Jimmy Stewart tougher than you’ve ever seen him, half-brothers in a gunfight, the heartbreaking beauty of Tina Louise, Janet Leigh, Shelly Winters, Sophia Loren, and June Allyson, and Buddy Hackett’s sage advice about the secret powers of albinos. It’s high crimes and white-knuckled Westerns, with a couple of epics thrown in.
Anthony Mann’s entire life was spent in the performing arts, even though he got somewhat of a late start in the film business. Mann was primarily a stage director until his thirties when he went to work directing noir pictures for Paramount, and shifted the rest of his life to Hollywood. He later worked for RKO, Universal, and Republic. His career took several notable turns.
Throughout the ’40s, Mann directed B crime pictures. Even though he had no big stars with whom to work, and scripts that seem to have been written with the forethought of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel, Mann somehow crafted a few real gems. Strange Impersonation is one of these.
During the ’50s, Mann switched to Westerns. What makes him notable in the genre is how he carried the darkness of noir from the ’40s into the ’50s Western. Mann’s Westerns are cruel, violent, and often amoral. Any Western has its share of killing and fights, but Mann’s, while not as explicit as today’s films, portray the violence more brutally than their predecessors. One of the best filmed fistfights of all time is near the beginning of The Man From Laramie.
With the rise of television, Mann turned to the epic. The 70mm films were Hollywood’s attempt to get America off the couch and into the theater. Now we are much more likely to see a quality film on the couch than in the theater. I really enjoyed the self righteous hero El Cid, played magnanimously by Charlton Heston, but was less than impressed with The Fall of the Roman Empire.