IT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM SHELF!

For fans of classic Westerns, the actor/director team of James Stewart & Anthony Mann is as revered as the pairings of John Wayne & John Ford and Randolph Scott & Budd Boetticher.  In all three of these cases, the director brought out the best in the actor and vice versa.  Unfortunately, while the Wayne/Ford and Scott/Boetticher outings are well represented on Blu-ray in the U.S., the Stewart/Mann Westerns (apart from a single exception) have only been available in standard definition on DVD.  This month, Kino Lorber Studio Classics takes a step towards rectifying that omission with their Blu-ray release of the second Stewart/Mann pairing, Bend of the River (1952).

While Anthony Mann was more important than Alfred Hitchcock in framing the post-WWII career of James Stewart, the pairing almost didn’t happen.  Before the war, James Stewart was best known for playing leads in light comedies (Pot o’ Gold) or incorruptible heroes in uplifting dramas (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), but after his experiences in the war, he longed to play more complex, darker characters.  However, his initial attempts expanding into darker territory, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Rope (1948), and Call Northside 777 (1948), which are now considered classics, were box office disappointments at the time of their release.  Stewart strongly considered leaving acting altogether, but he was reinvigorated after gaining critical acclaim playing the part of Elwood P. Dowd in the Broadway production of Harvey from 1947 to 1950.

When he returned to Hollywood again, he accepted a part in the Western Winchester ’73 (1950), with film noir master Fritz Lang set to direct.  When the studio removed Lang from the picture, Stewart suggested Anthony Mann as a replacement.  Not only had Stewart previously worked with Mann in the theater; Mann was another director with a strong noir style, having directed such films as T-Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948).  Mann hired Borden Chase, the screenwriter of Red River (1948) to rewrite the Winchester ’73 script.  Together, Mann and Chase successfully convinced the public that skinny, likable Stewart also had the grit and darkness to convincing play a conflicted Western hero.

For Stewart and Mann’s follow-up and their first Western in color, they again worked from a script by Borden Chase.  In Bend of the River, Stewart plays Glyn McLyntock, a scout for a wagon train, who hopes to leave behind his dark past by homesteading with the settlers when they arrive in the Oregon territory.  While checking the trail ahead, McLyntock encounters a lynching party, and he rescues the intended victim, Emerson Cole (Arthur Kennedy), a drifter with questionable morals.  Out of loyalty to his rescuer, Cole joins the wagon train and helps McLyntock protect it, while keeping a leering eye on Laura Baile (Creature From the Black Lagoon‘s Julie Adams), the eldest daughter of the leader of the settlers (Jay C. Flippen), who McLyntock also desires.  Thus begins a very tenuous friendship, made all the more delicate, because Coleis hiding a dark past as a former border raider, and he recognizes McLyntock as one of his own kind.  The trail contains numerous threats, from Indians to harsh terrain to unscrupulous businessmen and cutthroats out for a fast buck.  However, the biggest obstacle McLyntock has to overcome is the darkness that he has buried deep inside of him.

Bend of the River is a solid story that provided exactly the type of complex character that James Stewart was looking for.  In the early scenes, McLyntock appears to be the kind of likable, upright guy that one would expect Stewart to play, but as the narrative unfolds, he gets to display the character’s desperation and savage nature.  A flash of violence involving Stewart brandishing a knife is especially electric.

Arthur Kennedy is just as good, and may actually steal the show as Emerson Cole, the darker, mirror image of McLyntock.  The character is the type of charismatic villain that was often showcased in the Budd Boetticher Westerns, and Kennedy brings a relaxed, snakelike confidence to the role.

A baby-faced Rock Hudson has a fairly thankless role as a gambler with a millon dollar smile; but the rest of the cast, rounded out by a rogue’s gallery of character actors, get worthy moments to shine.  I especially enjoyed seeing Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, and Royal Dano play a trio of deceitful, no-account halfwits.  They seem like the models for the two-bit, redneck peckerwoods that Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones would play in the later Sam Peckinpah Westerns.

Bend of the River features a smart story, memorable characters, glorious location photography, and strong performances.  In short, this collaboration of James Stewart and Anthony Man is a great entertainment and a treasure for fans of classic Westerns.

US/C-91m./Dir: Anthony Mann/Wr: Borden Chase (based on the novel Bend of the Snake by Bill Gulick)/Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julie Adams, Rock Hudson, Jay C. Flippen, Lori Nelson, Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, Royal Dano, Howard Petrie, Chubby Johnson, Stepin Fetchit, Frances Bavier

For Fans of: Anthony Mann’s Bend of the River should appeal to anyone that loves adult Westerns with psychological heft.  It would pair nicely with the Westerns that Randolph Scott made with Budd Boetticher.

Video: Kino Lorber Studio Classics will release Bend of the River on Blu-ray on April 16th.  Overall, the film looks very nice, sharp, and colorful.  However, it should be noted that in some shots, especially long-shots, you will notice some green outlines or halos on the edges of objects, which is due to shrinkage of the original negatives.  Three-strip Technicolor cameras actually captured the image on three separate strips of film, with different color filters, simultaneously.  When the images from the three strips were combined, it displayed the full range of color.  The problem is that the three strips often shrink at different rates, which results in minor misalignment or color bleeding.  Without extremely expensive restoration work by Universal (which would probably be cost prohibitive for a lesser-known title such as this) the color separation is not unusual for a film of this period.  Kino did a very nice job with the materials they were provided, and the color bleeding should not stop anyone from picking up this excellent Western.

The disc also includes the following special features:

• An excellent new audio commentary by film historian Toby Roan, filled with well-researched, behind-the-scenes information
• The original theatrical trailer for Bend of the River, along with trailers for Kino Lorber’s Western releases of Broken Arrow, Man of the West, The Indian Fighter, and The Wonderful Country.
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature

Streaming: At the time of this review, Bend of the River was not streaming through any of the major subscription services.

More to Explore: All of the Western collaborations between James Stewart and Anthony Mann are worth seeking out, but Winchester '73, The Naked Spur, and The Far Country are only available on DVD. The Man From Laramie was released as a limited edition Blu-ray from Twilight Time, but it has gone out-of-print.  Second-hand copies can be found.  You may also want to check out Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West which stars Gary Cooper.

Trivia: The two female leads in Bend of the River both acted opposite the Gill-man.  Julie Adams was most famous for her role in Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), and Lori Nelson, who plays Adam’s sister in Bend of the River, was the female lead in the first Gill-man sequel, Revenge of the Creature (1955).

For More Info: If you are interested in more information about director Anthony Mann, his career, and his working methods, I suggest the book Anthony Mann: The Film Career by William Darby.  Bend of the River is also one of the 131 offbeat Westerns featured in Renegade Westerns: Movies That Shot Down Frontier Myths by Kevin Grant.