Anthony Mann

If one is able to look beyond the noise of its tumultuous production, Spartacus remains one of the finest epics to ever emerge from the Hollywood studio system.

He Walked by Night can lumped into a very special category of film noir. As elaborated in their simply title book, Film Noir (Alain Silver, James Ursini, Film Noir, Taschen, 2004), there exists a sub-movement within noir recognized as docu-noir, wherein the filmmakers go about telling stories based on real life events (as well have German expressionism marry Italian neo-realism, but that is another discussion for another article)

Crime dramas and noirs predominantly made up the early part of Anthony Mann’s career, and epics and action/adventure films concluded it. But the Westerns he directed solidify his standing as one of the great, underrated figures of American cinema. Many films are evidence of his talent. Man of the West is just one, a very good one.

“‘Men in War,’ from 1957, contains much of what makes Anthony Mann a distinct filmmaker, and reveals much of what makes the war film its own unique form of motion picture.”

Movies that meld together fiction and fact as explicitly as T-Men are no longer made. In that respect, the film is something of a time capsule, a curious look into an extinct sub-genre of film that only caught on for a brief period. Audiences prefer to know what it is they are watching, be it a purely fictional tale, an adaptation of a real life event, or a pure documentary. For the 21st century movie watcher, the effect can be a strange one,

Strangers in the Night  Written by Bryant Ford and Paul Gangelin  Directed by Anthony Mann  U.S.A., 1944   Coping mechanisms vary from person to person, innumerable variable influencing how, why and when an individual must invest a conceited effort in attenuating psychological and emotional stress caused by past trauma. Visits to the doctor, medication, a …

Man of the West Directed by Anthony Mann Written by Reginald Rose US, 1958 Anthony Mann directed more than 40 films but is mostly known for his remarkable collaborations with Jimmy Stewart during the 1950s. These five westerns aren’t as well-known as the genre legends but match them in quality and depth. In Winchester ’73 …

Border Incident Directed by Anthony Mann Written by John C. Higgins U.S.A., 1949 The Mexico-United States border has long been the subject of controversy when discussing the arrival of those described as ‘illegal aliens,’ desperate individuals from Mexico who traverse the border without proper permission in the hopes of finding some work and money to …

Desperate Directed by Anthony Mann Screenplay by Harry Essex U.S.A., 1947 One of film noir’s strongest, most unique qualities is its malleability. A film which fans and scholars deem as part of the genre need not be especially violent, nor especially thrilling, nor especially long, nor especially short, etc. Despite that so many take pleasure …

Side Street Directed by Anthony Mann Screenplay by Charles Schnee U.S.A., 1950 There is a favourite saying used among film reviewers when espousing the virtues of a film that uses the story’s locale to the full extent: location ‘x’ is a character in of itself. While an admittedly clever term, it has been slightly overused …