The Criterion Collection has never short-changed the Western genre: classics like Stagecoach, Red River, and My Darling Clementine; revisionist fare from Monte Hellman, Sam Fuller, Delmer Daves, Sidney Poiter, Sam Peckinpah, and Jane Campion; even lesser-known genre greats from Budd Boetticher have gotten their due with handsomely packaged boxsets. It’s good to know there are even more great treasures to mine with 1950’s delightfully dark Winchester ’73 remastered for 4K UHD and Blu-ray disc special editions—marking the film’s first North American release on Blu-ray and its first anywhere on 4K.
Granted, Winchester ’73 might be a bit less well heralded than some of the classics of Ford and Hawks, but it’s not for a lack of intensity or depth. It’s the first of the collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart that led the genre through its thorny re-evolution in the 1950s, marking exceptionally rewarding midcareer transitions for both men with a series of films that dug deep into the psyche of American masculinity by looking backwards towards its violent past.
Westerns were not really the vogue in 1950. They had already had their celebrated heyday, beginning with the revolutionary Stagecoach in 1939. Through and past the war years, their tales of frontier mortality—and the notion that a “good guy with a gun” will always win out in the end—began to seem, in the wake of World War II, more than a little shopworn. Many filmmakers turned instead to tales of wartime heroism; others to the increasingly popular dark crime tales that later became known as film noir; and still others to the popular psychology of melodrama. Did the Western, so focused on the men and guns of the late 19th century, still have anything to say?
In retrospect, the answer is obvious, and the 1950s would turn out to be a surprisingly stellar decade for the genre. The controversial High Noon kicked things off; George Stevens would make the decade’s most lasting and iconic Western in Shane; John Ford would deepen his study of the West with The Searchers (and later, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Cheyenne Autumn); Daves, Boetticher, Fuller, and others would direct increasingly taut, brazen thrillers; and Mann and Stewart together would re-envision what the Western—and more importantly, the Western hero—could be.
As befits its title, Winchester ’73 begins and ends with a gun. It’s a spectacular weapon, a lovingly crafted, brightly burnished thing of beauty, a rifle so perfect none of the men in the story can scarcely resist its allure. In a genre where the weapon holds a phallic power and grown men fawn and fondle, fetishizing their own desired masculinity, there’s no film in which the spectacle is more evident than Winchester ’73. Shelley Winters, who plays the film’s only female character, complained “you’ve got all these men… running around to get their hands on this goddamn rifle instead of going after a beautiful blonde like me.”
As accurate as Winters’ complaint may have been, it doesn’t tell the whole story of Winchester ’73. It’s true that all the men are indeed covetous of the prized Winchester. The film’s plot essentially follows its possession, yet Mann and Stewart make from it a complex tale of vengeance and redemption. As the film starts, the gun is, literally, a prize: Stewart’s Lin McAdams is one of several contestants in a sharpshooting competition hoping to win the rifle; so too is his sworn enemy (and more), Henry Brown aka Dutch (Stephen McNally), for whom Lin has been searching.

Lin wins the contest fair and square, but Dutch doesn’t play fair; he steals the rifle and from there, the plot follows each of the Winchester’s successive owners—one including a pre-fame Rock Hudson playing a Native American chieftain—practically cursed by its possession. Winters and a delightfully dastardly Dan Duryea flesh out the excellent supporting cast, but this is above all a Jimmy Stewart film. Eager to shed his typecasting as a do-gooder, Stewart as Lin McAdams is an agent of vengeance, an unstoppable force in tracking down his sworn enemy and ready, in the final shootout, to wreak a long-overdue retribution.
Even were Winchester ’73 not restored to pristine condition in this excellent 4K UHD remaster, Stewart’s performance would make for one of his finest in a career without peer. He’s a gentle soul, the “good son” who must take on a task he doesn’t relish but will certainly accomplish. He’s onscreen a little less than in many of his starring vehicles but commands every scene he’s in with a sincerity and gravitas that at times seems to border on a psychosis: in the 1950s, the Western was taking a dark turn.

Mann’s direction deserves kudos as well: Winchester ’73 is perfectly and crisply paced, with a handful of excellent shootouts (including the film’s famously rocky climax) making for an exciting action picture. And yet the characterizations of each of the supporting cast, including a baby-faced Tony Curtis in an early role, are thorough and complete, excepting only the egregious whitewashing of handsome hunk Hudson as Young Bull.
The film’s stylized visual design, darker in tone and bordering in scenes on film noir’s rich chiaroscuro (Mann had by then helmed many a noir), benefits from the 4K restoration conducted by NBCUniversal StudioPost in collaboration with The Film Foundation, created from the original 35mm camera negative and presented in 1.35:1 aspect ratio and a remastered, uncompressed monoaural audio track. Viewers can expect pristine detail, subtle variations in greyscale, and deep, near-pitch black levels. As per usual with Criterion’s dual-format releases, the 4K remaster is presented on a single UHD disc alongside the audio track; a second Blu-ray disc presents that version of the film (also excellent) alongside the other supplements.
Special Features
As Spine #1248, Winchester ’73 is a new addition to The Criterion Collection and benefits from a sprightly and varied array of supplements, each well worth a watch—or listen.
- Audio commentary by James Stewart and Paul Lindenschmidt. This archival commentary track, recorded in 1989 as the actor approached the age of 80, is an absolute delight. With his typically avuncular, laconic delivery, Stewart reminisces about the film’s pre-production and production both, as well as some of the other films we went on to make with Anthony Mann. Lindenschmidt makes for an excellent interviewer and moderator, drawing keen insights from the actor about Mann’s visual, kinetic storytelling. Rarely will you hear an actor deliver as insightful and delightful a commentary track as you hear here.
- Forces of Nature: Anthony Mann at Universal is a 48-minute mini-documentary from Ballyhoo Productions focused on the director’s time at Universal Studios, complemented by clips from Winchester ’73 and other films and with commentary from film scholar C. Courtney Joyner, script supervisor Michael Preece, critic Michael Schlesinger, and others.
- Lux Radio Theatre Version of Winchester ’73. This one-hour radio play, originally broadcast by Lux Radio Theater in 1951, is also a delight.
- Adam Piron. Film programmer Adam Piron speaks to the portrayal of Native Americans in Hollywood Westerns and to the pervasive problem of whitewashing in this newly-commissioned, 18-minute featurette.
- Also presented is a vintage trailer for the film from Universal Pictures.
As is typically the case, while subtitles are presented for the deaf and hard of hearing for the feature presentation, none are available for any of the supplements, a longstanding practice of Criterion’s that needs to change. The double-disc jewel case packaging is presented with a 12-page grayscale foldout insert featuring an excellent essay, “Under the Gun,” by critic Imogen Sara Smith and with newly commissioned cover art by Gregory Manchess.
Aside from the (perpetual) oversight of SDH for the disc supplements, Criterion’s presentation of Winchester ’73 glistens and shines with all the allure of a well-polished rifle of the same name: any fan of the genre will surely delight in its possession as much as do any of the film’s characters that of the titular weapon. Let’s hope they—we—all meet better fates.
Will Geer as Wyatt Earp is on the (L) not the (R)