Winchester '73 4K 1950 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

In the 70s of the XIX century, the best weapon in the Wild West was considered to be a multiple-shot rifle "Winchester "73" model 1873, and many shooters were willing to go to any lengths to get hold of this weapon ... Desperate Lyn McAdam, in pursuit of his father's killer, arrives in Dodge City with his friend Johnny, nicknamed "Tall Blade".

The town celebrates U.S. Independence Day under the watchful, fatherly eye of Sheriff Wyatt Earp, who collects guns from gun-toting outsiders and stores them in his office for the duration of the festivities. In honor of the festivities, the town announces a contest for the best shooter, the winner of which will receive a unique (one in a thousand) "Winchester "73". Lin goes to the local saloon and orders a drink.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he notices "Dutchman" Henri Brown - his worst enemy. The heroes have to compete in marksmanship at a town festival for the best winchester in the country. McEdam manages to defeat "Dutchman" and get an expensive rifle, but annoyed Henri attacks the winner and takes away the winchester. An exasperated Lin begins to pursue the rifle thief....

Review 4K Movie

If the “Man of the West” was for Mann summarized in the many years of research into the possibilities of the western, “Winchester 73” was his first experience in this genre. Screen version of the story of the same name by S. N. Lake is perceptibly constrained by the format of black-and-white image, not allowing to unfold Mann's talent to liken the natural landscape to the inner state of the characters. Nevertheless, the director masterfully uses light shading to emphasize the sense of danger and dramatic tension in a number of masterfully constructed episodes.

In the first scenes immediately strikes the eye Mann's attentive attitude to dialogues, programmatic denial of patterns in describing the psychological experiences of characters inherent in the genre: the film unfolds dynamically, but resembles more of a drama than a tense action, although there are shootouts and chases, which, unfortunately, reduces its artistic level. The choice of D. Stewart, the star of F. Capra's social comedies, for the main role was a bold step for the director, primarily because it broke not only the actor's role, but also the image of the protagonist as a self-confident and imperturbable self-made man.

Stewart makes his hero nervous, impetuous, spiritually restless man, capable of spontaneous outbursts of anger, which gives the image of volume, contradiction and psychological authenticity. When the character speaks or acts, Stewart plastically emphasizes his inner discomfort, which pleasantly surprises the viewer, accustomed to the icy masks-typazhami D. Wayne and G. Cooper.

Despite the unambiguity in the arrangement of moral accents and the black-and-white division of characters, Mann avoids rigorism by decentralizing the dramaturgical structure, making the main character of the picture not a man, but a rifle. Such a successful narrative move allows to show the adventure of the object as a fetish, passing from one owner to another, which makes the narrative extremely diverse, rich in unexpected situations. At the same time, Mann shows a cross-section of social life in the Wild West of the late XIX century, reaching the level of universal generalizations closer to the finale.

The desire to possess a new Winchester becomes in the director's eyes a struggle not only for social status, but also an almost Old Testament confrontation between brothers for the right of primogeniture. Biblical symbolism appears in the competition scene, when the heroes compete for the right to possess a rifle, first shooting at targets and then at the sky, as if trying to show greater zeal in pleasing God. One tries harder and the other envies him. The figures of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob immediately stand before the viewer. Only in the finale do we learn why the characters are so similar, and what the words spoken by one of them at the beginning mean: “We had one teacher.

By transferring the conflict of the characters from the sphere of private life to the archetypal sphere, Mann creates a kind of reflexive western, i.e. a film that exposes the semantic roots of the genre and analyzes the system of symbolic oppositions underlying it. The Winchester is transformed from a social fetish into a sign of divine blessing, chosenness, and the fact that most of the heroes try to seize it fraudulently, illegally, not by right, testifies to the general perversity of human quests in the world. The director, while preserving the external attributes of the genre, has significantly enriched its content, bringing to the forefront of the narrative the hidden, underlying semantic springs of the western.