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The Naked Spur (1953)

This is a classic straight forward and somewhat clichéd but professional western, with very solid acting and very solid direction, photography, and scenery. That's great, and that's the flaw of it all, this lack or originality. The core of it is action adventure, and an unlikely merging of unsavory characters. At first it's an outlaw that is being sought (Robert Ryan, a youthful bearded Ryan), then it's the Indians who are a danger (and the white gang of good guys and bad guys unite agains this new foe). Heading the posse, if you can call it that, is James Stewart, who is always pretty amazing. And there is the surprise woman in the group, an almost unrecognizable Janet Leigh. Eventually the group has to cross an inhospitable (and beautiful) landscape in all kinds of weather. It's powerful in the themes, if a little familiar in its themes.

Ryan is the highlight here. Stewart is billed first, but he's an uncomplicated hero, and Ryan plays a more convoluted type. The woman is at first Ryan's, it seems, but then it gets complicated. And the other two figures in this roving band take on opposing roles, as well. Leigh, in short hair (a 1950s style, and a good one), is really different, and she does fine. This cast of five is the entire credited cast (the Indians don't count, I guess, with no speaking parts). And because it's a small group, it gets increasingly personal. And good.

Director Anthony Mann is clearly in good form, making a routine script take on both psychological and kinetic edge. Everyone is trapped a bit by a routine script, but Mann makes it really tight and smart. The color photography is also trapped by the routines of beauty in the great Western landscape. The best scenes, at night in a cave, for example, are constricted and tense, really visually wonderful. Sometimes a simple tracking shot will follow someone across bumpy landscape with perfect grace, an invisible cue that the crew is really working hard, laying dolly track, making a difficult scene look easy.

The one really interesting theme that grows slowly until exploding at the end is the morality of hunting someone down just to turn them in for money. The bounty. And the bounty hunter. Well, with Janet Leigh there to help persuade you to higher goals, I supposed Jimmy Stewart can be forgiven. Or praised. You watch and see.

James Stewart and Anthony Mann worked together on several films during the 1950's, and this film, "The Naked Spur", represents a very satisfying effort, pooling the collective talents of a great star with a renowned director and letting a story tell itself on film.

There is very little action in the sense of a normal western, no shootouts in the streets, no bar-room brawls, no breakouts from the jail, or even a bank robbery. There is no town, period; the film was made outdoors in Colorado, and the scenery simply enhances and enriches the plot of the film.

Basically, James Stewart plays a bounty hunter, Howard Kemp, who has a chance to catch a major outlaw, Ben Vandergroat portrayed by Robert Ryan. To Kemp, capturing the outlaw represents a chance to make something of himself, start over, with no ties to the former failures he has met. Along the way, he bumps into a weather-beaten prospector, Jesse, played by veteran Milliard Mitchell, and a deserter from the army, played by Ralph Meeker. Ryan has a traveling companion, Lina, (Janet Leigh), and when Ben is captured, she does make efforts to free him, thus causing Stewart's character all sorts of grief and anguish. Ryan, in a starkly brilliant performance, also attempts to create chances to escape.

In watching the film develop, one has to wonder if Kemp will ultimately, due to his hardened nature, surrender Ben to the authorities, or will he simply let the outlaw go, and try to make a fresh start elsewhere. The answer comes at the side of a roaring river set between a rocky gorge. A very unique film, and one that deserves a watch by western fans.

Acting legend Jimmy Stewart and filmmaker Anthony Mann made a handful of notable collaborations, but none quite as impactful as this. It's hailed as one of the finest Westerns ever made by fans and buffs, and this viewer isn't exactly inclined to disagree with them. It's a rather intimate story (there are only five main characters), but it's gorgeously filmed (by cinematographer William C. Mellor) in Technicolor on Rocky Mountain locations in Colorado, and it certainly would have looked even more grand had it been filmed in "scope". Its five characters are developed well, and we see how plain greed often motivates their actions.

Jimmy is cast as Howard Kemp, an intense bounty hunter determined to collect the reward for wanted man Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan). However, he didn't really count on Ben travelling with a companion (the lovely young Janet Leigh), or that he'd have to rely on two other solitary travellers: grizzled gold prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and young Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), who was drummed out of the Cavalry for his shaky morals. Tate, at the very least, comes off as more level-headed than the hot-tempered Anderson.

Without over-explaining things, we learn what motivates Kemp, and we see why he's so driven. A complicated, somewhat compromised character was not exactly known to be Jimmy's forte (he usually played symbols of human decency), but he handles it with style. His co-stars are just as good, though, with Ryan a standout as a smart cookie (this is one of his cheeriest performances, for sure) who knows how to drive a wedge in between the "partners", and otherwise manipulate them.

The good, straightforward story is by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, who were later nominated for the Screenplay Oscar. In addition to giving us an engaging set of personalities to clash with one another, they also make sure to include some riveting action sequences, well realized by the filmmakers. The final few minutes involve some river rapids, and they're as exciting as anything one will see in this genre.

Well worth seeing for Western devotees, it's also a good time for fans of any of the cast members present.

Eight out of 10.

Set in the post Civil War American West, The Naked Spur is more than a western. The director, Anthony Mann, took a script by two relatively unknown screenwriters (later nominated for an Oscar) and made a great picture about losers trying to survive in a tough postwar world. James Stewart, the star, plays a rancher who lost everything because before going off to the Civil War, he signed his ranch over to his girlfriend. In 1952, when this picture was filmed, World War II was no distant memory, the Korean War was going on and the idea that a soldier thought he wasn't going to return from a war was real enough. The writers and Anthony Mann placed the story almost a hundred years earlier, but the movie is about regular people on the skids. The cashiered Army officer, always looking out for number one, whatever the cost to others, had to ring true with war veterans in the audience in 1953. There is a villain, and Robert Ryan plays a great one, but James Stewart's character, Howard Kemp, is no hero. Ryan's character, Ben Vandergroat, complains that he knew Howard and he never did Howie any wrong, so there was no reason for Kemp to track him down, regardless of the reward money. Ryan has a point, a western hero doesn't hunt down someone just for money, knowing that if caught the person will be executed. But the scenic views of the Rocky Mountains, the great production values (including Technicolor) by MGM and the stars all are a façade for what could have been a film noir picture, Anthony Mann's earlier specialty. Stewart's character in The Naked Spur is trying to get back the ranch he lost after his world was turned upside down by war. The screaming nightmares he has, showing the psychological trauma the war was responsible for, would now go under the name post traumatic stress syndrome. War veterans trying to return to a normal life has always been a subject for movies, but rarely has the message been hidden as well as here. The Naked Spur is the type of class picture studios don't (or can't) make anymore, and that is the moviegoers' loss.

I saw this for the first time recently.

The plot in short n without any spoilers - A man with a tragic past becomes a bounty hunter to catch a cunning murderer so that he can buy back his land via the bounty reward. Unwillingly he partners with two fellas, one an ex soldier who is discharged dishonorably n the other an old fella looking for gold mine. The trio manages to catch the murderer but on the trail the cunning wanted murderer wages a continous psychological game to turn his captors against each other by various means.

This is no doubt a very different western which started off very engrossing, specially the psychological duel n the journey but somehow towards the end it felt a bit odd.

The girl suddenly changes her mind, the soldiers' fate in the end was uncalled for n what was the need for digging a grave for a murderer n where will the couple live if the man is broke n without a house.

Still i am generous with a 7 cos of the performances n cinematography.