THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, Columbia, 1955.
Dir. Anthony Mann. Perf. James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O’Donnell.
Review by Dominic

The concluding chapter of Anthony Mann’s collaboration with James Stewart is a stylish and well paced—if awkwardly plotted—tale of intrigue and betrayal. Will Lockheart (Stewart) is lugging three wagonloads of supplies to the town of Coronado from (you guessed it) Laramie. He makes the drop all right, but is savagely and inexplicably attacked by the son of a local land baron before he can leave again. Understandably irritable, and irked by the town’s air of disquietude and secrecy, he decides to stick around, befriending a local woman and few else. Someone there has been selling guns to the Apache, and Lockheart makes it his business to find out who.

There’s no way around it: The Man from Laramie’s plot points are real gear-grinders. The land baron’s son (Alex Nicol) makes a believable enough hothead but his provocation of the film’s initial conflict is implausible, and there is something too perfunctory about his crowning folly later on. Similarly, the film’s romantic subplot is sustained by the combination of coy dialogue and Stewart’s modest charm, but it’s hardly load-bearing drama, and Lockheart’s obsession with the Apache arms deals is never satisfactorily explained.

The greater narrative may lean unfortunately toward the by-the-numbers angst of a soap opera, but at the more immediate level of the scene, Mann’s film is wonderful: even if it isn’t quite one, The Man from Laramie certainly looks like a classic. The cinematography of Charles Lang, who went on to do the camerawork for The Magnificent Seven (1960), is both measured and energetic. Elegantly colorful shots of the midday sunlight spread across the township or corrugated by rocky outcrops supply that truly “cinematic” feel, and subtly creative camera positioning amps up the action sequences considerably.

Stewart doesn’t fail to deliver, bringing to this one a conflicted mix of assertion and humility that seems to enliven his every move. The man simply cannot utter a bad line: “Why you scum!” may not be the greatest of Western lines, but it sure seems like it when Jimmy says it.

The Man from Laramie’s structural flaws are of a pretty regular variety, in all. Nevertheless, it is a testament to the film’s strengths that predictable dramatics don’t keep it from being a fun, likeable thriller and a satisfying end to the Mann/Stewart partnership.