The Naked Spur

Director: Anthony Mann Anthony Mann

Overview

In this film, James Stewart plays a taciturn frontiersman who loses his home while he's off fighting the Civil War. To raise enough money for a new grubstake, Stewart becomes a bounty hunter in Colorado territory. His first quarry is fugitive killer Robert Ryan.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/15/2006
UPC:	0012569792463
Original Release:	1953
Rating:	NR
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:31:00
Sales rank:	34,514

Special Features

Closed Caption;Vintage Pete Smith Specially short Things We Can Do Without; Classic cartoon Little Johnny Jet; Theatrical trailer; Languages: English & Français; Subtitles: English, Français & Español (feature film only)

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Stewart	Actor
Robert Ryan	Actor
Millard Mitchell	Actor
Ralph Meeker	Actor
Janet Leigh	Lina Patch
Actor	Actor
Jesse Tate	Actor
Bronislau Kaper	Composer

Technical Credits

Sam Rolfe

Harold Jack Bloom

Anthony Mann	Director
Sam Rolfe	Screenwriter
Harold Jack Bloom	Screenwriter
William H. Wright	Producer
Virginia Bougas	Stunts
Warren Newcombe	Special Effects
Douglas Shearer	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

One of the most intense psychological Westerns of the 1950s is as much an edgily melodramatic character study as a Western. Anchored by James Stewart's anguished performance, in his third Mann Western, the five characters struggle between instinct and morality, a conflict heightened by their isolation in a Colorado landscape free of the trappings of civilization. Robert Ryan's smoothly manipulative villain may be the bounty target, but Millard Mitchell's prospector and Ralph Meeker's soldier aren't solid citizens either; Janet Leigh's Lina is the only voice of propriety. Stewart's Howard, emasculated by a treacherous wife, teeters on the brink of hysteria and excessive violence, even after he manages to reclaim the strength to kill his quarry. In a dramatic departure from the traditionally taciturn, resilient Western hero, Howard can only collapse sobbing into Lina's arms as he acquiesces to her moral imperative at the conclusion. Shot on location in the Rockies with Mann's customary pictorial beauty and violence, The Naked Spur was a vital sign of the Western's postwar turn toward revisionism and neurosis, and one of the best of Mann's five westerns with Stewart.