I’ve never read A Time To Kill but it just sounds enough like the movie that I could comment, but I’ll wait for you to watch the movie.

Winchester ‘73 - Rube. J/k, I’m dissapointed that you didn’t like this, I was hoping it was one you’d enjoy. Oh well. I find there to be very little wrong with it, and think it’s one of the most entertaining westerns. I’d like to call out John McIntire and Dan Duryea for great supporting performances.

I agree that it’s not a “Western Noir.” It’s shaped by some of the same trends that shaped noir and made by a director coming out of a phase of his career where he was making noirs, so I get it, but it’s not a real noir. He made a bunch of similar westerns after that that are all in color, so nobody calls those noirs, but they’re more similar to Winchester ‘73 than his anther noirs like Raw Deal and Railroaded.

The westerns Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart made together are all classics but if you didn’t like this one then I guess skip the others except for maybe The Nakes Spur. If you want to give their partnership another go then that’s the other one to try. The Far Country is the least of the five, fwiw. If you thought that making the characters brothers was too literal a connection then I guess Bend of the River might be more agreeable, with Arthur Kennedy as Stewart’s foil in my favorite of his roles, but that one has more of an “old western” vibe vs. “dialogue that is kinda crackly.” Also, I like Stepin’ Fetchit in the movies he made with John Ford, but he’s excruciating there (although his part isn’t that big).

Winchester ‘73 is probably more influential on the genre than anything that came after it. The movies that would compete for the title, like ’60s Leone and Peckinpah, 1) were also influenced by it and 2) came along when the genre was in decline. In 1950 Hollywood was making more westerns than they make movies now. Broken Arrow, that came out the same year and also starred Jimmy Stewart, was also very important and shaped the way that Indians were portrayed for the rest of the classic Hollywood era.

Winchester ‘73 is also the movie that redefined Stewart’s screen persona. Anthony Mann saw his breakdown at the climax of It’s A Wonderful Life and recognized something in Stewart that hadn’t been tapped elsewhere.

Here I’ll throw you a bone and criticize two things about the movie:

-In the intro text, the “An Indian would sell his soul to own one” and final sentence always seemed like a sour, out of place note.

-WTF is with that weird shot of the deer? That’s “Citizen Kane rubber octopus” territory right there.

Thoughts on this critical commentary?

A Gay Peace
Wyatt Earp is played by actor Will Geer, in real life a gay man, and the boyfriend of the founder of the US Gay Liberation movement, Harry Hay. This would not be relevant to the film - except that his characterization on screen seems loudly gay. We are introduced to him as a rather flaming character, and only gradually learn that he is first the Marshal, and then the famous Wyatt Earp.
Earp keeps the peace in Dodge, by requiring everyone in the city to give up their guns. A vivid scene soon shows hero and villain trying to have a gunfight in a saloon - only to discover that their hands are flapping at empty regions on their hips, where their guns used to be. The giving up of the guns has the visual effect of depriving the men of a phallic display. It is a “homosexualizing” of the town, in some ways: an enforced removal of heterosexual gender identity symbols. It saves the characters’ lives - it is a genuinely good thing to happen. But one that could only take place through the intervention of a gay man in charge (Earp).

Some of Mann’s noir films had powerful gay villains: Desperate, Railroaded!, T-Men. Here we have a powerful gay man again, but he’s not a villain: he’s a famous real life American hero.

In The Tin Star, Mann will once again have a gay icon playing a Sheriff: Anthony Perkins. Perkins’ character is vastly younger and less experienced and established than Earp here. But once again, he will be in charge of trying to civilize a town. He will try to get rid of the violence perpetrated by a straight villain troublemaker (Neville Brand). It’s the same challenge successfully met by Earp in Winchester 73.

Bob Dylan, Dylan: I’m sure I’ve heard it at some point, but I had to relisten to it to comment. It’s boring and the arrangements are sometimes awful. People probably hated it because they payed money for it expecting a new Dylan album. Coming to it now when I can just stream it and know what I’m getting into, it’s just boringly bad. Even the songs I know and like are bad here. If you like Ira Hayes, have you heard this version?

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If you haven’t watched Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, he’s a character in that movie.

Here is Bob Dylan’s drawing of a frame from Winchester ‘73:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/winchester-73--73605775140212021/

You seriously need to WATCH Jimi Plays Monterey (edit: I mean, you don’t need to see it if you don’t want to, but if you’re listening to the album for historical reasons and not watching the video then you’re really missing alot). As an audio recording, your review is fair, but you’re really missing it if you don’t see it. It has a Criterion release and is streaming on the Criterion channel and HBO Max. I don’t mean the Monterey Pop movie that just has Wild Thing, the entire performance is out there. For the later historic performances, you don’t need to see the entire shows, but you should watch Jimi Plays Monterey and then at least see some later clips to see how he’d changed as a performer. His early performances didn’t add much to the song that already had studio performances, but there was a showmanship there that he later lost interest in.