The Naked Spur (1953, Anthony Mann) (Patreon)

83/100

NOTE: This was briefly a poll request, but it only stuck around for two weeks and thus wasn't ever eligible for the random drawing. It's leaving the Criterion Channel soon (along with a bunch of other Manns), and I don't currently own the DVD, so I decided now was the time.

Second viewing, last seen 1997. Poked around a bit and didn't find any detailed analysis of what for my money ranks among the greatest, most galvanizing shots in cinema history. It occurs in the last few minutes, after everything's been resolved save for the question of what to do with Ben Vandergroat's body. Lina is horrified by the prospect of lugging the corpse to Abilene so as to collect the dead-or-alive reward, but bounty hunter Kemp*, his goal achieved at last, ignores her entreaties for as long as he can. His words don't quite make grammatical sense (Stewart, in thrall to the character's agitation, apparently fumbled his lines), but their meaning is abundantly clear: "I don't care anything about that but money, that's all I care about, that's all I've ever cared about." It's not simply that this is perhaps the quintessential moment of the Mann-Stewart Westerns, which sought to complicate the star's golly-gee image (Kemp even growls "Maybe I don't fit your ideas of me but that's the way I am") and would pave the way for some truly warped Hitchcock masterpieces. There's also the shot itself, and Mann's decision to have Stewart deliver this grotesque credo with his back to the camera, dragging a dead body, hunched over and walking with a limp, looking more like Igor in a Frankenstein movie than like even a conventional anti-hero. Mann follows him at the same measured, lurching pace, thereby suggesting a certain complicity; it's one of very few dolly shots in the entire film. That Kemp ultimately relents and buries his nemesis doesn't negate the singular ugliness of this brief, climactic heel turn. He'd been morally dubious from the outset, to be sure, but not so, uh, nakedly. 

Pretty terrific movie prior to that, too. Robert Ryan likewise plays against type, forgoing his usual commanding presence to embody a more weaselly variety of villain. (I actually failed to recognize him at first, even though I was waiting for him to appear. He just looked and sounded too lightweight. A possible partner in crime had been mentioned, so I assumed it must be that dude.) This dynamic shifts what would ordinarily be a straightforwardly macho battle of wills into more of a round-robin manipulation contest. Jesse, occupying more or less the Walter Brennan role—I was startled this time to realize it's the same actor, Millard Mitchell, who plays Singin' in the Rain's urbane studio head!—gets bribed by Kemp into serving as a de facto deputy to what he mistakenly assumes is a sheriff, then later bribed again, to his eventual doom. Roy (a magnificently smug Ralph Meeker) more or less bulldozes Kemp into letting him tag along and subsequently agreeing to split the reward. Ben spends much of the film demanding shoulder massages from Lina ("wouldja do me?" never stops being funny) and whispering instructions that take noxious advantage of her innate decency. And of course there's Lina's flirtation with Kemp, which may or may not (SPOILER ALERT: not so much) be primarily a means of distracting him so that Ben can escape. Mann shoots all of this intrigue in cramped compositions that suggest a forest's vertical density more than the Western's standard horizontal expanse (which usually comes across even in Academy ratio). I'll allow that anyone still wondering, toward the end, "Why is this called The Naked Spur, anyway?" will get a decidedly goofy answer, and Roy's fate feels similarly contrived; the film's narrative skeleton can be a tad rickety. But I treasure its raw emotions, which earn the word "naked."

* As a rule, I try to avoid referring to female characters by their first names and to male characters by their surnames—a commonplace and slightly infantilizing tendency. But if I call Lina "Patch," nobody will know who I'm talking about (don't even recall hearing her last name in the movie; I found it on Wikipedia), and conversely we almost never hear anyone address Kemp as "Howard" (though Ben repeatedly goads him by using "Howie").  So it seems kinda necessary in this particular instance.