The Man from Laramie

A tough, visually powerful, and emotionally intense Technicolor Western, and one of the first films in the genre to be shot in CinemaScope (on location in New Mexico). James Stewart is a stranger investigating the circumstances around the death of his brother, who runs afoul of a cattle baron (Donald Crisp), his miscreant son (Alex Nicol) and his foreman (Arthur Kennedy). This was Stewart’s final collaboration with Anthony Mann, who would later walk away from the production of Night Passage and bring the creative partnership that reinvigorated the Western genre in the ’50s to an unceremonious end. This was one of their best films together and, when Stewart decided to perform his own stunt and allowed himself to be dragged by a horse, one of their most potentially dangerous (“It wouldn’t have worked half as well if they’d used a double,” said Stewart. “I guess I made Mann a nervous wreck for a short while.”). The Man from Laramie is presented in a beautiful 4K restoration. A Sony Pictures release.