Jimmy Stewart plays a senator who returns with his wife to their home town to attend the funeral of an old friend. The newspaper men are curious to know the details of why he would come back to pay his respects to a "nobody" so he tells them the tale. It's fairly standard western fare for the most part: an educated and non-violent man from the East comes to town, gets robbed, tries to fight his battles using law and his sense of civilised justice but finds that the sword can be mightier than the pen. There are gunfights and saloons and tough men eating big steaks but there are also some interesting insights into American politics of the period which in some ways hasn't changed at all.
Stewart is always good, of course, but the standout performances here are from the supporting cast — particularly Edmund O'Brien as the newspaper editor who likes a drink and the sound of his own voice and Woody Strode as John Wayne's loyal sidekick. Wayne himself was a limited actor but had great screen presence and was constantly watchable — surely the definition of a true film star.
It's hard to talk too much about themes without giving away the ending. We have the old standby of so many westerns: civilisation coming to the West and how it parallels the story of the USA. We have the central triangle of Jimmy Stewart's idealist, John Wayne's pragmatist and Lee Marvin's anarchist — facets of a single character or facets of America itself? All very Film Studies 101 but there are some more interesting questions being asked here too — about the flexibility of law and the role of myth in American history. Its answers are quite pessimistic really, but I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
A top Western, and well worth its place at no. 60.
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