Evelyn T
Great movie and cast.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
04/17/25
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Steve D
Not among Stewart's best westerns despite its reputation.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/24/24
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Matthew B
The Man from Laramie marked the end of a fruitful collaboration between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart. The two men had worked together on seven movies already, including four westerns (Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur and The Far Country).
It might be thought that this final movie was one too far, and that the Mann/Stewart westerns were getting tired and had run their course. This was not the case. The Man from Laramie showed no decline in quality, and was even one of the best films on which the two men worked together.
Theirs had been a fruitful arrangement which had given Stewart a chance to show that he had acting abilities that went far beyond playing a good-natured hero in comedies. Mann in turn benefitted from having a charismatic actor fronting his movies.
Perhaps it is no bad thing that their five-year professional relationship ended on a high. The Man from Laramie was another tense and tough western that used the new Cinemascope method to fully capture the beautiful if barren scenery of New Mexico.
Anthony Mann was no innovator or auteur like John Ford, Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah. He made use of conventional and familiar western plots – a loner arrives into a remote town, a family member seeks revenge for a murder, a love triangle develops between hero, heroine and villain, immoral white men sell guns to the Apaches etc.
What Mann did bring to the table was a strong sense of pace and rhythm that was perfectly pitched during both the intimate chamber scenes and the action set-pieces. His westerns had a toughness and grit about them, although it was still too early for a director to make films in a style that was too brutal and nihilistic.
At its heart, The Man from Laramie is a revenge tale. Will Lockhart (James Stewart) is trying to find out who sold repeating rifles to the Apaches. His interest in the issue is personal – the warriors used the guns to attack and slaughter a troop of soldiers, one of whom was Lockhart's brother.
The question is whether Lockhart is the kind of man to see it through. Does he have the necessary hard streak to kill another man, except in self-defence?
At the heart of Lockhart's investigation is Alex Waggoman, the owner of the Barb Ranch, which occupies almost all the land in the area for miles around. Like many westerns, the film has a conservative approach towards the powerful man. Waggoman may be a ruthless businessman who uses unethical methods, but the story ultimately makes him seem more sympathetic than he deserves.
Nonetheless there is a sense how hollow Waggoman's lifetime of greedy acquisition has been. Most of the land that we see in the film is surprisingly empty and barren, hardly worth the fight that it took to own it. In any case, Waggoman will no longer be able to admiringly gaze on his property for long. He is going blind.
In some ways, the story acts as a re-enactment of King Lear. Waggoman has just the one son, Dave. The old man would like to see Dave as his responsible heir one day, but the young man has no interest or aptitude for the business, and prefers to preen in front of a mirror rather than look at the accounts.
Due to the feeble nature of his son, Waggoman is forced to leave the real running of the estate in the hands of Hansbro. Hansbro has no relations of his own, and regards himself as being a second son to Waggoman. The feeling is not reciprocated. Waggoman likes Hansbro, but favours Dave because he is a blood relation.
At first glance, it might seem that Hansbro is the better man. He is more reasonable and capable than Dave, and his personality is more appealing. Perhaps he would have been the better man in other circumstances.
However Hansbro has his own Shakespearian flaw, his ambition. Despite warnings from Barbara that he is being used, Hansbro guards the honour of the family jealously, because he believes that he will one day inherit a share in their estate. This ambition corrodes his soul. By the end of the film, Hansbro proves to be far worse than any of the Waggomans.
The Man from Laramie is seen as one of Mann's darker westerns. There is certainly an intensity about it that is not found in Winchester '73, which has a more relaxed and open feel to it, compared with the more intense focus of The Man from Laramie. Nonetheless the final note is one of redemption and not retribution The last of the great Mann/Stewart collaborations ends on a hopeful note.
I wrote a longer appreciation of The Man from Laramie on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2021/03/13/the-man-from-laramie-1955/
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/30/23
Full Review
Ed M
Solid western. And, of course, Jimmy Stewart elevates the material.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/10/22
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david f
This film felt kind of incomplete, I wasn't quite sure what everyone's motivation was. But nice scenery and a kind of almost Shakespearean plot about a man out for revenge and a cattle baron and his bully son and frustrated assistant that he encounters.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
William L
You've seen the West. But have you seen the West in CinemaScope AND Technicolor?
My third Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart Western in as many weeks, The Man from Laramie fits the mold of most of their collaborations - built on solid foundations with plenty of room for nitpicking, but still an overall enjoyable experience. Stewart's Lockhart is provided with a double-revenge motivation as he is initially wronged by a cliched and completely unsympathetic antagonist in Nicol's Dave, who burns his wagons and beats him over a misunderstanding, but then it's revealed for some reason that there is some festering resentment over the murder of Lockhart's brother by an unidentified assailant as well that only comes into relevance in the final minutes, happens to coincide with the villain of the main plot, and really didn't need to be there at all. It's pretty standard fare - Lockhart himself is a terse man who knows his way around a gun that gets tied up in local resentment against an authoritarian land baron, Crisp's Alec Waggoman (who, 40 years prior, portrayed Ulysses S. Grant in D.W. Griffith's technical masterpiece and moral nuclear waste dump, The Birth of a Nation). However, Alec himself is actually given a fair bit of character development, at once a caring father, a cold-hearted businessman, and the kind of visionary that would carve up the West, but now entering his twilight years and dealing with crises with respect to his own authority and succession, many of which are of his own making.
There are some interesting touches on greed and its potential to tear people apart that bring to mind echoes of Mann's earlier Naked Spur, twisting moderately healthy relationships, but they never really make it anywhere particularly profound. Stewart is saved from any sort of moral stain when, despite being given the opportunity to kill the man who shot his brother, instead lets the killer leave; but circumstances are of course set up so that the killer gets his comeuppance anyway, because traditional Westerns just don't like much complexity to their protagonists. But the strength of this film isn't the story, it's the visuals, as 18-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Charles Lang busts out the CinemaScope to plant you out on the range with the cowpunchers. Taken together, it's pretty conventional, but also just plain pretty. (3/5)
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
05/31/21
Full Review
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