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India Press Store - Man From Laramie
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List Price: $9.95
Our Price: $6.24
Your Save: $ 3.71 ( 37% )
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Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell, Alex Nicol
Directed By: Anthony Mann
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302177442
Format: Color
ISBN: 6302177448
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Release Date: 1994-06-28
Running Time: 104
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: 1955-08-31
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fine, Leathery Jimmy
Comment: Full disclosure: That header is lifted from a previous newspaper review of this movie. That settled, "The Man From Laramie" is a first rate western. ML features a definitive beginning, middle, an end, a credible plot, a fine cast, razor sharp direction from Anthony Mann and Big Sky New Mexico scenery. ML represented the 5th western but final collaboration twixt Jimmy Stewart and Director Mann. According to Tony Thomas' "The West That Never Was', they feuded over the script to "Night Passage". Mann backed out and Stewart soldiered on without Mann at the helm, with mediocre results. Special mention for ML should go to veteran Donald Crisp, a local cattle baron. DC, whose credits date back to the silent era is perfectly cast here. This review is striving to avoid a plot synopsis but viewers may enjoy ML more if they watch with a touch of cynicism. There is more to the Stewart character than meets the unjaundiced eye. This observer missed a major plot twist and did not figure it all out until the fadeout. Key point: Why did Jimmy linger in town so long? The bottom line is that ML is a major western classic. Fans should contrast the hardnosed JS here against the tenderfoot western lawyer in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". What a wonderful range he showed over his distinguished career!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great western
Comment: Great J. Stewart western, one of his best. Kind of "dark", but still great movie.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Stewart and Mann's last Western in widescreen
Comment: This western, unfortunately, turned out to be James Stewart & Anthony Mann's last collorboration together and their only Western in widescreen (Cinemascope). It's may well be their best one along with "The Naked Spur" for it tells the Shakesperian like story of a stranger who arrives in a New Mexico town bent on revenge who totally disrupts an elderly rancher's (Donald Crisp)family. Mann's use of the wide screen process is exceptional and Stewart, without the use of a stunt person, creates the portrait of a cowboy who is physically abused by the evil elements in town. He's more than matched by the under-rated Arthur Kennedy who always remain somewhat sympathetic even as a villain and Alex Nicol as Crisp's weak son who brutally abuses Stewart in his quest for power. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot but if you know your Shakespere, you'll recognize some elements of "King Lear" in the story. Recommended for all Stewart fans and lovers of great westerns.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Usual great stuff from Mann and Stewart
Comment: Director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart made a great combination. I always found their westerns together reached a part of me that other westerns didn't reach. Along with Bend of the River, Winchester '73 etc, this is top-notch stuff, not necessarily heavy on action, but with a lot of heart.
The rest of a really great cast includes Donald Crisp, Arthur Kennedy and Aline MacMahon.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A tale of anguish and vengeance...
Comment: Some of the best Westerns of the fifties were those directed by Anthony Mann and John Ford, straightforward and unpretentious, but each with an interesting approach to the requirements of the genre... Mann's films were the more prestigious, usually featuring James Stewart who, with John Wayne, was the fifties' biggest box-office draw... "The Man From Laramie" best known because of the Frankie Laine theme strong which accompanied it, is notable for (among other things) Alex Nicol's extraordinary projection of sadism, an element which dominated the best of Mann's movies... The motion picture was to be the last of the Mann-Stewart Westerns...
Stewart is cast as a wagon handler from Laramie, Wyoming, but is, really, an army officer out to avenge the death of his younger brother, a U.S. Cavalryman, massacred by the Apaches who were buying guns from unknown persons... It is these persons that Stewart is looking for..
Soon Stewart gets involved in an area of New Mexico which is ruled by the iron hand of a cattle baron Donald Crisp, a strong authoritarian "who can't live with a lie"... Crisp's one weakness is his love and care for his spoiled son, Alex Nicol...
Wild but feeble, yet vicious, Nicol - with extraordinary projection of sadism - accosts Stewart in several confrontations in which (among other outrages) Stewart is dragged through fire by horses, and has his hand held tight while Alex puts a bullet through it... Mann proceeds in this mood throughout the movie, growing even more sadistic...
Arthur Kennedy, a hard-working heavy, plays the adopted son of Crisp... He is a son in disguise, jealous of Alex, pretending to be his brother's ally and protector...
A lot of good supporting actors are cast including Cathy O'Donnell, the fragile beauty who has little to do but await patiently for an opportunity; Aline MacMahon, the fine 'ugly' woman who never leaves the old man, and Jack Elam who tries to knife James Stewart in the back...
Anthony Mann adopted an altogether tougher approach to Western mythology than John Ford... His obsessive, neurotic characters and his emphasis on violence foretell the work of Peckinpah, Leone and Eastwood...
Filmed in Technicolor, "The Man From Laramie" is a Western with new touches of brutality touching off the wide screen spectacle...
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Editorial Reviews:
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Only John Ford excelled Anthony Mann as a purveyor of eye-filling Western imagery, and Mann's best films are second to no one's when it comes to the fusion of dynamic action, rugged landscapes, and fierce psychological intensity. The Man from Laramie is the last of five remarkable Westerns the director made with James Stewart (starting with Winchester '73 and peaking with The Naked Spur). This collaboration marked virtually a whole new career for Stewart, whose characters are all haunted by the past and driven by obsession--here, to find whoever set his cavalry-officer brother in the path of warlike Indians. The Man from Laramie aspires to an epic grandeur beyond its predecessors. It's the only one in CinemaScope, and Stewart's personal quest is subsumed in a larger drama--nothing less than a sagebrush version of King Lear, with a range baron on the verge of blindness (Donald Crisp), his weak and therefore vicious son (Alex Nicol), and another, apparently more solid "son," his Edmund-like foreman (Arthur Kennedy). There are a few too many subsidiary characters, and the reach for thematic complexity occasionally diminishes the impact. But no one will ever forget the scene on the salt flats between Nicol and Stewart--climaxing in the single most shocking act of violence in '50s cinema--or the final, mountaintop confrontation. For decades, the film has been seen only in washed-out, pan-and-scan videos, with the characters playing visual hopscotch from one panel of the original composition to another. It's great to have this glorious DVD--razor-sharp, fully saturated (or as saturated as '50s Eastmancolor could be), and breathtaking in its CinemaScope sweep. --Richard T. Jameson
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