Marvin makes for a rather intense villain, whose sadistic zeal is downright frightening. Director John Ford demonstrates that he is a consummate craftsman by allowing his actors to make their characters their own, while slowly building tension as the story moves to its inevitable showdown. The black and white image is clean, sharp and nicely defined, making one forget that this movie is nearly forty years old. Certainly, there are a few blemishes and a bit of noticeable grain, but it's nothing that detracts from this wonderful presentation. Blacks are suitably inky, plus the image provides a healthy dose of shadow detail and fairly impressive depth.
Contrast is quite good, as are various gradient of gray and the clean, stable whites.
For an older monaural film, this is an effective reworking of the material that doesn' t try to exceed the limitations of the original recordings. Gunshots and other sound effects have some directionality, plus the film's music garners some benefits by being spread into the periphery. The fidelity of the music is limited by age, but still manages to sound pretty good. Dialogue is fully intelligible and the actors' voices are clean and distinct sounding. The original English monaural soundtrack is also encoded onto the DVD, as are English subtitles.