text: One of the greatest westerns of all time! But this one, unlike many others, does not deal with the nature, horses, shootouts, etc., but instead deals with one rifle, the Winchester '73, and how this one rifle effects others and how they effect it. A rifle is not a living, breathing, human being, right? You may be inclined to believe that it is not. But it seems to have a mind of its own, for two very similar reasons: it gets back to its rightful owner in the end, even though that throughout the rest of the picture, its unthoughtful "owners" do their best to make sure it does not, and it never seems to be content until it gets back to its original owner, so, coincidentally, the unthoughtful "owners" always seem to lose it somehow or get killed trying to protect and keep it, until it gets back to James Stewart, then it is "content". But, not every one of the owners deserves to have it. Stewart does, of course, since he won it. McNally does not, since he had to be a dirty thief and steal it. Drake definitely does not, because he would probably lose it in some poker game, and besides, Drake is too cowardly to fight, so why should he have a one-of-a-kind rifle if he will not even use it? Duryea does not, because he is just a chuckling maniac, and we all know that chuckling maniacs do not deserve guns. This film has a sort of noir edge that only Westerns can have, such as the Ox-Bow Incident. Westerns have their own type of noir, much different than the 30's and 40's Bogart films. It is, hands-down, the best one out of all five Stewart-Mann westerns, even though my personal favorite is "Bend of the River". The other four became much different than this one. I do not think it a coincidence to see that the other four were color, and this is black and white. This is because of the noir edge. All five films had the revenge and the dark past on Stewart's part play into the film, to the point where this is not just Stewart's dark side, but also actually a sort of character, not one to be listed in the credits, but one that you can only recognize and know that it is there, always present. However, this one, not just on revenge and the dark past, but also in terms of supreme danger, and characters that were very different than Stewart make it surpass the other four in all aspects. But Stewart never crosses the line. He does, however, walk the line between light and dark. This is why black and white played such an integral part in the film. They could have all been black and white, or they could have all been color. But this one is in black and white, and the other four are in color, and there is a very good reason for that.