Mount Hood looms in the background – often centrally positioned, showcasing Anthony Mann’s incredible skill in framing – at the beginning of Bend of the River. A line of dialogue compares it to a tall man with white hair (in Mann’s films, the landscape is alive and breathing). It’s not ominous, but distant and serene: a reminder of the difficulty in reaching the earthly paradise. In the triumphant and festive finale, we see it again from the other side of the journey. In a key conversation between the old man Jeremy and Glyn (James Stewart), Jeremy recounts how he has seen “untouched land” elsewhere, ruined by men who steal and kill: “We mustn’t let it happen here too.” (Notice: here, Glyn touches the scar on his neck, hidden by a bandana, a mark of his former life as a bandit.)
Mount Hood dominates the background – often in a central position, in Anthony Mann’s incredible ability to construct the frame – at the beginning of the movie. In the dialogue compares him to a tall man with white hair (in Mann the landscape lives and breathes). It i...
Greed ruins everything: for Mann, as for Budd Boetticher, money is a disgrace. The journey of these settlers represents the dream of leaving behind, beyond the mountain, the chaos of history. This also applies on a personal level, with James Stewart hiding his past as an outlaw and struggling against himself. As always in Mann’s work, his “dark side” is represented by a ‘double’, here his companion Arthur Kennedy. Mann’s heroes, obsessed with the past (revenge, betrayed friendship, broken family ties), are internally divided, haunted by the Furies (which, incidentally, is the title of another western by Anthony Mann, less known but among the most beautiful).
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