Bend of the River (1952)

 While Jimmy Stewart is known for his multiple colaberations with filmmakers like Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock, his most frequent director was the now largely forgetten Anthony Mann, between 1950 and the close of their business relationship in 1955 they made eight films together, five of them westerns. Mann along with Hitchcock helped shape the harder edged post war Stewart persona.

'Bend of the River' was the pairs second movie. Jimmy Stewart is a man with a past in Missouri, who sets out for the Columbia River country to reinvent himself as a farmer. While guiding a wagon train west he saves Arthur Kennedy from a hanging and the two later kill some Indians together who have attacked their caravan.

On a stop in Portland we accrue more characters, including a gambler with a hart played by Rock Hudson and an unfortunate racial stereotype played by Stepin Fetchit. Months pass, the homesteaders homestead and then Stewart and community leader Jay C. Flippen go back to Portland for some previously paid for winter supplies. An influx of miners have inflated prices and Stewart and allies (some of them paid and not exactly loyal) must steal their own goods and set up River in Chubby Johnsons River boat, unscrupulous buisnessman Howard Petrie sends a possie on horses to intercept.

The above summery only gets us about 50 minutes into the movies 91 minute run time, it also leaves out the many subplots, including Stewart's possible romantic intrest in either of Flippen's two daughters, Julie Adams and Lori Nelson. There is alot going on in this movie, the story takes some unexpected turns as shifting loyalties and madness are signatures of Anthony Mann westerns. On par with the better known 'Winchester 73' and The Man from Laramie', solid, satisfying, and mythic. ***1/2