Anthony Mann was hitting his stride in the 1950s as a
singular auteur of the American western, fresh off of his 1954 Jimmy Stewart
starring epic The Far Country involving a nuanced portrait of a complicated
antihero and doling out contemporary westerns that seemed to send up
expectations of the genre conventions. Going
on to direct two more westerns in 1955 with The Last Frontier and The
Man from Laramie, Mann briefly shifted over to a military film with the
Paramount Pictures produced VistaVision film Strategic Air Command reuniting
the director with Jimmy Stewart before following it up with the Mario Lanza
starring musical Serenade. Having
worked with the then-new VistaVision high-resolution widescreen 35mm format and
having done a few color pictures recently, Mann made a marked return to the
western genre with the black-and-white lensed small-town gunslinging sheriff
drama The Tin Star now available in a new digitally restored limited
edition blu-ray from Arrow Video.
--Andrew Kotwicki