Cheap Bend Of The River (DVD) (James Stewart, Rock Hudson) (Anthony Mann) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bend Of The River

Can A Man Change?
James Stewart, a man with a past that he is trying to put behind him, leads a group of settlers in this highly entertaining Western. He's taking them deep into the country of Oregon where they are going to set up a farming community. Along for the ride is Julia Adams, the daughter of the settler's leader and a girl that Stewart likes. But she only has eyes for Arthur Kennedy, another man with a shady past that Stewart has befriended. I liked this Western a lot. The main character is complicated and a bit mysterious, and Stewart plays him with a lot of intensity and authority. This is one of the films where you see the kind of actor of great depth that Stewart matured into as he grew older, and although I have seen few of his films with director Anthony Mann, I'm going to make a point of it do so now. The rest of the performances are also very effective, although Rock Hudson is given a badly underwritten character that adds little to the film. Mann builds up a lot of tension as the story progresses, and the photography is beautiful. In one sense, the story is a character study about redemption and how a man can change. But it is also a well produced Western, with plenty of action. The combination works unusually well!

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Great Movie, Poor DVD!!
This is a great film but not a great dvd. I had a password issue at the start (which was fixed by just pressing stop on the player) and then the image quality ranged from really good to really poor throughout the film. For the price I paid I can't really complain but I will. As far as the image ratio goes, according to IMDB it was orginally shot in a 1.37:1 so at this format of 1.33:1 not alot is lost. Stewart didn't film a "widescreen" western until "The Man From Laramie" in 1957 if I am correct.

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Pioneers struggle to survive in the great Northwest
This western is a film of great visual beauty that has a great cast headed by James Stewart whose task is to guide a wagon train of pioneers through the Northwest Territory to their new settlement in Oregon. Stewart's Glyn McLyntock has a troubled past but also a conscience and a sense of fair play and justice that saves a gunslinger from a hanging. The ungrateful Emerson Cole repays McLyntock with treachery and gun-play and gets involved in swindling the settlers out of their needed winter supplies that have been seized by an unscrupulous owner of a steamboat and saloon. The rugged terrain of the Oregon countryside and dangerous river rapids lend realism to this story, and there is an interesting sub-plot that has McLyntock and Cole fighting Shoshone warriors at night. Julia Adams is pleasing to the eye as a pioneer girl and old hand Jay C. Flippen is a straight shooter who knows a bad apple when he sees one. The rough and tumble action has shoot-outs between the settlers and gold-crazed miners and hired double-crossers who aim to steal the supplies and sell them at a profit. Rock Hudson is a gambler who's handy with a six-gun.