Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)

Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)

Cast: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Millard Mitchell, Charles Drake, John McIntire, Will Geer, Jay C. Flippen, Rock Hudson, John Alexander, Steve Brodie, James Millican, Abner Biberman, Tony Curtis, James Best. Screenplay: Robert L. Richards, Borden Chase, based on a story by Stuart N. Lake. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Bernard Herzbrun, Nathan Juran. Film editing: Edward Curtiss.

Winchester '73 fetishes the titular firearm as if it were Excalibur or the Shield of Achilles. Which is all to the point if you're mythmaking, as this film, the first of a series of five movies on which James Stewart collaborated with director Anthony Mann, distinctly is. It's not only a contribution to the myth of the American West, but its central conflict is based on the story of Cain and Abel, with a touch of Oedipus thrown in. Sibling rivalry -- I almost wrote "sibling riflery" -- never got hotter. This is the only one of the Stewart-Mann Westerns that wasn't made in color, but it hardly matters: William H. Daniels photographs the high desert country of Arizona as lovingly as he ever filmed Greta Garbo. The film also holds a place in Hollywood movie history because of the deal Stewart's agent made guaranteeing the actor a percentage of the profits -- a step toward the disintegration of the studio system that would accelerate through the 1950s. But it might also be noted that the studios still held some power: Two up-and-coming Universal contract players, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, both have small roles in the film, the former in war paint and a fake nose as the Indian chief Young Bull, the latter in a bit part as a cavalryman who admires the rifle on which the plot centers. Winchester '73 is one of the great Westerns not because it questions the myths (and the clichés, such as Shelley Winters's "dance hall girl" with a heart as gold as her hair) on which the genre is founded, but because it so wholeheartedly accepts and integrates them into a well-paced and entertaining movie.

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Cast: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, Mark Gatiss, James Smith. Screenplay: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara. Cinematography: Robbie Ryan. Production design: Fiona Crombie. Film editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis. Costume design: Sandy Powell.

I was eager to see The Favourite because I hoped it would give me a sense of how much of the brilliant weirdness of Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) stemmed from their director, Yorgos Lanthimos, and how much from his screenwriting collaborator, Efthymis Filippou. The Favourite is the first film of Lanthimos's I've seen that has a screenplay by other hands than theirs. I think it can be truly said that Lanthimos is a genuine auteur, although I also think that was pretty clear already. He doesn't compromise with the genre of The Favourite, the historical costume drama; instead, he sends it up in ways that will make it hard for anyone to watch one of those glossy, opulent recreations of the past with a straight face again. Is it, for example, going to be possible to watch Olivia Colman playing Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown without cracking up, recalling her performance as Queen Anne? And who will ever be able to witness a stately ballroom scene without remembering how Rachel Weisz and Joe Alwyn take the floor in The Favourite? Lanthimos thumbs his nose at historical accuracy, introducing anachronistic music, from Schubert to Elton John, in the midst of period-correct composers like Purcell and Handel, and thereby achieves a higher correctness of emotional intensity. He inverts sexuality, not only in the same-sex cavorting of the queen and her favorites, but also in the foppish bewigged courtiers, whose male devotion to war is subjugated to the power plays of the dominant females who regard war as a game. Abigail, her mind on other things, gives her husband a hand job on their wedding night. As in his earlier films, Lanthimos is fascinated by people who play god, and although the film is mostly a comedy there's a kind of tragic irony in its ending, with Abigail, who has won her battle with Sarah, now under the thumb of the half-mad queen, reduced to a pet like one of the queen's rabbits. Earlier, Abigail has tried to squash one of the bunnies under her foot; now she's being squashed by Anne. The Favourite, I think, is going to take its place as one of the great satiric films.