The Criterion Collection has released 4K Blu-ray upgrades of two legendary films of the last century, 1950’s Winchester ‘73 and 1990’s The Grifters.

Anthony Mann, who rose to fame with such 1940s films noir as T-Men and He Walked by Night, turned to the western genre with the noir western, Winchester ‘73, his first film with James Stewart who had previously played to type as a gentle lawman in George Marshall’s 1939 classic, Destry Rides Again. Under Mann, he is anything but gentle in his first western since then.

Stewart and Stephen McNally play two men desperate to win a marksman contest to own an 1873 Winchester repeating rifle in Dodge City, Kansas on the 4th of July in 1876. The two men, who are openly hostile to one another, have a history that will soon be revealed.

It turns out that Stewart and McNally are brothers, one good, one bad. Stewart is out to avenge McNally for the murder of their father. Although Stewart will win the contest hosted by the town’s sheriff, Wyatt Earp (played by Will Geer), McNally and his gang will steal it in the middle of the night. The rifle will change hands several times before the film comes to its bloody conclusion. Also making strong impressions are Dan Duryea as a homicidal maniac, Millard Mitchell as Stewart’s friend, Rock Hudson as a doomed Indian Chief, and Tony Curtis as a cavalryman infatuated with Shelley Winters who pops up from time to time, ending up with Stewart.

The film won high honors for being one of the first to realistically portray Native Americans, but who here still speak in broken English and call themselves Indians although by the time the film takes place, many had had been university trained graduates who spoke perfect English and didn’t call themselves “Indians.”

The other thing the film is famous for is changing the dynamics of the Hollywood star system. It was the first film for which its star took a reduced salary in exchange for a percentage of the film’s profits. It made Stewart a rich man. He and Mann went on to make another seven films together including Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, and The Man from Laramie. After a falling out over 1957’s Night Passage which Mann felt was beneath him, they went their separate ways with Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper becoming Mann’s go-to stars in The Tin Star and Man of the West, respectively. He then made another career turn, directing such spectacles as El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Stewart, of course, continued his legendary career with such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, and such occasional westerns as John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Andrew McLaglen’s Shenandoah.

Extras include the commentary Stewart made for the film’s laser disc, the only commentary he ever made, and a new interview with film programmer Adam Piron on the portrayal of Native Americans in the western genre.

A made-for-TV remake of Winchester ‘73 turned up in 1967 with Tom Tryon and John Saxon in the Stewart and McNally roles and Dan Duryea in a different role than in the original as their murdered father.

Forty years after Mann turned away from pure film noir with Winchester ‘73, Martin Scorsese produced The Grifters, one of the great modern noirs that he was unable to direct himself due to his work on the same year’s GoodFellas. Instead, he narrated the film’s introductory voiceover while turning directorial duties over to Stephen Frears.

British director Frears had already won acclaim for such films as 1986’s My Beautiful Laundrette which made a star of Daniel Day-Lewis, 1987’s Prick Up Your Ears with its indelible performances by Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, and Vanessa Redgrave, and 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pheiffer, which had been nominated for 7 Oscars including Best Picture and won two for its production design and costumes.

Based on the novel by Jim Thompson, who wrote the dialogue for Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and the screenplay for Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, The Grifters had been one of his most popular pulp fiction novels. Thompson died in 1977, so the screenplay was written by another pulp fiction writer, Donald Westlake.

Nominated for 4 Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actress (Anjelica Huston), and Supporting Actress (Annette Bening), the film was a highpoint for both Huston and John Cusack at the height of their careers and Bening at an early high.

The film opens with all three stars going about their routine grifts – Huston stealing money from her boss (Pat Hingle) at a racetrack, Cusack getting beat up by a bartender for trying to stiff him with a $10 bill substituted for a $20 dollar bill, and Bening sashaying her way into not paying for anything.

It turns out that cold fish Huston is low-life Cusack’s mother, having had him at 14. He left home eight years ago at 17 and they haven’t seen each other since. Bening is his sometimes girlfriend with a past that will soon catch up with her.

The performances of all three are astonishing, especially Huston who won numerous awards for her performance albeit losing the Oscar to rising star Kathy Bates in Misery. Bening, at this point in her career was nothing like the matronly star she has long since become, and no one at the time could play it as cool as Cusack does here.

The supporting cast, in addition to Hingle, includes J.T. Walsh and Henry Jones. All three are at their sleaziest best.

Frears went on to direct such fine films as 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things with Audrey Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor, 2005’s Mrs. Henderson’s Presents with Judi Dench in an Oscar-nominated performance, 2006’s The Queen for which he received a second Oscar nomination and Helen Mirren won an Oscar, 2015’s Philomena with Judi Dench in another Oscar-nominated performance, and 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins for which Meryl Streep received an Oscar nomination.

Extras include new interviews with Frears, Huston, Cusack, Bening, and Westlake.

Happy Viewing.