Why do I love old movies? I get asked that question a lot, because I see an awful lot of them. I want to share the answer here, but first I need to clear something up.

There’s no such thing as an “old” movie.

There are, rather, movies you’ve seen and movies you haven’t seen. There are great movies–superbly constructed and executed—and those not so great. As a moviegoer, I obviously love the former. But as a moviemaker, I have an interest in them all. (Often there is more to learn from the bad ones.) The only thing I ask when I go to the movies is to be involved emotionally—for the issues/45/images to cast a spell. I find inspiration in movies that tell their stories primarily with pictures, and with tools like editing, composition, lighting, sound and music. For me, content, genre and techno tricks are mostly irrelevant. Craft is king.

When you stop to think about it, movies have evolved over the last 20 years into just the sort of experience they were at their birth. In the Nickelodeon era, one could drop a nickel into a slot and view a quick sequence of a train rushing at the camera, or a similar scene of action designed to provide a visceral thrill but not to tell a story. By the mid-’30s, the craft had evolved to a high level of narrative sophistication, and the following 30-year period has always been the most interesting and exciting to me.

I think that’s because most moviemakers of that era started in silent pictures. And the directors who didn’t start in silents at least learned directly from those who did. I’m certain that one reason so many modern films lack the basics of good visual storytelling is due to the “watering down” of each successive generation of moviemakers. Today’s creative teams are influenced more by TV, music videos, and commercials than by classic cinema.

Thankfully, the great movies still exist, and they’re special treasures for moviemakers who take the time to learn how to watch them...

As an example, let’s take a look at The Naked Spur, a 1953 western directed by Anthony Mann. James Stewart plays a bounty hunter obsessed with bringing in murderous outlaw Robert Ryan for the reward money. With the help of an old prospector (Millard Mitchell) and a shady Union officer (Ralph Meeker), he captures Ryan and Janet Leigh, and the five of them start back to Abilene. The bulk of the movie is made up of this journey, as Ryan tries to turn his captors upon each other and fill them with distrust so he can escape.

The Naked Spur is a perfect movie—so perfect, in fact, that it’s easy to get caught up in the story and characters without noticing the many subtleties of craft that help make it a classic. But we’re moviemakers, and this is MovieMaker Magazine, so let’s take a closer look at some of Mann’s choices.

1. The opening shot. Mann’s opening static composition of a tranquil landscape swish-pans to a close-up of a man’s leg on a horse, centered on his boot spur. Why the swish-pan? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to begin on the spur? Consider the progression of what we see: 1. Peaceful image.

2. Violent camera move.

3. Jagged, abstract image. We don’t know it yet, but this shot visually and emotionally sets up the rest of the movie! Many more sequences will show moments of peaceful calm suddenly erupting into violence, and from his first frame, Mann finds subtle ways of expressing this visually.

By doing so, he invests us in a particular way of seeing and reacting to things, and this establishes our visual relationship to the story. Soon we’ll realize that a certain unity has been created, because this relationship will be re-stated constantly.

2. Shooting Leigh’s horse. About 15 minutes into the movie, Stewart shoots Leigh’s sick horse to put it out of its misery. Leigh, hysterical, tries to prevent it, but Ryan forcefully takes her away from the horse and tries to focus her on his escape plan. Mann saves his first big close-ups of these stars for this moment. On Leigh’s first close-up we hear Stewart’s loud gunshot, as shocking as the close-up is forceful. It’s a great choice, as the sound further underscores the intensity of Leigh’s moment with Ryan.

3. Indian attack scene. Look at the editing here. Our characters are riding along when they notice an Indian war party on their tails. They keep riding slowly, and the Indians keep following. Mann shoots this in long takes with steady pans and traveling shots which create suspense, but which also lull us. Then the two parties stop on either side of a clearing. They stand and watch each other silently. Again, the cross-cuts are long, static, and wide enough to make us notice the beauty of the surrounding landscape. We feel tense but still calm. Stewart waves a greeting to the Indians, and we relax, thinking, “OK, things were hairy there, but Stewart will talk his way out of this.” Suddenly a terrible, violent shootout erupts, and we see quick cuts and grotesque close-ups of tumbling horses and anguished faces.

It’s shocking and powerful, an emotional effect resulting from Mann’s choices of location, lenses and editing style which placed us into something of a trance. But Mann isn’t finished. Most fascinating of all, after the shooting stops, there is a seemingly senseless master shot of the clearing as the survivors pick themselves up. It lasts 30 seconds! Why is this shot included? It certainly doesn’t give us any new story or character information. It’s static, the frame is almost totally calm, and all we hear is the rustle of the trees in the wind. Though it could easily have been cut, Mann’s brilliance is his realization that this shot does as much to emphasize the violence of the attack as do the slow traveling shots that precede it.

Viewers won’t think, “Why am I staring at this empty shot for 30 seconds?” They’re too busy catching their breath from the intensity of the shootout. As with a great composer who understands the power of silence, Mann trusts himself to include this shot, and the audience to get it. It’s a subtle, seamless, amazing choice.

4. Stewart and Leigh. When the shootout with the Indians begins, Stewart immediately jumps from his horse onto Leigh’s and pulls her to safety. During the scene, we see them several times in a two-shot, their first of the film, and at the end of the scene, she pulls him to safety. This is satisfying symmetry and a visual way of first planting their romantic connection. It subtly forces us start thinking about it.

5. Ryan shoots Mitchell. Near the end of the movie, Robert Ryan shoots Millard Mitchell. It’s one of the most shocking killings in all of cinema. Why? First, Mitchell is an old man standing completely defenseless. Second, the shooting is again an unexpected, violent outburst preceded by a calm moment. Mann constructs the sequence by initially cutting between medium shots of the two men as they talk. Then Ryan casually dismounts, points his rifle at Mitchell and shoots. A swish-pan, not a cut, back to Mitchell shows his body crumpling to the ground. Again we were effectively lulled by the shot choices. Other directors might have cut back to Mitchell one more time after Ryan dismounted in order to set up the showdown, and then had Ryan shoot. Having Ryan shoot so casually, before even showing Mitchell again, makes it jaw-droppingly powerful.

6. Ryan’s characterization. Consider Robert Ryan’s character in this movie. Up to the point he shoots Mitchell, he has been a laughing, almost endearing villain. When Ryan says to Stewart, “You can’t sit a horse with a slug in your leg, Howie!” it sounds like the genuine sympathy of a concerned friend. When you realize that the line could have been read many other ways—facetiously or mockingly, for example, it’s a most interesting choice.

7. The climax on the cliff. Take a look at this masterful sequence and notice how Mann slowly establishes the space of this scene piece by piece, culminating with Stewart and Ryan sharing the frame just before Stewart kills him. There’s no significant dialogue—the angles and editing are all that sustain our interest.

8. The ending. At the end, only Stewart and Leigh are left alive. As Stewart violently drags Ryan’s body to a horse to take it the rest of the way to Abilene, he psychotically defends his actions to Leigh, who has implored him to forget the bounty and bury Ryan here. Mann plays the speech with Stewart’s back to the camera—a very bold choice. This is Jimmy Stewart—you don’t hold on the back of his head without a good reason. The unusual angle emphasizes the subtext— it’s wrong, and it’s ugly, and he knows it.

These choices aren’t relevant only to an “old” Jimmy Stewart movie. Any of them could be applied today. They’re not flashy—they’re subtle, nuts-and-bolts directing choices designed to elicit emotional responses. They ask the audience to work visually/intellectually, something audiences love to do, whether they realize it not.

I’m not suggesting that moviemakers imitate all these ideas. Mull them over, and come up with your own techniques. You can of course borrow without copying. It’s known as inspiration. MM