Ostensibly an adventure story, Winchester '73 is really a study in obsession in which a gun, the gun, crystallizes all the hostility and insecurity of the old West. The schematic, circular form of the narrative as the rifle goes from hand to hand suggests not quite that this gun made the West but that it filled a gap left by failures of law, character, or purpose. As such, the movie has an unconscious rapport with those areas of American society in which the gun has become both a character and a force. Moreover, the jewelled clarity of Mann's imagery and the interlocking cleanness of the plot begin to resemble the “perfect” machinery of this one-in-a-thousand weapon. Winchester '73 is also Mann's first film at Universal, his meeting with James Stewart, and the first assembling of his stock company, among them Will Geer, Millard Mitchell, John McIntyre, Charles Drake, Jay C. Flippen, along with Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea. These supporting characters are all as bold and vivid as court cards in a poker game.