unknown (Universal Pictures) · Public domain

A film director who made his name on tightly budgeted film noir before reshaping the Western as a genre of real psychological weight, directing James Stewart in eight films including Winchester '73 and The Naked Spur. American critics of the time undervalued this work, but French New Wave critics did not — Jacques Rivette named Mann one of the four great directors of postwar Hollywood, alongside Nicholas Ray, Richard Brooks, and Robert Aldrich.