A common sentiment is that if you want a reliable film, get someone who has spent their life perfecting a specific genre to direct it – but if you want a film that turns an entire genre on its head and presents a wildly different image of what can be done within a specific category, find a filmmaker who is not traditionally aligned with the genre. In the case of No Name on the Bullet, Jack Arnold momentarily moved away from his niche, which was mainly directing science fiction and horror films (two genres that he helped popularize through a very successful run of B-movies, which include arguably one of the greatest science fiction films of the 1950s, The Incredible Shrinking Man), and instead stepped into the past in the form of directing a western, one of his sporadic voyages into the genre that never quite produced his greatest output, but was still a source of some very intriguing experiments. This is by far his most successful, both critically at the time and in hindsight, so it’s not surprising that it is often brought up as a clear exemplification of his versatility as a filmmaker. The film tells the story of a small town in the American Southwest that receives an unexpected visitor in the form of John Gant, a notorious outlaw and hired gunman feared by communities across the region, gaining a reputation for his exceptional marksmanship, as well as his tendency to manipulate his victims into shooting first, as a means to claim his murders were done in self-defence. His arrival clearly signals someone in the town has a bounty on their head, but his stoic, silent nature means that the target is never made clear, leading to a panicked search for the potential victim. Harsh, cynical and often quite offbeat, No Name on the Gun is far from traditional, despite featuring all the usual elements that go into the creation of such a film at this time – and it’s in these more ambigious spaces that we find Arnold making the most fascinating observations of both the genre and the story within it, making this a far more complex film than it would seem on the surface.

By the time the 1950s was coming to an end, we started to see the Western fading in popularity. The death knell of the classical western had not been rung just yet, but there were signs that it was declining, especially since there was a steadily growing movement of directors in what we can consider the pre-New Hollywood era that was starting to take bold strokes, while still maintaining a relatively consistent sense of direction in terms of how they told these stories. Arnold was not as seasoned a director of westerns as some of these other filmmakers, but he had enough experience to be entrusted with this material, especially since he served as a co-writer on No Name on the Gun, rather than just being hired to direct the film. It isn’t entirely obvious at first, but we find ourselves looking at one of the most important transitional films of the Western genre – it takes on the appearance and general tone of a classical Western but is deeply subversive, and its entire attitude towards its characters and the surrounding world is quite different, which is ultimately what draws us into this film in the first place, as well as the quality that holds our attention. In the coming era, where the likes of Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood would redefine Westerns as grittier and more violent, No Name on the Bullet sets the foundation, finding a perfect balance between the two eras. Whereas Budd Boetticher was doing as much as he could preserve this kind of solidly crafted, simplified western (which were not at all without merit – they are as integral to the eventual evolution of the genre as the more experimental works), Arnold held very little nostalgia for the heyday of the western, which allowed him to take on a far more objective position when it came to crafting this film and foregoing traditional structure on favour of something that wasn’t intending to underline the fact that westerns were declining in popularity, but rather take a few more calculated risks that ultimately proved to have far better results than we may have initially expected.

The aspect of No Name on the Bullet that is mostly discussed and dissected is not how this signalled the end of the classical era of the Western, being one of the more cynical entries into the genre, but rather how it uses these elements to craft quite a unique philosophy, using traditional tropes of the genre as a way of highlighting certain ideas that had not previously been explored in more conventional films. Arnold presents a far more complex depiction of a small Western town. Through utilising a slightly more effective version of the ideas embedded in High Noon (perhaps the first major intellectual Western produced in Hollywood), he crafts a film that centres around a murder – but not only does it shift the narrative away from solving the mystery as to who the culprit it but rather where the information we patiently wait to unearth is to do with the unknown victim who only becomes clear in the final climactic moments, the motive itself is also left ambigious until the very end. The structure may seem traditional, but this is where Arnold inserts some of the most daring commentary, with most of the film being a provocation of the traditional Western form, albeit in a form so subtle and daring, that only eagle-eyed viewers (or those who are familiar with how the genre developed during this very contentious time) will notice the underlying cynicism and philosophical allusions that Arnold and his cohorts scatter liberally throughout the film. It borders on revolutionary, particularly in how it challenges not only common archetypes found in these films, but also the function each character plays in progressing the story – suddenly, the valiant hero is a maniacal villain, and the comedic relief turns out to be the bravest of souls, and the frail supporting player plays a vital role in the conclusion, which presents quite a unique reconfiguration of a genre that often received allegations of being far too dependent on a particular structure.

Narratively and thematically, No Name on the Bullet is quite remarkable, and it’s actually in how these characters are defined that we find some intriguing details that make it very clear what Arnold and the rest of the crew were attempting to achieve. Stock characters are useful in only two ways: to adhere to the strict rules of a particular genre, or to entirely dismantle common conceptions of the same genre, what makes this so interesting in the case of this film is that Arnold utilizes both, sometimes in tandem. It is the rare western from this era in which the central character is a pure villain – not in the sense that he was a previously good man who fell on hard times and had to turn to the darker side of humanity to get by, but rather someone who seemingly lacks any empathy or compassion. The decision to cast Audie Murphy in the part of John Gant was ingenious for several reasons, not only because he was one of the most popular Western stars at the time (about on par with Randolph Scott, if not even higher than him in terms of public perception) and would guarantee audiences would flock to theatres, but because this is a role that is very much against-type for an actor who was seen as the embodiment of true American heroism, both in his personal life, where he dedicated years of his life to fighting for his country, and on-screen, where he would often play the most valiant of heroes. This film casts him as the embodiment of Death, a sinister and seemingly heartless figure who lacks emotion, and whose only purpose is to bring an end to the lives of specific targets, his assignments being simple but violent. Murphy is exceptional in the film, and his willingness to set aside his more beloved persona in favour of such a villainous character is one of the fundamental reasons why No Name on the Bullet is such a resounding success in terms of how it challenges common perceptions of the genre.

At a cursory glance, No Name on the Bullet seems like quite a traditional Western, both in form and the story it is telling. However, the comparisons between this film and the work of Ingmar Bergman, while seemingly bizarre at first, are not entirely unfounded – there is an underlying complexity that Arnold brings to this film that makes it much more complex and challenging, which is one of the many reasons it has been celebrated as one of the most unorthodox entries into the genre from this period. It took some time for it to be recognized as quite revolutionary, and it remains relatively obscure by contemporary standards since the common perception of the shift in Westerns is often viewed as a sudden change from one style to the other, rather than featuring a solid canon of quietly subversive films that facilitated this transition in more subtle ways. However, the masterful style and the incredibly complex story, which is more philosophical than the majority of Westerns made in later years, is astonishing, especially when we consider how Arnold was often cited as being more aligned with B-movies than actually revolutionary arthouse cinema, and even if we can’t quite associate him with the latter, there are some qualities here that speak to the growth of the genre that we’d not see for decades, particularly in how it shows that a western film doesn’t need to feel confined to follow the same cliches and tropes to be successful. Instead, it is perfectly acceptable for such a film to take some bold risks – perhaps it was slightly ahead of its time, but based on how celebrated it has become in certain circles, and its reputation for being one of the foundational texts in the eventual shift towards a more cynical, bitter style of western filmmaking, its clear that No Name on the Bullet achieved something remarkable, which we can easily find through its simple but evocative approach and the underlying complex ideas that work in tandem to create such a vibrant and intriguing work of revolutionary genre filmmaking.