An amazingly compelling film that deals with serious moral complexity and the issues of law and order in society. This western shows western tropes, i.e. the standoff at the beginning, and the dynamic of a lone character up against the town. You can see how a lot of what it does sets the precedent for Westerns following it.
Henry Fonda is fantastic in his role, one that you will see him reprise later in 12 angry men, the outspoken voice against the mob. His style of more soft-spoken, somber, and critical thinking really works well with the lines he's given and beats he's given in this film. He is supposed to be the scorning voice of human decency against a lynch mob. And you feel the injustice and anger inside of him wanting to stop this lynching from happening.
This movie does a really good job of setting up a moral quandary within you the viewer. The story is very dark and is part of this shift to darkly realistic films that seems to be occurring during WW2. It definitely stands to reason that the war affected culture across the board and in films it affected it by pushing storylines to darker places, areas that blurred the line between traditional good and evil. I got really upset at this mob for trying to kill these people yet I completely understood where the mob was coming from and how easy it was for them to get swept away in blood lust. You almost feel the blood lust of the war creeping into the everyday lives of ordinary Christian Americans. In a way this movie is a trial to reaffirm the good and moral spirit of the American way of life.
On a filmmaking level the shots are pretty wide, they mostly emphasize the characters in the frame and the story. There's not much invention going on here. The camera mostly works to focus your attention on the actors and the staging which is completely fine because the story itself merits a great deal of attention to the actors and the blocking. This film is more in the vein of a theater piece being adapted for film.
This movie addresses the depression directly, has women as central characters, strong characters and challenges the notions of society but in a flashy way that almost completely undoes any revolutionary suggestion or thought in the film. It's really very strong.