Man of the West

MAN OF THE WEST (C+): One of those Westerns that love to spend most of its time in talking scenes once it has unveiled the stakes of the plot. Gary Cooper plays a reformed outlaw who, along with two innocent souls on the train with him, winds up accidentally with his old outlaw gang headed by scene chewing Lee Cobb. He has to then trick them that he is into returning to the old life in order to protect the lives and honor of his innocent companions. The key theme here is whether or not Cooper can trick them and get away without re-igniting the old evil self in him. It's a nice concept, but I found the film a bit too plain and obvious. The train robbery and an extended fight sequence are interesting, but Cooper here is kind of boring and while the film engages, it's hard to buy Lee Cobb believing that Cooper is interested in returning and putting up with the chaos it causes his crew. Decent stuff here, not a bad watch, but not something that struck me as must see.

"Man of the West", being an Anthony Mann directed western, contains a good deal of violence. Usually starring James Stewart, this one stars Gary Cooper in one of the best roles of his career.

The story centers on Cooper as a reformed outlaw who boards a train with Julie London as a saloon girl and Arthur O'Connell as a fast talking gambler. Along the way, the train is held up and the three are left behind. They stumble upon a shack that turns out to be the hide out of the men who had held up the train. Led by a slightly mad Lee J. Cobb, the gang includes Jack Lord as Cobb's sadistic henchman and veteran western performers John Dehner, Robert J. Wilke and Royal Dano as the other gang members. Turns out that Cooper had once been a member of Cobb's gang.

There is a violent fight between Cooper and Lord that is the highlight of the film. There is also an graphic (for the time) shootout in a deserted town and the ultimate showdown between Cooper and Cobb at the end.

Cooper was a little long in the tooth at the time to be believable as Cobb's protege (Cobb was actually 10 years younger), but that can be overlooked due to the excellent performances by both actors. London has little to do but O'Connell is excellent as the gambler who finds his courage.

"Man of the West" is arguably one of Cooper's best.

I am a big fan of Director Anthony Mann. When it comes to Westerns, he has to belong in the top directorial echelon - WINCHESTER '73, NAKED SPUR, THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, THE LAST FRONTIER, all deserve praise for their gritty realism and anti-hero approach.

MAN OF THE WEST stars Gary Cooper, often in Westerns but seldom working under Mann. I have no idea why, but Mann allows a few incongruencies to poison the script, easily the worst in any Mann movie I have seen: 1) Link Jones (Cooper) going on a train with money belonging to a village whose residents want him to bring back a schoolmarm - I find it hard to believe that a teacher would require a large sum of money to be contracted, and even harder that he would surrender that info to the inquisitive Beasley (O'Connell) who immediately finds the ideal schoolmarm (London) aboard the train. 2) Tobin (Lee J, Cobb) plays a much too loud outlaw leading men who would kill their own mother but bungle a train robbery, and look well fed enough that they must enjoy comfortable living... despite failing in their attacks on banks and trains. 3) Tobin's master plan to rob the bank in the town of Lassoo is ridiculous, seeing that it has become a ghost town ever since the local mine shut down.

To add to the need to suspend your disbelief, Tobin is supposed to be Jones' uncle, but Cobb clearly looks younger than Coop - and so he should, seeing that Cobb was born in 1911 and Coop in 1901.

Sultry beauty London tries valiantly to make the most of a rather irrelevant part. She was first and foremost a wonderful singer, and I can only lament that she did not sing a note here, even though the introductory credits announce a song composed by London's then husband Bobby Troup... but no song is heard at all.

Supporting actor O'Connell does not start off too badly as the nose poker of a passenger but then disappears for long whiles. Ultimately, his role is justified by the need to stop a bullet intended for Coop. Jack Lord looks like the most dangerous of Tobin's sidekicks but after a few threats he is just no match for Coop's fast hand.

As a curiosity, Coop underwent cosmetic facial surgery after completing this shoot, but unfortunately cancer would soon set in, so he had little time to enjoy his regained looks.

Forgettable Westerner, I doubt I will ever rewatch it. 6/10.

Man of the West, the film that Jean-Luc Godard called the best one of 1958 when he was at Cashiers du cinema, is both brutal and sad in how it places its characters into states of being no one can really get out of. One may call it fate or just bad luck when Link Jones finds himself off the train taking him back to his home and finds the one place he'd rather not go to is the only one close by (and happens to have his Uncle Dock Tobin and his cousins), but much of it comes back to the domination of MEN in this world; the 'Man' of the title is meant to be Gary Cooper, and yet it could be any of the men in here. What does it mean to be a man here? For those people wanting someone with honor and integrity, one might look to Cooper's character.

What's fascinating is how much of an inner struggle he is having as he comes back to his former home, where his uncle taught him to be a "man" along with his cousins and it was in the ways of being a robber and a killer. He tried to leave that life behind, but somehow, some way, he's pulled back in to it (not that his face possibly tipping off an old-time marshall won't get the old wanted posters out again). So when he happens along to his former criminal, gunslinging, bank-robbing kin when off of this train with a good woman (Julie London as Billie) and Arthur O'Connell as a man who seems like a possible annoyance at first (and who isn't so much once the drama really unfolds), it creates an instant conflict.

This is Mann's territory, of the dysfunctional families out in the west (see also Winchester 73 with the brothers who have gone down very different roads of killing, or The Furies with its father-daughter power struggles), and he mines it for some rich dramatic terrain. it's amazing so much of this movie works even when knowing what isn't quite right about it - the age disparity is hard not to see, with Cooper trying to play younger (and, to be fair, not doing a terrible job), and Lee J. Cobb as his *uncle* with a gray wig and some make-up that isn't wholly convincing, certainly on first glance, not to mention his character was a "kid" with one actor half his age - because the acting sells every tension-packed moment. And few moments are more tense and sad and almost tough to watch as when the men demand that Billie take off her clothes in front of them (it takes a knife to Cooper's throat to convince her to start doing it).

That, by the way, has the feel of a rape scene because it is (later, off-screen, there is another, and Mann shows us enough of the aftermath and London is heartbreaking in every moment that Billie is put through the wringer), and yet the only thing that stops that violation of her agency to go further is that "Uncle Dock" says it's time for bed. Man of the West is the kind of film that gains in uneasiness and violence, including a fight scene midway through the movie that does not look fun like many, more possible hacky directors (or just more "commercial" minded) might have done. At one point it's Cooper vs one of this gang and it goes on and on, feeling not unlike something out of the fight scene from They Live only without the sense of over the top spectacle. This is rough and ragged and there's a point where the "movie" ness of it goes away and it's just watching two bedraggled men duking it out - including, ultimately, a "humiliation" that Link does that seems to set off this guy more than a simple shot to the head might do.

What on the surface may seem like a straightforward thriller turns into a moral tale about the implicit terror that masculinity brings to people in the old west - not unlike Winchester 73 a subtle commentary on the form while getting to be it, in the 1950's of course - and Cobb makes this uncle an imposing presence over everyone (how could he not, after all, he's Lee J friggin Cobb!) Cooper brings a sad dignity to the man, someone who no longer wants to kill, and at the same time can spring into action if he's pushed into a corner, which, you know, is what this movie could also be called: Cornered in the West or something like that. Mann and his writers have here less a story that's meant to arouse excitement as much as contemplating what it fully means when someone gets shot, what that violence entails, or what happens when a woman is stripped away down to what she's "made" for (when she Billie says to Link that he's the first man she can remember in a long time, if ever, to not look at her as something to be "had" or defiled, we believe it). And yet London as an actress gives her a ton of screen presence and little moments that don't make her one dimensional.

It may fall short of being a "best of 1958" like Mr. Godard said, but I can see his love for the movie: it's more concerned with ideas and notions of the old west than having it be just empty action and gunfights, and exploring the psychology, to be pretentious about it, of the west itself, of what an outlaw family entails and then what it means to be a *good* person in a world where it's so easy to get a gun and go out and shoot for cash and gold. 8.5/10

Stranded in the middle of nowhere after their train is robbed, a former outlaw, a schoolteacher and a gambler take refuge with the gang that the former outlaw once belonged to in this dark western drama. Taking refuge does not come easy to the once-outlaw, played by Gary Cooper, as he has to pretend to still be a tough lawbreaker despite reforming his ways, and there is a lot of tension in the air as the gang members are equally as uneasy about his return. The plot actually has a lot in common with David Cronenberg's 'A History of Violence' with Cooper having to face the violent past that he thought he left behind. Cooper never quite seems right in the role though; aside from being two decades older than his character, it is hard to ever imagine Cooper once being a hardened outlaw. As a character, he is not as well developed as Viggo Mortensen in 'A History of Violence' either with the train robbery happening before we even have a chance to know him. The film is also set back by a melodramatic music score from Leigh Harline that comes off as overbearing half the time. The film does have its moments though. The long distance shots of Cooper entering the supposedly abandoned cabin are great, capturing the eerie isolation of the place. The scene in which Julie London is told to strip at knife point is nail-bitingly intense too, and while he looks too young to really be Cooper's uncle, Lee J. Cobb is delightful in the role, radiating both danger and a sense of longing, wanting so much to reconnect with the outlaw nephew he thought he lost forever.