Man of the West

MAN OF THE WEST         A            

USA  (100 mi)  1958  ‘Scope  d:  Anthony Mann

I have seen nothing so completely new since—why not—Griffith. Just as the director of Birth of a Nation gave one the impression that he was inventing the cinema with every shot, each shot of Man of the West gives one the impression that Anthony Mann is reinventing the Western, exactly as Matisse's portraits reinvent the features of Piero della Francesca. It is, moreover, more than an impression. He does reinvent. I repeat, reinvent; in other words, he both shows and demonstrates, innovates and copies, criticizes and creates. Man of the West. in short, is both course and discourse, or both beautiful landscapes and the explanation of this beauty, both art and the theory of art of the Western, the most cinematographic genre in the cinema.

—Jean Luc Godard, listing the film #6 of the year Jean-Luc Godard's Top Ten Lists 1956-1965 from Cahiers du Cinéma (1958)

There's a point where you either grow up and become a human being or you rot, like that bunch.     —Link Jones (Gary Cooper)

Another critical and commercial failure upon its release, the controversy surrounding this film happened well before the movie was ever made, as James Stewart was initially targeted for the lead role until he had a falling out with the director who instead chose another all-too-familiar western figure, Gary Cooper, in something of a thematic reprise of his role in HIGH NOON (1952), though critics condemned his performance in 1958, calling him “too old.”  But Cooper is a calmer presence than Stewart and lends a quiet nobility to the role of Link Jones, exactly what’s needed as a counterpart to the other players, all of whom are marked by the bitter cynicism of the era, set in a time when settlers had grown weary of cutthroats, gunslingers, and card sharks and a prevailing sense of civilization was beginning to crop up throughout the West, eradicating the previous influence of Indians, outlaws, and thieves.  Link Jones is not a whisky drinking man, or even a man who carries a gun, though he has one tucked away in his bag as he leaves from desolate parts unknown on a train journey to Fort Worth in search of a schoolteacher for his barely formed community.  Part of the interest is the way Mann leaves out pertinent details about Link’s past, adding an allure of mystery to the quiet dignity of Cooper, who has always been notoriously polite.  Even more scintillating are the gorgeous landscape compositions from Ernest Haller in one of the most exquisitely photographed of all westerns, bearing a resemblance to Sam Peckinpah’s RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962) filmed four years later, even down to the use of familiar faces onscreen who represent iconic images already associated with many heralded westerns, where that chiseled and cultivated maturity lends credence to the truth and authenticity of the picture itself.  Stewart may have been the first choice, but Cooper is ultimately the better choice, where his reputation with the audience precedes him, where his stern countenance reflects the gravity of his every move, a precursor to later films like Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH (1969), and especially Eastwood’s own gravelly portrait of an aging, ex-gunfighter in UNFORGIVEN (1992). 

After a comical beginning, seeing the obviously uncomfortably Cooper awkwardly attempt to fit his long legs behind a train seat, the tone quickly changes when the train is ambushed at a water stop out in the middle of nowhere, leaving three passengers stranded behind who were knocked off the train in the shooting melee, including Jones, but also Julie London as Billie, a heady but also attractive saloon singer who’s been forced to acquiesce to the slimy nature of man, and Arthur O’Connell as Sam, an overly friendly confidence man known for dealing off the bottom of the deck.  Having no choice except to walk, as the next train doesn’t come by again for another week, Jones leads them to what resembles an isolated, uninhabited shack where they are quickly commandeered by ghosts of his past.  Unfortunately, they have walked right into a den of thieves headed by Dock Tobin, Lee J. Cobb as a demented old geezer who happens to be Jones’s deranged outlaw uncle who raised him as a kid.  Despite this bittersweet family reunion, the homecoming resembles a kidnapping at gunpoint, a psychologically crippling moment of terror where at one point the drunken men revel at forcing Billie to perform a striptease with a knife at the throat of Jones, her supposed “husband,” a lie he fabricates for her own protection.  This humiliation is the moral centerpiece of the film, as it shows how women remain vulnerable and are degraded in the wilderness of the Western frontier, a far cry from the supposed civilization depicted in the opening where she exerts the independence to make her own living, but it also challenges the unarmed Cooper to find a way against insurmountable odds to overcome this disastrous turn of events, where his honor in protecting the woman he calls his own is at stake.  Entrapped by thugs that used to be his family, he has to rely upon his wits to reflect a defining heroic masculinity instead of a gun, where his calm, self-assured nature is quite a contrast to the twitching anxiety of his kidnappers, who always seem to be distressed, continually flying off the handle, always at war with themselves.  

This is a film about choices, where characters are challenged throughout to make difficult choices, but here their lives depend upon them, which add a threatening intensity to every moment, where one wrong move could cost someone their life, and eventually does.  Civilization is given a mythical status here of dueling parallel options, where one is the undefined, almost imaginary town where Jones comes from that is depicted as hard working but true, a place where nothing comes easy, but it’s here that Jones built himself a better life, lifting himself out of the muck of his uncle’s thieving and murderous ways into a place of respectability.  The other is every outlaw’s dream, the imaginary oasis of fortune, the unprotected, two-bit town with a lone bank secretly holding untold gold reserves, where all they have to do is make one final score before they can make a clean break to Mexico.  Like THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948), these men are both motivated and doomed by their respective obsessions, where Jones is driven to overcome his haunted past, while Tobin and his men are destined to mercilessly re-live their failures over and over again, where just the sight of seeing Jones again is like pointing a mirror reflection into their own failed pasts, reminding each one how little they’ve grown or accomplished.  Part of the brilliance of this film is balancing the haunting beauty of the exterior landscapes with the psychologically probing interior states of mind, which seem challenged at every turn of the road.  Adapted by Reginald Rose, who a year earlier wrote 12 ANGRY MEN, from a Will C. Brown novel called Border Jumpers, the film centers around familiar Anthony Mann themes, a vast untapped territorial beauty undermined by the devious nature of man, a film noir sensibility featuring flawed and damaged characters in the lead roles, where there’s an element of cruel inhumanity inside every man, not just the outlaws, but more importantly films that feature men who seek justice without resorting to violence, who are in fact forced into action, often against their will, to defend their inherent beliefs about the kind of world they want to live in.  What distinguishes Mann westerns from others is this rough edged vision, where they’re not just defending a person or a family, but the “idea” of a place where a man can live in peace.  Mann exposes the raw elements of nature and man, using fierce landscapes and cunning outlaws, not standard types, where overcoming these overwhelming obstacles is more than a thrilling adventure usually fraught with violence, but a legacy to our own perseverance and capabilities as a populace, as by now the untamed West has been tamed, but at what price, as certainly elements of our darkest nature survive intact as well and are also part of our historic legacy.