329. Man of the West (1958)

Directed by Anthony Mann

Synopsis

A man (Gary Cooper) is caught in the middle of a train robbery. He, a woman and another guy get dumped and walk until they found a house. Well Gary Cooper has a past with the gang in the house. It all goes pear-shaped.

Review

Sometimes in the history of cinema you clearly see the art-form having a pronounced growth spurt. This happened right at the beginning of the 50s and is now happening again at the end of the decade. Several reasons might exist for this, the development of the technical instruments or more importantly changes in the wider society.

At the moment we are seeing the slow and inexorable relaxation of the production code, recently on this list we've had Paths of Glory and the Sweet Smell of Success. Two films which are quite different and now we have Man of the West.

This is the most violent Westerns we've had on the list until now, not solely in terms of physical violence but also psychological, it reaches the level of grotesqueness at times. The two undressing scenes and the death of the mute bandit make this violence particularly interesting.

I was not a big fan of the Mann-Stewart collaborations but here we clearly see a transition to a more violent and adult western, one which explores the worse of humanity instead of a "pioneering spirit". A very good Western.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

When first released, the film was largely ignored by American critics, though renowned French critic Jean-Luc Godard regarded it as the best one released that year. In the decades since the film's release, it has garnered a cult following as well as considerably greater acclaim. Some, such as The Guardian's Derek Malcolm consider the film Mann's best and a landmark in the western genre's canon. Malcolm included the film in his 2000 list The Century of Film.

Cool fight scene: