Man of the West (1958)

Film: Man of the West (1958)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gary Cooper: click here to learn more about Mr. Cooper (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Gary Cooper never really stopped being famous, or working in major movies.  While other actors of his generation would eventually be relegated to television, this wasn't the case for Cooper, who worked pretty much until his death in 1961.  Cooper never escaped the shadow of Will Kane, his famed cowboy in High Noon, and played some version of him throughout the 1950's, including in today's film Man of the West, which was nearly his last western (we've actually discussed his final western, which is one of his best roles in my opinion, The Hanging Tree, a few years ago).  He was always forced to play the man-of-honor in the west, someone who was up against the odds.  Here, though, the seedier elements honestly make that conversation far more interesting, as Man of the West is that rare hybrid genre: the western noir.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Link Jones (Cooper), who is a former outlaw that has gone on the straight-and-narrow and is tasked with bringing money to Fort Worth to hire a new schoolteacher for his town of Good Hope.  On the way, his train is hijacked, and he, another cowboy named Sam (O'Connell), and a saloon singer named Billie (London) are all forced off of the train, and start walking to town (the money for the teacher is still on the train).  At this point, Link goes to meet with his old gang, which happens to be his family, including his uncle Dock Tobin (Cobb), whom he abandoned years earlier.  He is blackmailed into rejoining the gang, and in the process his hope is to kill them for ruining so much of his early life.  He does this, eventually killing everyone in his old gang, with him riding off into the sunset with Billie.

The film plays with a lot of tropes, including the concept of honor.  Link is a good man.  This might be the only time that a man spends the night with another woman but doesn't have sex with her in a movie of this nature (Link knows in order to protect Billie from the men, he has to pretend she's "his woman" even though he's married and loves his wife).  As a result, the age gap between Cooper & London (who was was 25 years his junior) reads more as paternal than romantic, even though her character is clearly in love with him.  It also is a strange juxtaposition to Cooper as honorable-he seems to want to kill his relatives out of revenge, which is usually something that a hero must overcome, and in a way he does, but even so he does, in fact, kill all of them in the end (having his cake & eating it too).  This moral grey area would become increasingly a part of the western in the decade to come, with movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Once Upon a Time in the West, and eventually The Wild Bunch smashing tropes that The Virginian and Stagecoach had made gospel in Hollywood for decades.

The movie also looks & sounds incredible.  Shot on CinemaScope by cinematographer Ernest Haller (of Gone with the Wind fame), the Mojave Desert makes an implausible but gorgeous Texas in Man of the West, and a judiciously-used score means we get scenes that actually sound like the vastness of the west.  Think of the scene where Cooper approaches London's attacked wagon, and how you can hear the whistle of the wind instead of a score...that's smart, atmospheric stuff.  The art direction, the editing...it's weird this didn't get some sort of Academy mention.  Even the acting is good.  Cobb plays his villain in heavy-but-convincing old age makeup, and is superb.  I loved the way that you can't tell what he's thinking, and how that adds to his villainy.  London is also good as a woman in love with a man she can't have, and at least hinting that part of the reason she loves him is because she wants out of a life where she's only as valued as the leers of the men who want her for a night, a life she's resigned to as the end credits fall.

About the only thing I'm not totally sold on is our Star of the Month, Mr. Cooper himself.  I started this month with the caveat that Cooper is one of those rare major Golden Age stars that does little for me, and I end there despite trying four new films.  I get the appeal on some level.  There are silent moments in this movie where Cooper's clear blue eyes convey a sense of emotion, a brokenness that definitely has talent.  But his wooden physicality and his stilted line delivery just does nothing for me as we explore him in different genres, and particularly in a very good film like Man of the West.  All of this is to say, we're hedging our bets in February by picking one of my all-time favorite actors to discuss next month.