Man of the West

This is not a typical "B" Western. Jimmy Stewart plays a man with a dark side, and a dark past for a change. He had about given up Westerns because he found himself playing parts that were too similar too often. This one was different.

Playing opposite Julie London, who played a saloon singer whose complaint was that everyone made passes at her, she fell into a situation (along with Stewart) where she was subjected to real brutality--tastefully handled. Lee J. Cobb played the heavy, and did his usual great job. Stewart was thrown back in with his old gang, from whom he had escaped once, and again was expected to rob banks and kill.

The story was good, and the acting was superb, as might be expected from such a cast. A dark, forboding film, which will hold your attention.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

Message for MGM: Why Pan & Scan?   January 1, 2003
I recently saw a gorgeous widescreen print of this film on TCM. This grim, brooding tale of disillusionment in the old west, like Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns" one year before it, shattered many of the conventions of the Western and helped reinvent that genre, a decade before "The Wild Bunch" or Leone's "Man With No Name Trilogy". Yes, Anthony Mann's films are violent (his direction always exhibits a brutal directness), but the body count is much lower than in any John Ford movie I've seen. It's just that Mann understood that dead bodies are heavy, they have weight, and must obey certain laws of gravity. I don't think it was the killing that alarmed most people, but the effects of that killing, as both heard in the loud thud of bodies hitting the ground and as seen in the way men must writhe around and mix with the earth as they die. Though MAN OF THE WEST was filmed in glorious CinemaScope, the only version available on vhs is an abysmal pan&scan, which is particularly unacceptable in a picture that aims to express the distance between men, and the barrenness of the landscape, by dislocating much of the action to the extreme edges of the frame. This works only if the action is shown in wide angle, but MGM, unfortunately, has shamefully compromised Mann's vision. If TCM has access to a print of the film that preserves the proper CinemaScope ratio, why can't MGM release it on DVD in anamorphic widescreen? I highly recommend MAN OF THE WEST, but don't bother with this pan&scan vhs version.


A Classic Film   March 25, 2000
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Man Of The West is a classic. Gary Cooper dominates a sterling cast with his powerful portrayal of Link Jones, a former killer who has long since suppressed the demons within. However, when he meets up with his Uncle and former partner, Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb, brilliant) he is forced to confront the fact that there is still a killer inside him. There is a brutal fight between Cooper and Jack Lord which is one of the meanest, most vicious fights I've ever seen in film. The only flaw, as others have pointed out, is that this video version is not letterbox. Avoid it and wait for TCM to show it in its original widescreen format. Better yet, why doesn't MGM/UA simply release a letterbox version? Cooper made this back-to-back with another classic, The Hanging Tree. But Warner Home Video has seen fit to remove it from distribution here in the U.S. It's available in Europe and Canada, but not here. Idiots!


This is a Magnificent Film   March 22, 2000
This is truly a magnificent film. Acting -- especially Gary Cooper's Link Jones, a man who is drawn back into his earlier life as a killer -- and direction and script and cinemaphotography, they are all flawless. The only flaw is in this video, from MGM/UA. I've written them, trying to get them to release this in letterbox and DVD, all to no avail. Do not buy this pan-and-scan version, since director Anthony Mann took full advantage of the wide screen to tell his story. In the pan-and-scan version, Cooper is missing from much of the action. This is because it is a typically tight-lipped Cooper performance, thus he is lopped out of the frame -- even though he is central to every single scene in the entire film! This is a magnificent film which is deserving of a better fate than MGM/UA video distribution. TCM shows it in letterbox, catch it there.


An Extraordinary Film   March 20, 2000
MAN OF THE WEST is one of the greatest of all westerns. Dismissed for being too violent, too dark, too grim and downbeat when it first opened back in the fall of 1958, its reputation has been growing ever since. Unfortunately, the video available from MGM/UA is in pan-and-scan, and unless you see MAN OF THE WEST in letterbox, you aren't really seeing the film as it was meant to be seen. Turner Classics shows it in letterbox, so I recommend forgoing this video and waiting until TCM shows it in letterbox. Toward the end of his career, Cooper through off the shackles and took on several dark characters, characters deeply flawed and deeply wounded. Whatever the merits of some of these final films, Cooper's performances are stunning, at times even shattering. MAN OF THE WEST is one of those performances. The metamorphosis his Link Jones goes through shows just what range Cooper possessed as an actor. This film is one of the real champs.