Film review: Man of the West (1958)

According to the somewhere that I read it, Francois Truffaut remarked that the French care about psychology or character studies while Americans care about plot (which certainly explains Simenon).  According to somewhere Jami read it, Jean-Luc Godard said that this was the best Western and Gary Cooper's finest hour.  The former explains the latter, in my view, because I was fairly unmoved by it but it certainly is some kind of psychodrama.  It's the last Western directed by Anthony Mann, also responsible for the first Western Noir we watched, The Naked Spur, and it has a lot in common with it (although, to be frank, I prefer that one).  An aging Hollywood icon plays a flawed man who finds redemption in part by saving a much younger woman (played by an up-and-coming much younger actress).  In this case the younger woman is Julie London, and actually she falls for him, rather than the reverse, as in Spur.  In both the antagonist is played by another stalwart character actor, and in this case it's Lee J. Cobb, looking nothing like how I'm used to him

(e.g. 12 Angry Men or On the Waterfront), and looking surprisingly at home well away from New York City.  The film (which is in sumptuous technicolor, and looks much more big budget than any of the other Western Noirs) begins lightheartedly enough, with Cooper arriving in town, dropping off his horse at a stable, and nervously (it's his first time) boarding a train for Fort Worth, where he is to hire a teacher for the newly-opened school in his small town.  As he reveals to the card sharp who strikes up a conversation with him, he has gathered together everyone's money in the town to pay her a year's salary up front to persuade her to move to the sticks.  With eyes on the money, the card sharp (a Sam Beasley) is trying to persuade Link that he doesn't need to go to Fort Worth to get a teacher, because his friend Billie Ellis (Julie London) who has just moved on from being a barroom singer in the town they've all just left, is trained as a teacher, when the train stops to fill up on wood, and all the male passengers are recruited to speed this up.  As this is happening, the train is attacked by horse-riding robbers, but the guard manages to get the train started and get up on it with a rifle, and shoots one of the robbers in the back.  In the end, all the robbers get away with is Link's bag, because the one that gets shot was on the train and also heard about the money.  Link and Sam and Billie are stranded and set out to find shelter.  Link leads them to a deserted-looking farm in the middle of nowhere where he says he used to live.  Turns out he used to live there because he used to be part of the criminal gang that still uses it as a base, and it's also the gang that includes the feckless train robbers.  He is reunited with Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tobin, whose name is famous in those parts but who appears to have fallen on hard times.  He only has about 6 men, one of whom is pretty simple, another of whom is a mute, and another of whom is dying in the next room of the wound in the back.  The next stretch of the film is where the psychodrama comes in.  Dock's young hoodlums are suspicious of Link and want to kill all three of the newcomers, while Dock is almost desperate to believe that his favorite protege has returned to the fold.  (It's a bit awkward: although they've made Cobb up to look old, he's supposed to be significantly older than Cooper, who by this stage was himself in his late 50s and looking older.)  It's reminiscent of yesterday's Day of the Outlaw, except that Dock is less compos mentis than Burl Ives's character and less inclined to rein in his young thugs (the nastiest of which is played by a very young Jack Lord, nothing like his Hawaii 5-0 character).  They hold Link at knifepoint and get Billie to start stripping

until Link persuades Dock that they need to get ready for the big job Dock has been dreaming about for years and is now prepared to try with Link returned.  After a night spent huddled with Billie in the shed, Link wakes to find that another old companion of Dock's, Claude Tobin, has returned from a scouting mission.  He too knew Link back when and is deeply suspicious of Link's claims, as well as being fiercely protective of his relative.  He also brings the news that Link was recognized on the train by a lawman who remembers his sordid past, so now the whole gang is being sought by the law.  Nonetheless, Dock is dead set on robbing the bank in a town called Lassoo, where, he claims, mines from all round deposit their gold.  On the way there, they stop for a break and amuse themselves by fighting, whereupon Link gets his revenge on Jack Lord

(by stripping him, bizarrely enough) whereupon the humiliated hoodlum tries to shoot Link but hits Beasley, who throws himself in front of Link.  Beasley is as surprised at this selfless act as anyone, but says, in a tragi-comic speech, that he'd done a quick calculation and worked out that he would be almost certain to be killed next if Link died, and gives the odds he worked out just before he dies in Link's arms.  Jack Lord, meanwhile is offed by Dock, and they press on.
The best part of the movie, for my money, is the raid on the bank in Lassoo.  It reveals how truly past it Dock is, and manages to be a great final shootout and a commentary on the squalidness of typical gunfighter violence.  Julie London survives, but there's every indication that she was taken advantage of by the henchmen while Link went ahead to the bank.  And once again, there's a (largely) happy ending, although Billie knows that she can't have Link, because he's got a wife and kids back in his hometown.  I have to say, though this film is much praised, it's probably my least fave of the Western Noirs, and Cooper's acting doesn't have the depth I was led to expect.  It's no High Noon, for example.  (Oh, by the way, the title comes from the fact that every time Link is asked where he comes from, he says "a town west of here" whose name he variously gives as Sawmill or New Hope.)