Man of the West

1958. USA. Directed by Anthony Mann. Ashton Productions, Inc./Walter M. Mirisch Production. Screenplay by Reginald Rose. With Gary Cooper, Lee J. Cobb, Julie London. Mann’s last major western is his most powerful and influential. Jean-Luc Godard felt it to be a virtual reinvention of the genre, with the classical compositions and mythic archetypes of Westerns by John Ford and Howard Hawks giving way to the pessimism, moral irresolution, and sheer blind brutality that would become hallmarks of the Vietnam-era Western. As Link Jones, the upright citizen unable to escape his outlaw past, Cooper was never more haunting or anguished. 95 min.