criterionforum.org

Man of the West



The pinnacle in the brilliant career of director Anthony Mann, Man of the West has earned a reputation as one of the finest westerns and one of the finest films, full stop produced in the late studio era.

Ex-outlaw Link Jones (Gary Cooper) boards a train to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his town when he's knocked unconscious and robbed by a gang of outlaws associated with his own uncle (Lee J. Cobb) whom he abandoned years earlier in his bid to go straight. Soon after, and in order to protect the life of the woman he'd earmarked for schoolteacher, saloon singer Billie Ellis (Julie London), Link rejoins the gang for one last hold-up...

Jean-Luc Godard wrote of Man of the West: "I have seen nothing so completely new since why not? Griffith... With Anthony Mann, one rediscovers the western, as one discovers arithmetic in an elementary maths class. Which is to say that Man of the West is the most intelligent of films, and at the same time the most simple." The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Man of the West in a special Dual Format edition that presents the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.

SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY + DVD) EDITION featuring:

• New HD 1080p HD presentation of the film in its original aspect ratio
• Optional English SDH for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Exclusive feature-length commentary by Glenn Kenny and Farran Nehme
• Exclusive new 18-minute video interview with Douglas Pye
• 44-PAGE BOOKLET with writing by Jean-Luc Godard, Robin Wood, a score of rare archival imagery, and more!

EDIT: Just realized I mixed this up with another Anthony Mann film, but regardless definitely looking forward to this. Is this the one great masterwork of Gary Cooper's career?

Well, okay, now I'm glad I didn't pick up the Kino yet. Hopefully they'll include the French video adaptation of Godard's essay on the film that was on the earlier French DVD of this ala Violent Sunday

Seems like all of Carlotta's biggest announcements are getting US/UK counterparts lately. Except for the Welles stuff, unfortunately, which I will purchase and then double-dip when an edition comes out with English Friendly extras. ](*,)

hearthesilence wrote:Is this the one great masterwork of Gary Cooper's career?

Hell no. Even if we were to dismiss Cooper's collaborations with Hawks, Capra, DeMille, and Lubitsch (which would be foolish, IMO), one can't legitimately overlook Josef von Sternberg's Morocco.

Its certainly not the one great masterwork of his career, but it is his best movie.

It is in my estimation (and the forum in whole, according to the Westerns List Project) the greatest Western of all time, even if, as the previous posters rightly suggest, Cooper had a long and interesting career full of greatness beyond this one masterpiece

domino harvey wrote:Well, okay, now I'm glad I didn't pick up the Kino yet. Hopefully they'll include the French video adaptation of Godard's essay on the film that was on the earlier French DVD of this ala Violent Sunday

Violent Sunday - is that the sequel to Violent Saturday?

Goddammit What's worse is that's probably the fifth or sixth time I've done that on this forum alone!

I blame Sunday Bloody Sunday.

kingofthejungle wrote:

hearthesilence wrote:Is this the one great masterwork of Gary Cooper's career?

Hell no. Even if we were to dismiss Cooper's collaborations with Hawks, Capra, DeMille, and Lubitsch (which would be foolish, IMO), one can't legitimately overlook Josef von Sternberg's Morocco.

I forgot about Morocco! I prefer at least two, maybe even four of the other Dietrich/von Sternberg collaborations, but I could go along with calling it a masterpiece. It definitely has great things about it.

I love Hawks, but Sergeant York was not a great film. Even with Cooper's Oscar-winning performance, there's probably twenty Hawks films that are much better. I liked the first half, but I'm not a fan of the rest when things shift over to the war.

I love Cooper in Meet John Doe (especially that first close-up - stone cold proof of why he's one of the great film actors ever) and Mr. Deeds but they're not great films. Except for It's a Wonderful Life, Capra's best work came before them.

Except for The Cheat, I'm really not a fan of DeMille at all, but I didn't see anything he did with Cooper. Which film(s) are we talking about?

Lubitsch's Design for Living has plenty of merit, but Cooper was actually a bad fit in that film.

hearthesilence wrote:I love Hawks, but Sergeant York was not a great film.

Agreed, but Hawks also directed Cooper in Today We Live and Ball of Fire. The latter is a lot of fun, with a lot of screwball flourishes, "Drum Boogie" with Gene Krupa, and some great camerawork by Gregg Toland.

DeMille directed him in The Plainsman, North West Mounted Police, The Story of Dr. Wassell, and Unconquered.

Forgot about Ball of Fire, but I did see it. It's a whole lot better, but it's still short of a truly great film. It doesn't reach the same heights as, say, Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday, two Hawks films that I would call stone cold masterworks. Haven't seen Today We Live though.

Again, I think Cooper is great - he's definitely one of the greatest film stars ever, but while he's made a number of popular 'classics,' as cinematic art, virtually all of those films (High Noon, Mr. Deeds, Pride of the Yankees, many others) are either severely flawed or simply fall short of being masterworks, which is a shame because he's typically great with what seems like a few, rare missteps (see Lubitsch's film).

There are some lesser-known films that come close (A Farewell to Arms). An argument can definitely be made for Morocco. I look forward to Man of the West, I love Anthony Mann and have heard so much about this one - plus more than Morocco it seems to be a star vehicle for Cooper as well. Compared to some of his contemporaries - James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant - I just wish his filmography rose to the level of his considerable accomplishments as a legendary screen actor.

It does, you just don't like those films

No, I like most of them, I said they all had merit.

I've always liked Cooper in Friendly Persuasion - a movie I'm very fond of...

I won't dispute that Cooper didn't have as many unimpeachable masterpieces to his credit as James Stewart or Cary Grant, but he has a solid resume of very good to great films.

To add to what's already been mentioned, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Lubitsch), Desire (Borzage/Lubitsch), Vera Cruz (Aldrich), and The Hanging Tree (Daves) are all creditable Cooper films. If he's in some of the most uneven films of a few great directors (Lang's Cloak and Dagger, McCarey's Good Sam, and Walsh's Distant Drums), he's also in some of the better films of uneven directors (Wyler, Hathaway, Wellman).

I seem to find Sergeant York and Meet John Doe much more compelling works than you do, hearthesilence (though I'll admit both have their flaws), but I'm glad we're at least in the same ballpark on Man of The West and Morocco (both of which are hypnotic films with Cooper providing superb nonverbal characterization).

Two of his most unusual and compelling are Peter Ibbetson and The Fountainhead, the former showing a different side to Cooper than the familiar roles and the latter pushing his stoicism into the bizarre Ayn Rand context (and he was Rand's choice for the role, though she was unhappy with the results).

Funny, I was about to mention those same two films.

February 16. Available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk

One of the features has been revealed, and its a good one:

Farran Nehme @selfstyledsiren · Jan 14

Yes, now it can be told: @glenn__Kenny & I did the commentaries for @mastersofcinema's Blu-Rays of MAN OF THE WEST and WILD RIVER due 2/23.

Well, there's no double dipping on Wild River (the Fox Blu was a Christmas gift from people who live in my house, so no go), but this is great news for Man of the West and me.

DVD Beaver.

Even against the Koch and Kino blu rays, MOC looks best.

bluray.com

Kino Screencap.
MOC Screencap.