Man of the West

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Man of the West

Directed by	Anthony Mann
Produced by	Walter Mirisch
Written by	Will C. Brown (novel) Reginald Rose (screenplay)
Starring	Gary Cooper Julie London Lee J. Cobb
Music by	Leigh Harline
Cinematography	Ernest Haller
Editing by	Victor Heerman Richard V. Heerman
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	October 1, 1958
Running time	100 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Man of the West is a 1958 western film directed by Anthony Mann in his last film of the genre. The screenplay, written by Reginald Rose, is based on the novel The Border Jumpers by Will C. Brown. When first released, the film was largely ignored by American critics, though renowned French critic Jean-Luc Godard regarded the film as the best released that year. In the decades since the film's release it has garnered a cult following as well as considerably greater acclaim from professional critics. Some, such as The Guardian's Derek Malcolm consider the film the best film directed by Mann [1] and a landmark western in the western genre canon. Malcolm included the film in his 2000 list The Century of Film.

[edit] Plot

Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones (Gary Cooper) is stranded with saloon singer Billie Ellis (Julie London) and gambler Sam Beasley (Arthur O'Connell) when the train they are riding is held up. For shelter, Jones leads the group to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack--they were in fact the train robbers--Jones poses as having "come back" to a life of crime. Only the gang's crazed leader, "Uncle" Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb), accepts Jones's story, and he decides to revive a long-planned robbery scheme. As Jones plays for time, he struggles with his background as a criminal, and the outlaws begin to lose patience.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Gary Cooper	Link Jones
Julie London	Billie Ellis
Lee J. Cobb	Dock Tobin
Arthur O'Connell	Sam Beasley
Jack Lord	Coaley
Royal Dano	Trout
John Dehner	Claude
Robert J. Wilke	Ponch
J. Williams	Alcutt
Chief Tahachee	Pio