dougdoepke
Aces all around, especially to whoever decided to film in b&w at a time when Technicolor for outdoor dramas was almost required. But b&w helps focus on story rather than spectacle, and this is a darn good story. Burns (Douglas) is a free spirit rebelling against authority. He seeks his independence in the world of nature. Fences and jail bars are his enemy; at the same time, he bonds with a horse rather than a conventional woman. So can he escape the confining conformity of all he detests once he breaks jail and the authorities pursue. That second half played against the rugged terrain of New Mexico is among the best chase sequences in all moviedom. In a sense it's Burns representing the Old West against the combined forces of the New. It's the escapee on horseback against helicopters, jeeps, and radios. The end couldn't be more ironic. Just a few yards from freedom, Burns and Whisky the horse are undone by a truck hauling toilets of all things. In a sense, that's what the modern world would like to do with his non-conformist ilk-- flush him away into yesterday. In a sense it's the motor force of history bearing down on his free spirit, which is why the truck appears early and mysteriously in the movie's narrative. The theme and twists are no surprise coming from anarchist Abbey and anti-capitalist Trumbo.All in all, I have two doubts about the 107-minutes. First, the Gena Rowlands role looks like an attempt to work a woman into the marquee in an otherwise all-male cast. At least she's not simply dropped in but does enter into Burns' motivation for going to jail. Second, I expected both Burns and his intrepid horse to be killed in the end. After all, the theme shaped up generally as a modern day tragedy. That would have created real impact for departing audiences. Instead, we're left with the possibility of the non-conformist surviving. That, in itself, may not be as impactful, but it does symbolize the possibility of Burns' free spirit surviving into our age, even though his dead horse symbolizes the passing of the Old West. Then too, I guess it's only fitting that nature's four-footed critter be crushed by a gas-belching 18-wheel mastodon.Of course, viewers may not agree with my interpretation or the worthiness of conformity in our modern age. Nonetheless, it's a heckuva a good movie and not surprisingly actor Douglas's favorite (IMDB). And now, I guess, it's one of mine too. (I can't help hoping that Whisky the horse got extra oats for all her exertions; plus, she really does deserve inclusion in the cast list given her importance to the story.)
James Hitchcock
To celebrate the recent 100th birthday of that great actor Kirk Douglas, only the second major male star (after Bob Hope) to reach that particular milestone, I turn to one of his greatest films, indeed the one which he himself regards as his favourite. Like a number of more recent films such as Pollack's "The Electric Cowboy" and Eastwood's "Bronco Billy", it is a modern-day Western which explores the way in which the legend of the Old West continues to affect modern American society.Douglas's character, John W. "Jack" Burns, is a modern-day ranch hand who regards himself as the heir to the cowboy tradition. He has a lot in common with Dempsey Rae, the character Douglas played in "Man without a Star". Both are wandering cowhands of no fixed abode, sleeping wherever they find a place. Both hate any attempt to restrict where they can go or what they can do, with a particular hatred of barbed-wire fences. As Jack puts it: "A westerner likes open country. That means he's got to hate fences. And the more fences there are, the more he hates them." Jack does not just hate modern laws, he also hates modern technology; he does not own a car and travels everywhere on horseback. He refuses to carry any form of identification, such as a driving licence; as he says "I don't need cards to figure out who I am, I already know." The difference, of course, is that "Man without a Star" was set in the late nineteenth century, the heyday of the Old West when the roaming cowboy lifestyle was widely accepted. Jack finds himself living in the 1960s and his attempt to live by the code of the previous century is seen as a dangerous challenge to the values of modern society. A homeless man is no longer seen as a free spirit but as either a mentally unstable vagabond or as a potential criminal. In the 1880s a dislike of fences could be seen as an attempt to uphold the "law of the open range" which was being violated by unscrupulous farmers; by 1962 it is coming to look, at least to the eyes of society, like an attack on the sacred principle of private property.Jack learns that an old friend, Paul Bondi, has been imprisoned for assisting illegal immigrants. He forms a plan to rescue Paul from jail, and decides that in order to do this is he needs to get arrested himself. He gets involved in a bar-room brawl, and when the police refuse to bring charges forces them to arrest him by assaulting an officer. Once inside the jail, however, he discovers that Paul does not want to be rescued, as he realises that any attempt to escape would only result in his being given an even heavier sentence. Jack breaks out of jail himself and goes on the run, pursued by the police. This being the twentieth century, of course, the forces of the law have at their disposal technology, such as helicopters, which would not have been available to a nineteenth-century posse. Jack has to use his skills and his knowledge of the terrain in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of his pursuers.Douglas did not just star in "Lonely Are the Brave", he also produced it after acquiring the rights to the novel it is based on, Edward Abbey's "The Brave Cowboy". To write the screenplay Douglas hired the still officially blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, with whom he had earlier worked on "Spartacus". The character of Jack probably owes something to Abbey's anarchist views, of which Douglas said "It happens to be a point of view I love. This is what attracted me to the story – the difficulty of being an individual today".Looking at the story objectively, it would be difficult to deny that Jack has a self-destructive streak a mile wide; his scheme for freeing Paul from the jail seems particularly hare-brained. Yet it would also be difficult to deny that, as played by Douglas, Jack comes across as the film's hero, not its villain. In that final chase it is Jack and his faithful horse Whiskey for whom we are rooting, not his mechanised pursuers. Even Morey Johnson, the sheriff charged with hunting him down, feels some sympathy with him. (The relationship between Jack and Morey may have influenced the portrayal of another relationship between pursuer and pursued, that between Harrison Ford's Dr Kimble and Tommy Lee Jones's marshal in "The Fugitive", made thirty years after this film). Douglas gives one of his greatest performances here, and he receives good support from Walter Matthau as Morey).David Miller appears to have been a prolific director, but this is only the second of his films which I have seen; the first was that mediocre comedy "The Opposite Sex", a film about as different from "Lonely Are the Brave" as one could imagine. Here, however, his direction is masterly. The film was made in black-and-white, an unusual choice for the early sixties when colour was fast becoming the default setting for film-makers, at least in America, but in my view the right one. Miller's stark photography of the Western landscapes (here in New Mexico) is reminiscent of Raoul Walsh's in that other great film about a man on the run in the mountains of the West, "High Sierra" from 1941. It makes a fitting backdrop to the tragedy of Jack Burns, a free spirit in a society which pays lip-service to the principle of freedom but which distrusts those who try to live by that principle. 9/10
AaronCapenBanner
Kirk Douglas stars as an independent modern day cowboy named Jack Burns who laments the age he lives in, and all the restrictive laws it represents. When Burns finds out an old friend is in prison, he makes the extraordinary decision to get himself arrested, and sent into that prison so that he can help his friend escape! Unfortunately for him, his friend does not want to escape, so Burns leaves on his own, which causes the authorities to pursue him, though he is now on horseback, and they are in jeeps and helicopters, leading to a sad an inevitable outcome...Interesting film is a well acted and directed(David Miller) story of a stubborn man who is worthy of sympathy for being born a century too late, but his stubbornness brings the problem on himself, so viewer can only relate to his plight to a point, and the sheriff in pursuit(played by Walter Matthau) is in the right. By the end, the character I really felt bad for was that horse.Look for Bill Bixby in his film debut as a helicopter pilot.
