O Galante Aventureiro

The Westerner will seldom make it on anyone's top ten westerns list, even one compiled by those of us who haven't succumbed to the garlicky charms of the Man with No Name. But this is one of the top notch hay-consumers of all time, make no mistake.

What can you say about Gary Cooper that has not already been voiced over and over. His beautifully understated acting style, the subtle twitches and raised eyebrows. His bearing. The way he sits a horse, as only someone who grew up on a Montana ranch can. The sure enough Western accent. Had he discovered the ear-pull yet, I didn't notice it in this one. Until watching this movie on a newly restored DVD tonight, I had not seen it in 20 years, and had come to think of it as more of a Walter Brennan movie. I was wrong. Brennan was there with all his fine tools, all right, and he royally deserved his best-supporting award, but that is what his role was. When it's a Gary Cooper movie, it's a Gary Cooper movie. Never having been a fan of High Noon, I had thought maybe Dallas or Vera Cruz were Coop's best westerns. But The Westerner gives us the definitive Gary Cooper.

The movie is handsomely turned out in the sensuously luminous black and white cinematography, fluid editing and silky-smooth scene changes we have come to accept as standard for top studio productions of the late 'thirties, 'forties era, and every cinematic effect is enhanced by a stirring Dimitri Tiomin score. The sets and costumes are superb with a much more authentic look and feel for the old west than most westerns before or since. The clothes of both the men and women, both the cowboys and the farmers, the gun leather, and the buildings, are all unusually accurate to the time and place. Refreshingly, the heroine of our piece, sensitively and strongly played by the beautiful but obscure Doris Davenport, wears a long, feminine dress and uses a wagon for transportation, rather than wearing men's jeans and riding astraddle a horse with her Tangee lipstick blaring as we see in so many great and small westerns. All the other characters, both male and female, come off like real 19th century men and women, not products of the time in which the film was made. William Wyler's direction is virtually flawless with just the right blend of action, tension, and humor. But considering the acting talent, the cinematographers, lighting specialists, art directors, and other technical help any director in the awesomely efficient big studio systems of the time had available, maybe he just knew how to stay out of the way.

This is an outdoor epic about land war in which director William Wyler offers us a solid, absorbent and entertaining film . "The Westerner" is an intense and rewarding western , which is filmed on location in Arizona. Nominated for 3 Oscars (actor cast, art direction and original screenplay), won one (for Walter Brennan who sparkles as judge who dispenses frontier justice in the days of wild west). The film explores the tensions and fights faced by the old farmers and new settlers landowners engaged in the operation of small farms, erected through the efforts of their work . It focuses on the conflicting interests of the two groups, their diverse working methods , struggles and different visions of the country and world . Within this scenario is the showdown among two two antagonists , a drifter addicted to freedom named "Cole Harden¨ (featured by an unforgettable Cooper), a sly , soft spoken cowboy who champions Texas border homesteaders in a range war , Cole is a former outlaw and become socially integrated while legendary Judge Roy Bean (Brennan's Academy Award was his third playing a shrew piece of villainy) known as ¨The law west of the Pecos ¨ sentences Hardin hang as a horse thief . Cole then falls for damsel Jane Ellen (Doris Davenport) and stays in the area advocating for the rights of homesteaders ; Cole has to have an ending confrontation with the judge . With these characters, the film explores the misery and the greatness of the human condition. Gary Cooper was 39 years when he played in this movie and he was a very famous player . The film gave Cooper one of the best of his laconic , strong characters as the cowboy caught among opposing factions ; in other hand Walter Brennan composing the reply and gives a role of cruel judge but that is nice , capable at the same time, being brutal and relentlessly hanging whatever suspect . The film describes the institutional and administrative instability that prevails in wide zones of western border, underscores the friendship, companionship, honesty, sense of adventure, enterprise and justice sentence drills by unscrupulous and dishonest people.The narrative is vivid and vibrant. The story is presented polished, stylish and free of nonessential items. The dialogues are sharp and funny, peppered with humor. The film includes spectacular scenes, fast-paced and iconography amalgam of the old silent westerns with romantic references characteristic of modern western.It's also a comedy, Brennan and Cooper have a fun relationship during the first half hour of the movie, you think we will soon lead to a happy ending, which ultimately will result but one of the two dead. Furthermore, movie debuts of actors Dana Andrews and Forrest Tucker. William Wyler exceed film genres and built an excellent film from the first minutes the feeling of coherence and emphasis that produces the majority of which went over his career.

Amazing cinematography by Cregg Toland (citizen Kane) places an emphasis on the realism of the action and splendid frames , which is one of the best things of the movie, with spectacular scenes as the fire. Emotive and stirring musical score by the classic Dimitri Tiomkin . Wyler looking camera concealed positions that sees without being seen observed with curiosity and interest and look for the pleasure of seeing. The film, made by a young Wyler (37 years) is solid, absorbing and entertaining.There are moments, like burning down crops that technically is wonderful . Some rides from Cooper or fighting in the middle of the country , so are scenes impossible to forget.

The Bean 's role is based on actual events as Roy Bean (1825-1903) was a near-illiterate frontier justice of the peace who ran a combined court-saloon in the tiny railroad hamlet of Langtry in the West Texas desert between the River Pecos and the Rio Grande . He was known as the ¨Lay west of the Pecos¨ . He was running a saloon in a tent-town for railroad builders called Vinegaroon . Ben , backed by the Texas Rangers and the railroad , was appointed Justice of the peace , although he had never studied law . He managed to keep the peace with a strange brand of common and rough sense , often basing his ruling on a single law book . The stories about him are legion, most apocryphal . The fines usually stayed in his pocket and he acquitted accused on condition that he buy a round of drinks for the boys . The law of the Pecos was a law unto himself . He got himself elected Langtry's justice of the peace , holding court in his crude saloon called the ¨Jersey Lily¨ where he lived till his death in 1903 . In 1896 he brought fame to Langtry by staging the Fitzsmmons-Peter Maher heavyweight-boxing championship. He also performed marriages , ending the short ceremony with the worlds ¨I Roy Bean , justice of the peace , hereby pronounce man and wife . May God have mercy on your souls¨. Bean's ¨Jersey Lily¨ has been preserved by the Texas Highway Department and is now a tourist attraction.

Walter Brennan stars as Judge Roy Bean, the legendary self appointed law west of the Pecos in Texas. He uses whoever happens to be in his saloon as a jury, and the penalty of death is often dispensed for killing or stealing the animals of others.

At this time Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) is brought to the judge for stealing a horse. Cole claims he bought this horse, although he admits the person he bought it from may have stolen it from the original owner. The judge is not impressed, and he can tell neither is the jury. So while the jury deliberates, Cole makes conversation with the judge, figures out he is obsessed with British actress Lillie Langtry, and talks about the time he met her, and about the lock of her hair that he has back in El Paso. Then the jury comes back with the expected guilty verdict. The judge defers Cole's sentence until he can look into matters more, since he says that no friend of Lillie Langtry could be a horse thief. Plus Bean really wants to hear more of Cole's tales of meeting Lillie Langry, and he really wants to see that lock of hair. Later, luck would have it that the actual horse thief wanders into Judge Bean's bar. When Cole shows that he still has the sixty dollars that he paid for the horse on him, there is a shootout and Bean shoots the actual thief dead, freeing Cole.

What I just described is the best part of the film. And I really haven't spoiled anything by telling you this since the art of it is in Brennan's and Cooper's delivery and the chemistry that they had together. But because an entire feature film is needed, there is a significant subplot about the judge being pro cattleman and thus backing people who sabotage the farming homesteaders nearby. This subplot is not that compelling and neither is the romance between Cooper's Cole and one of the daughters of the homesteaders, played by Doris Davenport. Davenport wasn't a very interesting actress, and she had only one other credited role the same year this film came out before leaving acting entirely.

I'd say watch it for probably the best thing Walter Brennan ever did and the great chemistry he had with Gary Cooper, but that the rest of the film, when Cooper and Brennan are not interacting, can be a bit of a bore.

"The Westerner" (1940): Directed by William Wyler, starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennen. On one level, this is a classic tale of the Old West as it struggled through a transition of re-settlement. Depicted as such, it is a beautifully photographed, well acted, gritty, weird, funny, and emotional story. But, this film was also made in 1940. The Germans had begun their sweep across Europe, they were breaking treaties as fast as necessary, and non-militarized countries could not withstand the armed renegade country bent on following no rules but its own. To think that this was not on the minds of "The Westerner's" writers, directors, and audience, would be naïve. It's a perfect representation of current events in Europe, England, and America – as of 1940. (1941 would change that.) I found it fascinating from this perspective – watching it with something of the same gut level understanding that people in that time would have certainly felt. Cooper was the outsider who had no real attachments and wanted to remain isolated – keeping his freedom and avoiding entanglements. The town, run by despot Judge Roy Bean, made their own laws, convicted everyone in their way, and hung them without a second thought. The farmers were seen as an impediment to their expanding ideas which required more and more land and water. Cooper was drawn into the battle of ideologies, and attempted to become the ambassador aiming for peace, not war. He moved slowly, and lost the trust of everyone – until it was made very clear to him that the aggressors had no intention of honoring promises. It was time to take sides. It is PERFECT representation of that, and our (we, the Westerners), time.

Samuel Goldwyn's The Westerner would be considered a good western about that old familiar topic in westerns, the cattlemen versus the homesteaders. Gary Cooper is his usual tall in the saddle hero whose presence brings about a general righting of wrongs.

Except that Mr. Goldwyn had the presence of mind to cast Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean, local head honcho of the area around Vinegarroon, Texas. With William Wyler directing Brennan etches an unforgettable film portrayal of a man who's both ruthless in enforcing his will on the territory and a likable sort of cuss once you get to know him.

Brennan has one weakness, as the legends have it in the west, he's crushing out big time of famed English actress Lily Langtry. When Gary Cooper is brought into Brennan's courtroom which in off hours is also a saloon, a little quick thinking on his part upon seeing Langtry's portrait over the bar saves his life.

Despite Cooper's friendship with the judge, he's also taken an interest in homesteader Fred Stone's daughter, Doris Davenport. It's inevitable that Cooper and Brennan come to a parting of the ways.

Wyler who is not a director of westerns per se has directed a couple of good ones and this is one of them. There are some good action scenes here, there are some scenes laced with humor when Brennan is around, and the romance is nicely handled.

Dana Andrews and Forrest Tucker got their first notice in The Westerner as well in small parts. But it's Brennan's show.

Walter Brennan won his third Best Supporting Actor Oscar with this film. This was the fifth year the Supporting Player categories were being awarded by the Academy and Brennan won numbers one and three previously.

Western fans will like The Westerner in any event and others will watch it to see a master craftsman in Walter Brennan at his job.