@deanduncan63Saw Anthony Mann’s great #ManoftheWest, which asks whether or not men are naturally civilized, or savage …
… Men, & by extension/more particularly, the USA. The returns are not reassuring.
#ManoftheWest. The 50’s really did see much of peace & prosperity. Mann’s film throws all that into disarray, even jeopardy …
… Here, all that undoubted decency & order are & remain off-screen. In their place, these roots, or at least this characterization thereof: …
… Lee J. Cobb is the flawed, possibly sociopathic father figure (cf. the New German Cinema). His offspring are troglodytic brutes …
… This isn’t the peaceful settlement & cultivation of reassuring frontier myths. Rather, this is Rape & Murder …
… Cooper (superb!), the civilized man, is still marked by, still originates in this savagery. He may well make it out of the darkness …
… but it’s darkness, not Enlightenment, that lies at the root and constitutes the core of this Enterprise. Brrr!
#ManoftheWest. Peckinpah, before Peckinpah! Shares its thesis w’ MS’s Gangs of New York. Also, non-diegetic females!
#ManoftheWest. Compare Cooper’s character to the protagonists in H. King’s The Gunfighter & C. Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
#ManoftheWest. Theme yes, but D. Mann & C. Haller also offer a master’s class in composition, camera movement & cutting. Visual perfection.