Man without a Star (1955)The Most Brutal Western in the Old Studio System? (Review)

Many Classical Hollywood directors have fallen victim to the passage of time. For every revered director like Alfred Hitchcock or Howard Hawks, there is an Edgar G. Ulmer or Jacques Tourneur. Like the latter, King Vidor has become less and less talked about over time despite being quite a successful director in the studio period. Known for his incredibly varied career which ranges from silent films such as the radical left-wing social drama, The Crowd, all the way to his adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel – The Fountainhead. Despite having an affiliation with Rand’s objectivism and the Republican party Vidor’s films often focus on communities, and occasionally individuals, that struggle to grapple with capitalism and the brutal forces associated with it. 

Released in 1955 A Man Without a Star was one of Vidor’s final films and released just a year before he would embark on his epic adaptation of War and Peace. In comparison this film is very different – it has a small scale and runs a lean 90 minutes. The film stars an incredibly charismatic Kirk Douglas who plays a gunslinging drifter named Dempsey who at the start of the film is a stowaway on a train going to Wyoming. On this train he meets a young and impressionable man named Jeff (William Campbell), Dempsey takes him under his wing and teaches him the ways of the West. 

Eventually, both get a job working at a large cattle range, which has a whopping 10,000 cows, it is revealed to be owned by Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) however, the land is all open range and various other, smaller, ranchers reside on it. Bowman’s plan is to overpopulate the land with Cattle, run the land dry and then move on once it cannot be used anymore. As expected this plan does not go well with the local rangers; whilst what Bowman is doing is perfectly legal, it is on open land, it will run them out of business and ruin the land. To prevent this they put up barbed wire around the land they need, triggering a range war. This causes Bowman to hire a gang of mercenaries to fight the local rangers and prevent them from protecting the land they need to survive. 

This film is without a doubt one of the most brutal Westerns to be released in the classic Hollywood system – despite this, it was somehow released by Universal. Within ten minutes of the film, there are two fist fights and a stabbing, all happening on screen in complete visceral glory. Vidor doesn’t let up the violence and builds an atmosphere where violence could break out at any time; fights break out over seemingly any reason, men are tied up using barb wire or strung up on horses and people are shot completely unexpectedly. Throughout the film is a palpable sense of dread that any moment violence will erupt on screen. Vidor depicts the west as a completely ravenous place where the powerful can crush whoever they want to and that violence was often the only solution to people’s problems. 

Whilst the film’s first half is slightly light-hearted and filmed with an almost slapstick humour, it feels like a Hawks film at times, the second half is where the grim reality sets in. A psychosexual love triangle between Dempsey, Bowman and Jeff causes friction between the two men; Dempsey eventually joins the local rangers whilst Jeff stays working for Bowman. A Man Without a Star really hits it home in its final act culminating in a shootout that takes place on horseback where the two sides fire at each other over a moving herd of cattle, seriously an incredible set piece for the time. After that, there is an incredibly bloodthirsty fight that involves men being pushed against barbed wire and punched until they can’t stand anymore.

Russell Metty, who worked on many Douglas Sirk films, shoots the film in astoundingly beautiful technicolour and Vidor makes full use of every single frame. There are some brilliant vistas that showcase huge fields with hundreds of cows being herded by men on horseback; also there are many scenes that showcase groups of people working together to build fences which feel exciting and also highlight the community spirit that resided in these tight-knit Western communities. Together Vidor and Metty capture the action in a dazzling yet brutal way that creates a spectacle of violence, which is rarely seen in traditional Westerns. Very rarely does Vidor shy away from showing you the ferocious nature of the West or the outcomes its violence has on both the body and the mind. 

Douglas’ performance of Dempsey is absolutely phenomenal in the role of the enigmatic drifter and he completely anchors the film. He has a mysterious past which is only briefly explained, not that it has to as you can get the sense of regret and sorrow from the facial expressions that Douglas is able to display. You are never quite sure where his character is going to go or what he might do; at one point it looks like he is going to start a fight in a bar with a long-standing rival from his past, except instead he bursts out into a song with his banjo which is both comedic but also equally terrifying. Whilst the rest of the cast cannot keep up with Douglas, Jeanne Crain is great as the cold and brutal businesswoman. However, that isn’t to say anyone gives a bad performance – more that Douglas’ is just very good.

Despite not being as gritty as it could be, there is a reasonably heavy dose of comedy added, it remains a pretty gripping Western that feels ahead of its time for how much it revels in bloodshed. Whilst the plot might seem basic the concept of a small community trying to fend off a greedy capitalist is something that is always engaging, and still relevant to the modern age. Vidor’s great direction and Douglas’ performance make this a must-watch for fans of the Western, although if you aren’t a huge Western fan then this is unlikely to persuade you otherwise. 

Autumn’s Archive – Man without a Star