Thanks for the memories!

Crappy film

As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This one is very similar to many other westerns, lacking anything unique. The sequence of events is very predictable - you know how it is going to end in the middle of the movie. The story is very simple and the personalities are vapid (the characters are very similar to those in many other westerns). Kirk Douglas performs very well as he always did. But most of the rest of the cast is rather wooden, with the exception of Richard Boone who comes across as convincingly menacing.

Kirk Douglas is in his prime in this excellent, subversive epic, directed by King Vidor. Douglas plays a drifter who hooks up with a young traveler (William Campbell) and then starts work on a ranch with a new, strong-willed female boss (a marvelously foxy Jeanne Crane). What gives this movie most interest to modern eyes are some gay undertones, as well as later moments of more overtly suggestive heterosexual dialogue between the randy Douglas and his new employer - reminding this viewer a little of Bogart and Bacall's wordplay in The Big Sleep. A young Richard Boone plays a more conventional heavy brought in to supervise the impending rage war, but even his menacing presence is largely sidelined by the real attentions of the film laying elsewhere. While Douglas' character is outwardly defined by his hatred of any barbed wire enclosing the open range (previous experience of which he has etched across his torso, rather like marks of passion), it is clear that Man Without a Star is more about freedom of the libido to range as it will, constrained only by the various explicit and implicit passions between the principal characters. Claire Trevor, playing Douglas' old flame, is part of a strong support cast which also includes Jay C Flippen. Douglas gets to sing and is a dynamo on screen. Script co-written by Borden Chase.

Man Without A Star is directed by King Vidor and adapted by Borden Chase & D. D. Beauchamp from the Dee Linford novel. It stars Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Crain, Claire Trevor, William Campbell & Richard Boone. Photographed by Russell Metty in Technicolor around the Thousand Oaks area in California, with the title song warbled by Frankie Laine.Dempsey Rae (Douglas) is easy going and a lover of life, so much so he has no qualms about befriending young hot head Jeff Jimson (Campbell). The pair, after a scare with the law, amble into town and find work at a ranch owned by the mysterious Reed Bowman. Who after finally showing up turns out to be a lady (Crain), with very ambitious plans. As sexual tensions start to run high, so do tempers, as the boys find themselves in the middle of a range war.It's all very conventional stuff in the grand scheme of range war Western things, but none the less it manages to stay well above average in spite of a tricky first quarter. For the fist part Vidor and Douglas seem to be playing the film for laughs, with the actor mugging for all he is worth. Add in the wet behind the ears performance of Campbell and one wonders if this is going to be a spoof. But once the lads land in town and the girls show up (Trevor classy, Crain smouldering), the film shifts in gear and starts to get edgy with Vidor proving to have paced it wisely. The thematics of era and lifestyle changes, here signified by barbed wire, are well written into the plot. While interesting camera angles and biting photography keep the mood sexually skew whiff. Boone lifts proceedings with another fine villain performance, and Jay C. Flippen in support is as solid as he almost always was. 7/10

While traveling clandestine in a train, the drifter cowboy Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) befriends the naive youngster Jeff "Texas" Jimson (William Campbell) and helps him when he is arrested by mistake in a train station. Dempsey Is hired by the foreman Strap Davis (Jay C. Flippen) to work in the ranch owned by the greedy Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), who brings civilized habits from the East, like having a bathroom inside the house. When the owners of minor ranches use barbed wire fence in the open grass to protect some land for their cattle in the winter, Reed hires a gang of troublemakers leaded by Steve Miles (Richard Boone) to work in her ranch and tries to seduce Dempsey to convince him to help her. But Dempsey decide to help the ranchers against the gunmen and Reed. "Man Without a Star" is a flawed but entertaining western. Kirk Douglas performs a nice cowboy that "adopts" a youngster to be the substituted for his brother that was killed in a dispute of land; hates barbed wire fences that he associates to the cause of the death of his brother; and is very successful with women. However, despite telling that barbed wire comes together with fights and killings, his character is incoherent when he defends the ranchers that are installing barbed wire fences. Jeanne Crain is amazingly seductive and sexy with her beauty, and her manipulative character is strong but totally forgotten in the end of the story. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Homem Sem Rumo" ("Drifter")