192: Man of the West (with Aaron & Carlee from Hit Factory)

Junk Filter

CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence.

Aaron and Carlee from the Hit Factory podcast return from San Francisco to discuss one of Anthony Mann’s best films, the psychological western Man of the West, starring Gary Cooper in one of his final performances as a former outlaw who has worked to get away from his sordid past and rebuild his life, only to find himself by circumstance back in league with the very “family” of killers who raised him, in a classic film noir scenario transposed to the Western genre.

Jean-Luc Godard hailed Man of the West as the best film of 1958 and in this episode we discuss the psycho-sexual complexities of this western and how it pointed the way to the future of American cinema including the horror genre, how like Michael Mann’s Manhunter it implicates the audience by depicting an “audience” within the movie forced to watch sexually-charged violence unfold, and the modernity of the performances by Lee J. Cobb as the crazed paterfamilias of the killers and the singer Julie London as the “saloon singer” held hostage by the gang. We also discuss what this film has to say about violence as the substance that forged Western expansion and which, as we’ve seen in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election, still courses through the American bloodstream today.

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Julie London’s title theme for Man of the West, un-used in the film itself

Trailer for Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)