Thanks for the memories!

How sad is this?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is an astonishing documentary that will wring your heart while it bends your mind

"How does it feel being put in your place?" "I wouldn't know."Pizazz, spunk, humor, and romance are all found in Borden Chase and D.D. Beauchamp's screenplay to Man Without a Star, but without the wonderful cast to say those great lines, I'm not sure how well it would have played. Kirk Douglas takes the lead in this delightful western as a drifting cowboy with attitude. Surprisingly enough, he's not the bad boy! Jeanne Crain is the bad girl, and the sparks that fly between them are scorching! Jeanne is the ranch owner Kirk works for, and she's a very tough boss. She's hard on her ranch hands, and even harder on Kirk, using every bargaining chip in the book to get what she wants out of him.Joined by Claire Trevor, William Campbell, Richard Boone, and Jay C. Flippen, the cast and director King Vidor creates a classic western, with every element in place to help it stand the test of time. This is definitely one you'll want to watch over and over again, especially if you're a Kirk Douglas fan. My favorite scenes are the tension-filled banters between Jeanne and Kirk, but there's another great scene that's a staple in the western genre: teaching the new kid how to be a cowboy. In Man Without a Star, the scene has an extra oomph of humor and charm, making it surpass other westerns that blend together in my memory. "Did your mother ever tell you it was rude to point?" Kirk asks William Campbell, after he's missed the shooting target. "Sure," William says. "Well, when you're using a gun, you're downright rude, so point!" Too cute!

Range wars- disputes over grazing or water rights which frequently escalated into violence- were a popular subject for Westerns; well-known examples include George Stevens' "Shane", William Wyler's "The Big Country", Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" and, more recently, Kevin Costner's "Open Range". "Man Without a Star" is another on the same theme. Like Costner's film it deals with the conflict between supporters of the "Law of the Open Range", meaning free access to water and grass for everyone, and the "barbed wire men" who used the new form of enclosure to fence off their land and to deny access to the free-range cattlemen.As the title song makes clear, a "man without a star" is one without a definite aim in life. The title character is Dempsey Rae, a wandering cowboy and passionate believer in the "Law of the Open Range". Dempsey loathes barbed wire, partly because of the injuries it can inflict on cattle, horses and people, partly because it can lead to conflict and partly because he sees the unfenced range as a symbol of the freedom of the Old West. He has left his native Texas because too much of the land there has been fenced off and moved further north and west in search of the still-open spaces.Together with a naive greenhorn named Jeff Jimson, Dempsey finds employment working for a ranch owner named Reed Bowman. Despite the masculine-sounding name, Reed turns out to be a beautiful young woman, who shares Dempsey's opinions about barbed wire and the open range. Now at this point you are probably thinking you know how the movie is going to end. Dempsey and Reed will not only team up to see off the villainous "barbed wire men" but will also fall in love and all will end happily in a peal of wedding bells.Only things don't quite work out as one might expect. The plot line of "Man without a Star" has some similarities with that of "The Big Country" from three years later. In both films the main character (Kirk Douglas here, Gregory Peck in the other film) becomes drawn into a range war between two groups of ranchers. In both films the moral boundaries initially seem clear-cut, but as matters progress those boundaries become blurred, it becomes more and more difficult to decide who are the heroes and who the villains, and the hero must decide where his loyalties lie.Here it is Reed who, in strict legal terms, has right on her side. The land across which her cattle roam is Government property, and therefore open range which no individual has the right to fence off. In moral terms, things are rather different. Reed is ruthlessly exploiting the open range system by bringing onto the land huge numbers of cattle, more than it can support, with a view to making a quick profit. Her neighbours are therefore compelled to fence off areas of land, even though this is strictly illegal, in order to prevent the grazing from becoming exhausted and to protect their own long-term interests. For all his hatred of wire, Dempsey reluctantly finds himself forced to side with these neighbours, especially when Reed's unscrupulous foreman Steve Miles starts using violence to enforce her claims. (Interestingly, Major Terrill, the equivalent character to Reed in "The Big Country", also employs a foreman named Steve. Was that coincidence or a deliberate reference to the earlier film?) This is not one of Douglas's great films, certainly not when compared with something like "Champion", or "Lust for Life", "Spartacus" or "Paths of Glory". I was, however, intrigued by the comments of the reviewer who stated that Douglas could "go from zero to 120 in intensity", as this seems to sum up perfectly his performance as Dempsey, the nonchalant, happy-go-lucky wanderer who is capable of passionate intensity where matters of honour or principle are at stake. Jeanne Crain is also good as Reed, looking far more attractive here as a redhead than she was as a brunette in another film from the same year, "Gentlemen Prefer Brunettes". Claire Trevor gets to play yet another "tart with a heart", a role of the sort in which she seemed to specialise after "Stagecoach".I would not rate "Man without a Star" quite as highly as "The Big Country", a film with a more epic feel, a greater depth of characterisation, some stunning photography and what is probably Peck's greatest performance apart from "To Kill a Mockingbird". It is, however, a very watchable Western and, like many of the best Westerns, an interesting exploration of moral issues. 7/10

A stunning, one-of-a-kind allegorical Western, with Kirk Douglas sensational as the tortured ranch hand who sees the fencing off of the West as the death knell of his freedom. He falls in with naive, impressionable William Campbell – a younger brother substitute – and the pair get work on the Triangle ranch. When wealthy scruple-vacuum Jeanne Crain turns up to make a quick buck off the land, Douglas splits, setting in chain a series of events that lead to murder and the symbolic destruction of Campbell's innocence. Then, with barbed-wire spreading like a rash across the green lands, Douglas wakes from a two-week drunk at Claire Trevor's bar to strap on his six-shooter... Nostalgic, thoughtful, intelligent and funny: a prototype 'Monte Walsh', and a remarkable film. It's shot like a dream too, by the ever interesting Vidor. Incidentally, the star that Douglas is without is not a Sheriff's star, but a star in the heavens he can follow.(3.5 out of 4)

Consistently shown these days on AMC, I managed to catch "Man Without A Star" this morning. Without knowing anything about the story, one might think it had something to do about a lawman without a badge, but here the title is used figuratively, and makes sense when cowpoke Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) teaches his sidekick, Texas Jeff (William Campbell), on finding his way by following an evening star. In that regard, the 'man without a star' in the story would have been the direction-less Jeff Jimson, as Dempsey Rae always knew where he was going, even if conflicted about it.Douglas seems to be having a genuinely good time here, strutting his stuff on banjo much like he did in his film from a year earlier, "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea". Seeing it on TV, I didn't have the opportunity to pause and rewind, but it looked like Douglas finished playing his first song about a half click before the music stopped. I can still give him credit for his singing voice though.The story itself is a fairly typical open range tale that turns deadly once barb wire enters the picture - "When wire comes in, there's fightin' and killin'." A little more thought could have gone into developing Dempsey's stand on the issue; at first we're convinced he's dead against it, then he's putting up a fence in defiance of former boss Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain). By the end of the story, he's heading into a further fence-less West, leaving behind Bowman, Texas Kid, and Madame Idonee (Claire Trevor). In hindsight, I would like to have seen more of Trevor in the story, maybe brawling it out with Bowman the way Dempsey and hell raiser Steve Miles ( Richard Boone) did, wouldn't that have been something?I liked director King Vidor's subtle humorous bits in the story, notably the running gag about a bathroom 'in the house', and Kirk Douglas combing his hair with the help of a goldfish bowl. And say, have you ever seen the Kirk Douglas dimple more pronounced than it is here?