The Westerner (1940)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

William Wyler directs a fictionalised account of the story of Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan), a small town saloon public official with a penchant for hanging and corrupt as well as he sides with the cattlemen against the homesteaders. Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) is sentenced by the Judge to hang after he is falsely accused of horse stealing. Cole noticing that the Judge is infatuated by the English actress Lily Langtry claims to have met her and even having a lock of her hair.The Judge suspends his sentence and both become unusual friends, Cole even rescues the Judge from some irate homesteaders. However the aggression by the cattlemen leads to one local homesteader Jane Ellen Mathews (Doris Davenport) farms being burned down and her father being killed. She had a tentative romance with Cole and he goes looking for the Judge who does little to protect the homesteaders in the lawless frontier.The film is nicely photographed by the legendary Gregg Toland, it is also overlong, too episodic with too many lulls in the story. It is an offbeat movie but vacillates too often between being a comedy, romance and a drama.

William Wyler wasn't a director who made film's. He was a director who showed you a film. And that's what he did with....The Westerner.Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan and Doris Davenport are fantastic in this film. Walter Brennan who plays (Judge Roy Bean) steals the show in his Academy Award winning performance. (Also look for 'Dana Andrews' in a brief app.)The one aspect that strikes me about this film is the friendship between Cole Hardin (Gary Cooper) and Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan). It's not the sort of friendship that happens over a number of year's. It's a very quick friendship that grows from respect for one another. Now..I'm not a big (Doris Davenport) fan, but, she does a really good job in this film. I think, it has to do a lot with William Wyler directing. There is a very touching scene with her and (Coop) where her facial expressions are priceless. She really wants to knock-him across the jaw, but she's also falling in love with-him at the same time. Is it (Coop's) best western of his career.., no, it's not. But, it's a great classic film that's worth watching over and over again. Believe me...All of you will enjoy...The Westerner.

We here in Texas have always HATED corn. If you have steak, who needs vegetables? America is fat (morbidly obese) today because high fructose CORN syrup is sneaked into almost every product in our groceries. Roy Bean tried to nip the creeping evil of Big Corn in the bud during the time he appears in this libelous Big Corn Lobby smear campaign film, THE WESTERNER. As Roy knew, any grain or vegetable requires many illegal southerners to harvest. Folks like Col. Travis and Jim Bowie DIED in order to kick them out of here (they even had the unmitigated gall to try to free our Intercontinentals!). Heroes such as Davey Crockett, Sam Houston and corn farmer-Hanging Judge Roy Bean tried to insure Texans a future steady diet of good old American steak. But rascals with names like Abe Lincoln and Michelle Obama have crammed fattening corn products down our throats instead as the decades roll by. At the end of this film, the FAKE westerner played by Gary Cooper ASSASSINATES Roy Bean so the Yankee fat cats behind Big Corn can have the last laugh. If you feel a twinge of unease watching your 400-pound 12-year-old waddling toward the fridge tonight, blame Gary Cooper and Big Corn!!

At first I couldn't figure out what the story's main conflict was. Then I went back and read the prologue: homesteaders vs. cattlemen. Oh. Maybe that was a big cultural rift back in the 19th century; but here in the 21st century, it seems a little too subtle. It also seems a little too weak as a premise to build a feature length story around. And so the relationship between Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) and cowpoke Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) eclipses the main story line.Judge Bean's romantic obsession with Lily Langtry screams contrivance as a way to advance the script's weak plot. All that business with a lock of Miss Lily's hair just reeks of superfluous silliness. There's no organic story relationship between Miss Lily and the homesteaders. Were the scriptwriters grasping at corn straws? Further, the script is talky, and the plot plods along, slowly and all drawn-out.But with the exalted presence of Water Brennan, I suppose all is forgiven, or at least overlooked. And yet, even here, I find discontent. My mental image of Judge Bean is of an old man, hardened and tough. In this film, Brennan is anything but old. I would thus have preferred an older actor in the role, though in subsequent films Brennan is perfectly cast. And Gary Cooper plays his usual stiff, wooden self. Maybe his acting is just … subtle.If the script and the casting are imperfect, the film's dusty, indigent visuals convey a terrific look of 19th century authenticity, helped along by expansive B&W cinematography that captures a landscape that genuinely looks like the Trans Pecos of West Texas, where the story is set.The film's visuals thus save the film from being a complete dud. But the script is dreadfully weak, as it vacillates between two unrelated story elements, neither of which seems compelling.