This wonderful Nick Ray picture is not at all a standard western, but as it takes place in the world of rodeo cowboys, it certainly belong to some extent to this thread. I discovered this film years ago on a big screen. I revisited it yesterday. It proved as powerful as I remembered.
Jeff McCloud (Robert Mitchum) is a rodeo cowboy. He tours endlessly the country riding mad bulls and wild horses until his body just gives up. He is penniless and homeless. He decides to revisit the place where he was born where he meets Wes and Louise Merritt (Arthur Kennedy and Susan Hayward). He works as a cowboy on a farm and they are hoping one day to be able to buy one themselves by saving money. But Wes gets the bug for rodeo. He realises he can earn a lot of money very quickly. His wife is very reticent; it's a mad and dangerous sport....
Nicholas Ray dispells any illusion you might be still harbouring about cowboys. This is a badly paid job and your only option is this rodeo riding if you want to earn some money. But, this world is just a pie in the sky! You might earn a fortune one day and be dead or crippled the next. The cowboys spend their evenings drinking and playing crap game until they have lost all their earnings. They all live in trailers. Robert Mitchum has never been better as Jeff McCloud; he is just a wanderer. He is in love with Louise (Susan Hayward), his partner's wife while hiding carefully his feelings. As for Wes, it's excellently played by Arthur Kennedy who usually had supporting roles in countless classics (High Sierra, Lawrence of Arabia, etc...). The relationship between the three characters are elaborate and all of them are very much three-dimentional figures. I was surprised to notice that Lee Garmes photographed this film: it's a very different universe from his most famous work at Paramount (City Streets, Zoo in Budapest)! I read (in Lee Server's bio of Mitchum) that the script was written as the film was shot. It certainly gave the actor perhaps this extra edge in their acting as they didn't know how the film would end. I certainly won't tell you how it ends, but it's very moving.....
I don't know if this RKO feature is shown often on TCM or other channels in the US, but if you have an opportunity, don't miss it!
