ecarle — 9 years ago(December 10, 2016 09:25 PM)

In honor of the 100th birthday of Kirk Douglas, December 9, 2016:
SPOILERS
We know that "Lonely Are the Brave" is Kirk Douglas' favorite of his own films.
I've recently learned that the widow of Walter Matthau believes this film had Matthau's best performance as well. It is certainly a moving role for Matthau his best as a supporting player.
Douglas made "Lonely Are the Brave" when he was just about peaking as a star. As with other male stars of his era, Douglas in "Lonely Are the Brave" looked perhaps his best in his forties; the younger Douglas had a ferret-like intensity that needed a few years and a little weight to "soften." Douglas is about as handsome as he'd ever be in this movie in the years after, he would get drawn and haggard looking. In addition, the fierce intensity of his voice is in "Lonely Are the Brave" softened and d470eepened in intensity.
In looks and voice and manner, Kirk Douglas is mellower in "Lonely Are the Brave" than in some of his earlier films. Moreover, as he'd been willing to play heels on more than a few occasions (Champion, Ace in the Hole, The Bad and the Beautiful), it was rather comforting on this occasion to see Douglas playing such a soundly nice guy.
Nice but no pushover. John W. Burns is a friendly guy, but pushed too far by a one-armed barroom bully (who uses his war injury as an excuse for terrorizing other men), he fights back. When the cops try to be nice to him and excuse him from a jailing that he WANTS (to visit his old friend), Burns picks a fight with them and ends up getting over a year in jail. Badly beaten (offscreen) by yet another bully (jailhouse guard George Kennedy), Burns gets some "payback" later. A tooth for a tooth, literally.
Still, John W. Burns is ultimately just about the most decent man Kirk Douglas ever played and thanks also to Jerry Goldsmith's moving score a very sad man once things reach their end.
"Lonely Are the Brave" followed "Spart5b4acus" by only two years, and both films share a lot: they were written by blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, and they were both about independent men (played both times by Douglas) who fight the system and lose. Both films feature achingly sad scores and downbeat endings. "Spartacus" cost about ten times what "Lonely Are the Brave" did, and is far more of a spectacle, of course. "Spartacus" comes close to being Kirk's best film but Kirk had to share that movie with Olivier and Charles Laughton and Oscar-winner Peter Ustinov, among others.
In comparison to the gigantic "Spartacus," "Lonely Are the Brave" is pretty much Douglas' movie. He spends the second half of the movie talking to his horse.
Still, Douglas has SOME help. And its great. Walter Matthau was here deep in his phase as the most distinctive character actor in Hollywood. Stardom was a few years away, but he gets near equal time on screen being cross-cut with Douglas, as the amiable but professional sheriff who must reluctantly lead the chase over a New Mexico mountain range when Douglas breaks jail. In a movie that often sounds in sadness and depression, Matthau helps keep things a bit amusing giving a play-by-play on an unseen dog's daily urination streetwalk; parrying with his dingy deputy (William Schallert) who always says "right" to everything.
Beautiful Gena Rowlands touchingly plays the woman who loved loner Douglas but married 1c84his more stable best friend instead. The movie nicely places Rowlands in a small suburban house right on the edge of the empty desert leading to the mountains. Given that she must live alone with her son while her husband does time, there is a real loneliness to her isolated home. When Douglas first comes to visit, her happpiness is palpable. And when jail escapee Douglas comes to get his horse and say goodbye well, there are tears shed in this movie long before the ending.
"Lonely Are the Brave" splits rather neatly into two parts. Most of the emotion is actually in part one, as Douglas comes in off the range for some heart-to-hearts with the woman he loved and the best friend who married her and rejected his rambunctous loner's life on the range. We also meet Matthau's deadpan sheriff though we don't know why we're meeting him yet. Here the movie captures the loneliness and lethargy of a small desert town.
Part Two becomes a rugged outdoor chase, with the story cross-cutting between Douglas and his horse climbing the mountain while Matthau directs the chase after him from down below. Douglas and Matthau will never share a scene until the end (and even then, they're not in the same frame), but they become "linked" as two independent men disgusted by the society in which they have been forced to live. Matthau, however, does his job.
Trumbo's script is perhaps sometimes TOO simplistic. Douglas' speeches about independence are sometimes a little too broad. The constant cross-cuts to Carroll O'Connor driving his truck full of toilets through the Southwest telegraph doom a bit too clearly.
But the