Gary Cooper did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Link Jones in Man of the West.
Man of the West is in many ways Mann's Unforgiven, about a reformed outlaw having to face his past.
Gary Cooper is an actor who I've long have a troubled history with in this endeavor, as while I have liked some of his performances, I've often failed to see the "strong silent type" nature of him as a performer, particularly not to the extent he is known for in popular culture, even beyond what Tony Soprano thinks. With Man in the West, I can say I've finally seen that Cooper fully, and in a way that makes sense as the part in itself is playing off the very idea of Cooper, as he plays a "man of the west" seemingly moving on from the old days, as we meet him coming into town, and embarking on a train, looking very "civilized". And regardless Cooper has of course his great stature, that does have a certain presence, in itself, however early on the film there is more than that when a random passerby starts asking him questions about who he is and what he's doing. Cooper's reactions in this scene are what I personally was always waiting for, where he conveys much, while still keeping the cool. And Cooper does portray that, his face of stone in many ways, but there are the elegant cracks of the man clearly trying to ignore this push for him to reveal more of himself than he is willing to give up. Cooper portrays the man hiding his old-self seemingly as he's moving onto a new life as a man simply looking for a schoolteacher for a town.
Unfortunately such notions are short lived as a series of events, including the train being robbed and Cooper's Link, along with two other passengers, former saloon singer Billie (Julie London), and grifter Sam (Arthur O'Connell) being left behind. Cooper is terrific in the action sequence because we see moments of instinctual reaction, such as reaching for a gun that isn't there along with a certain conviction and calm of someone who is used to such situations. And we see after the train takes off, Cooper expectedly takes charge and that Cooper's presence is in its ideal form as indeed a titular man. The film takes its turn when Link comes across his old home, that remains still his old gang hideout, unfortunately still the remnants of the gang and technically his family. Led still by Link's uncle Dock (Lee J. Cobb) and other men, some known to Link or at least related to him. And Cooper is in his "strong silent type" prime in the scene of meeting the group, where Dock wavers between familial connection and threat, and the rest all look to Link with some suspicion, while giving nothing but hostility towards Link's companions. Cooper though is terrific in playing the sides of the scene between the understated sense of the distress of being in this place again, though also an attempted calming manner towards his companions, while also still having a strong force of personality. It is never the simple silence here, and Cooper plays the shades here with a genuine intensity.
Cooper manages to play the layers of the situation, holding it together with a sense of underlying tension of the man emotionally having to deal with these reflections of his past, but also just immediate tension of the danger they pose to his companions, and to his attempted existence as a reformed man. Cooper is able to balance between the sense of the man dealing with what's going on in every reaction, as there is this quiet emotional turmoil Cooper does exude within his eyes of the man facing something he's so long wanted to avoid, while also still providing some sense of comfort as trying to be "the hero" by being the one thing standing between the gang and Billie and Sam. Cooper being on one hand the new man who has reformed himself, and has his moments of talking about his new life where Cooper, perhaps playing more so into his expected presence, with a quiet warmth and certainty of the good of his existence. Even speaking to the fact that the town who took him in knew him, and forgave him, Cooper brings this respectful gratitude of a man who has found a new path in life. However with every moment that the gang, particularly Dock, brings up his old life, Cooper says so much in every reaction. Cooper conveys the quiet shame of it and the quiet sense of being caught within the sway of the old amoral man's ways at one time. No longer is that the case, but there's a real vulnerability in these moments, even a retiring sense of defeat at times of having to admit who he is, that shows the shades of Cooper I frankly always wanted to see as a performer.
The plot of the film interestingly is kind of the opposite of Mann's great the Naked Spur, where James Stewart played the hero trying to hold a group together, a group all with different degrees of nefariousness disrupting the journey in someway, as they attempted to make a trek comparing that to this where Cooper's Link is the one trying to disrupt the journey this time around. And I have to say I love Cooper in portraying this side that insidious was never really a note that he was called to play, yet he does so here, even if it has heroic connotations. The first moment being getting one of the most boastful youngest members, who had forced Billie to do a striptease at gunpoint, Link prods to get him to attack in order to take at least one man out, and Cooper's performance is remarkable. His delivery is truly cutting as he speaks. There's just venom coming off his lips as he accuses the man of cowardice until the man attacks and Cooper has vicious moments in the fight. Far beyond the physical moments, but rather again in his eyes you see real hate, and perhaps the bandit of old, before he holds himself back from finishing the man off himself. And Cooper continues to truly realize these darker aspects, even within the overall good of the reformed man, throughout every scene that makes him truly dynamic as Link takes on each man, not just as the normal hero, but a killer like them in so many ways. But the darkness isn't just in the attacks in this film, as there is another shade that I think penetrates the film even deeper, and perhaps is in some ways even more influential.
As someone who has great affection for all of the Mann westerns that he has seen, some more than others, however, regardless each are fascinating in subverting the genre, in little ways and bigger ways. This film might be the most extreme because of just how downright sad the film is in the depiction of the old west, or at least in what is left of it. And Cooper's performance helps to personify it. The reaction to being sent to rob a town that Dock thinks has money, yet is a nearly abandoned ghost town, is that of sad resignation of the nothingess of that lie. Something we see earlier in the film that Link verbalizes, again in a scene where Cooper displays an impressive emotional range in the sense of anguish he brings as a man unearthing his pains in the moment. But there is more, one of the saddest moments, is outside of our central characters, rather the tragic tale of two bystanders who get in the way, that is made all the more tragic because of how accidental it is, and there's something truly powerful in Cooper's brief and blunt, yet potent "I'm sorry" to a victim who he had not wronged, but who had suffered just for no reason particularly at all. And the ending of the film isn't really the righteous hero succeeding you might think, as a terrible thing happens that Link had been trying to stop the whole time, and while some may reject this choice, I think actually it speaks so strongly the film's presentation of this world as truly cruel and cruel in a way that feels so pointless. And Cooper is great in his reaction to this moment, because it is just with a blunt guttural disgust, and his final confrontation with the man behind the act. It is not a moment of heroic justice but rather Cooper presents it as a final wiping away of the grime of his past. Cooper delivers a terrific performance here, that I have no reservations or hesitations in calling it his greatest performance that manages both to be the ideal of his expected presence while also artfully subverting "the strong silent type".
