Man Without a Star

Dempsey Rae is riding a freight car without paying and there is a young man with him. The two find work at a ranch. Dempsey is a good hand and nobody rides better. The ranch's new owner is a woman who has come from the east; Reed Bowman wants to grow the operation and puts her herd onto the open range. The small farmers start putting up barbed wire. Dempsey stops when he sees the wire; there is an old wound on his back and barbed wire made it. The woman wants him with her. The young man takes another road. King Vidor directs. Kirk Douglas plays Dempsey and Jeanne Crain plays Reed Bowman; Claire Trevor and William Campbell are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1955. The matter it treats is the closing of the open range; barbed wire is among the most concrete subjects of the western and the film takes it directly. The narrative builds Dempsey as unaligned; he is on the side of neither the big ranch nor the small farmer and has a reason of his own. Kirk Douglas plays the banjo and sings in it. A woman ranch owner is unusual for westerns of the period; she is ruthless and she makes the decisions. The narrative builds the young man's road as a second line and the two come face to face at the end. It was shot in colour and uses the exteriors widely. Its limit is structure; the narrative is in pieces, the romantic line unnecessary, and the ending conventional. Who it is for: viewers who like classic westerns and Kirk Douglas's films. Who it is not for: it is old, episodic, and the ending where expected.