PLEASE Universal, can we all have a DVD of this gem soon? | Lonely Are the Brave

One of Kirk's very best | Lonely Are the Brave | Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands

vhs video:


	• Lonely Are the Brave Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands Universal Studios, 1992 average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

not everybody serve to operate a computer

This cowboy is yet born in the era of jet planes, but with no doubt he's from an older time. Old times were ever better? Frankly I think not, but this is the great merit of this superb movie because masterpieces don't need to be "based in true facts". They can or they cannot, you only need a good moviemaker and excellent actors to achieve a jewel of cinema. The fight of the human cowboy, capable to risk his life for a horse against the inhumane times of machines, the sheriff being unable to recognize him finally because he has done his work professionally but doesn't know really who or how is his prey because never has seen Kirk Douglas so near. Well, this can sound even vulgar, but the film is extraordinary and I suppose made with no much money but lots of real wisdom. This was truly a brave, lonely cowboy, don't put him behind a business desk because I'm sure such men ever will be indispensable for all mankind.

for more information click here

PLEASE Universal, can we all have a DVD of this gem soon?

A forgotten gem of the 60's that is now only just being reappraised. Kirk Douglas is justified in regarding this as his best flick. Filled with wonderful character actors, a great multilayered script with genuinely funny moments, it also features beautiful, shimmering WIDESCREEN photography that can only be appreciated in digital format. A true anti-hero movie. Universal, we are waiting patiently for a dvd!

One of Kirk's very best

A Kirk Douglas film that has somehow been overlooked. The story of a rebellious cowboy, one not ready to accept the changes to the new west, is filled with drama. It had the looks of an academy award winner. Why this is not on DVD is beyond me. A movie with western overtones, based on character development, and the slow dramatic pace undoubtably cost this film commercial success. As a DVD only collector, I've made an exception here. This is a movie I will watch again, even on a VCR. The ending alone is worth the price of admission.

for more information click here

At last! A true classic comes to DVD

On many occasions over the years I've been asked to list my top 5 films of all time - and only one film has been a constant on that list - 'Lonely are the brave'.
There are those who've grown up in a multi-coloured media world who fail to appreciate the true beauty of great black-and-white cinimatography (TV schedulers amongst them!). This is, quite simply, one of the most stunning examples ever of the potential of monochrome to add drama to the very basic passions of love, lust, and the longing for freedom.
Kirk Douglas gives his finest performance as the anachronistic throwback - the feckless cowboy in an industrial world, the lover destined never to be the husband, the small boy at the heart of every grown man.
Gina Rowlands embodies a sadly lost, but universal, movie truth -that it's possible for a genuinely talented actress to be unbearably sexy, desirable, seductive and beautiful while remaining fully clothed.
Walther Matthau is brilliant. Cast in his early films as a 'heavy', he became famous for outstanding comic performances.
In this film he's in transition. On the 'heavy' side, he embodies the power of society against the outlaw - helicopters, jeeps, guns, versus the man on the horse - and, on the 'lighter' side, he displays his developing, gum-chewing exasperation with the incapacity of the modern world to accomodate the rebel.
He also does the classic display of "It sure is hot in here" acting, unmatched until Rod Steiger/Sidney Poitier sweated out 'In the heat of the night'.
Dalton Trumbo's screenplay is his masterpiece. Movies are pictures first, words second. Never has such economy at the typewriter better underpinned the work of the camera.
A fine film, that still makes me cry.

for more information click here

Not Abbey's novel, but a Hollywood classic . . .

Edward Abbey wrote "The Brave Cowboy" (1956) on which screenwriter Dalton Trumbo based his script for this 1962 movie adaptation. And Trumbo did a fine job of focusing in on what's translatable to cinema in Abbey's novel. His script, meanwhile, is well served by veteran movie director David Miller, especially in the action scenes, and excellent black and white cinematography. The casting directors couldn't have known at the time, but they picked a supporting cast for lead star Kirk Douglas, many of whom went on to distinguished careers in film and television - Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Carroll O'Connor, and George Kennedy.

For me, the most stunning scenes in the film are the pursuit of Douglas and his horse across a New Mexico mountainscape. Loose rocks tumble down a steep incline, toward the camera, as the two of them struggle precariously upward, the horse expressing terror and confusion and the cowboy a kind of foolhardy courage. The irony and ambiguity of Abbey's "brave cowboy" is expressed dramatically and cinematically in these scenes.

Lovers of the novel, however, have to be disappointed in other aspects of the film, for it truncates and simplifies the character of the sheriff, played by Matthau, who is a central character through long segments of the novel. While Kirk Douglas is fine, the part calls for a much younger actor, someone who can play youthful confidence and idealism more plausibly. At the ripe old age of 45, he has the appearance of a man who should have outgrown the impulsiveness that the part calls for.

Abbey readers will also note that Hollywood has reduced the political charge in Abbey's book by having one of its main characters imprisoned for transporting Mexicans illegally into the U.S. In the novel, both he and the cowboy played by Douglas are guilty of not registering for the draft, which as a plot device was a bit early for the young Vietnam era audience it might have appealed to. Finally, both film and novel can leave the viewer a little puzzled by how to measure the rugged individualism of Abbey's cowboy. In the closing chapter of the novel, it is the cowboy's love of his friend that seems to be what has motivated him. In the film, there is a good deal more heat and physical attraction between him and his friend's wife, played by Rowlands. And there are no final words in the last scene as a clue to his "brave" behavior.

It's a fine film, nonetheless. With others who have reviewed it here, I look forward to a DVD release. I'd love to see it in its original wide-screen format.

for more information click here