Cowboy Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Cowboy Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .starring that iconic western performer, Jack Lemmon.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 14, 2016

Though they’re manifestly different in terms of subject matter, tone and especially style, I couldn’t help but think of David O. Selznick’s overheated oater Duel in the Sun when watching Cowboy, due to one certain similarity the two films do share: the appearance of an iconic actor in a Western setting that would seem on its face to work against the performer’s inherent urbanity. Duel in the Sun’s Gregory Peck actually made a rather surprisingly large number of Westerns throughout his long and distinguished career, with a by no means exhaustive list of credits which includes The Gunfighter, Yellow Sky, The Big Country, Mackenna's Gold and How the West Was Won. Those credits (and others) notwithstanding, his turn as the feral Lewt in Duel in the Sun can be an almost shocking experience, at least for those who tend to see the actor through the prism of his Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck’s patrician qualities might seem to be at odds with the rough and tumble world of many Westerns (including several in which he appeared), which is no slam at Peck’s obvious performing acumen, but simply an acknowledgement that every actor, no matter what his or her talent level, tends to arrive at a project with an immutable persona that perhaps inevitably informs their work. Perhaps even more of a “square peg in a round hole” ambience surrounds the appearance of Jack Lemmon in Cowboy, for there was probably no more “contemporary” feeling actor in Lemmon’s generation than Lemmon himself, a guy who tended to embody the tic filled world of the modern male in a teeming metropolis rather than that of a pioneer in the wide open spaces of the American west. Lemmon at least is not left to play completely against type, for part of Cowboy’s premise is that Lemmon’s character is a Big City type (at least as big as cities were back in the 19th century) who has perhaps The Secret Life of Walter Mitty-esque dreams of hitting the plains as a cattle baron. The film is based on a perhaps fancifully fictionalized “autobiography” by one Frank Harris (Lemmon’s character in the film) entitled My Reminiscences as a Cowboy, something that would hint at an anchoring in “real life”, but the film tends to be rather precariously perched between some more traditional Western tropes and an odd sensibility that hints at the kind of comedy material with which Lemmon would become more associated as his career moved into the 1960s and beyond.

As the commentary on this new Blu-ray release of Cowboy mentions, taking the real life Frank Harris at his word might be something of a fool’s errand, an element that perhaps colors this western’s assertion that it’s giving the audience “the real story” about life for cattle wranglers. Harris didn’t confine his written exploits simply to tales of the Old West (or at least not this kind of tale), and in fact is still notorious for his erotically charged book My Life and Loves, which was a literary sensation in its day but which ended up being banned in several countries due to its explicit nature. Several critics and cohorts of Harris have alleged for years that Harris’ self confessed adventures were at least exaggerated in their novelistic forms, and may in fact have never happened at all. That subtext probably doesn’t impinge too mightily on the adaptive screenplay, by (a still blacklisted) Dalton Trumbo and Edmund H. North.

Part of the screenplay’s economy may sacrifice a certain emotional element in terms of Harris’ character, for there’s little to no backstory provided regarding Harris’ romancing of a well to do Mexican woman named Maria Vidal (Anna Kashfi). When the Chicago hotel where Harris works as a clerk, and where the Vidal family is also ensconced, is alerted to the fact that a rowdy cowboy named Tom Reese (Glenn Ford) is due at the hotel at any moment for his regular multi-week stay between cattle drives, Harris’ relationship with Maria comes into play. The natty hotel manager (a great turn by Vaughn Taylor) leaves it to Harris to get the Vidals to vacate their suite because Reese is used to staying there. That at least gives Harris and Maria a brief moment to profess their undying love for each other, while also ultimately providing Maria’s martinet father (Donald Randolph) with the opportunity to squelch any budding romance, telling Harris there’s no way Maria is ever going to be allowed to marry him.

Reese is a rabble rouser, as evidenced by his tendency to shoot bugs crawling up the hotel wall, and he’s singularly uninterested in Harris’ requests to take part in a cattle drive. That interest level is changed after a reversal of Reese’s fortunes and Harris’ ability to finance the next drive. Suddenly, Harris’ dreams of a financial windfall courtesy of some bigtime cattle deals intersects with his wish to see Maria again, since Reese’s next drive will take him to Mexico. That sets up the bulk of the film, where greenhorn Harris is quickly schooled in the rough and tumble world of the American west.

What’s rather interesting about Cowboy is how it both luxuriates in and departs from some standard tropes of the western, especially the so-called “adult westerns” which started to crop up with increasing regularity throughout the fifties. On one level the screenplay offers a fairly traditional “growing pains” scenario for Harris as he learns the ropes, one which brings him into frequent conflict with the older, supposedly wiser, Reese (one might think of this relationship as at least a bit similar to that between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River). But in other ways, probably most especially in the whole romance angle between Harris and Maria, the film almost deliberately departs from the expected, and rather winningly so. This is (like many westerns) a film more about male bonding than about any amorous proclivities on the part of the guys, and the interrelationship between Harris and Reese provides almost all of the dramatic grist for this particular cinematic mill.

Cowboy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cowboy is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While slightly opened up from the 1.85:1 aspect ratio seen on the French Blu-ray reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov, this appears to have been sourced from the same restoration spearheaded by the typically reliable team at Sony-Columbia. The film's great opening title sequence (by the iconic Saul Bass) is full of bright primaries and fanciful illustrations, a whimsical allusion to Harris' illusions about what being a "cowboy" means, but once the film actually starts, the palette is at times at least considerably tamped down, offering a wealth of browns and beiges. That production design choice only tends to make the bursts of bright colors—like the almost absurdly green wallpaper of the hotel—pop with even more immediacy. The film has a rather large amount of optical dissolves, including long swaths where interstitial elements are dupes (due to longer opticals), and at times the source elements have minor anomalies that include some fairly chunky grain and even some quasi-ringing (see screenshot 15). There are also some minor density fluctuations that affect the palette minimally, but overall this is a fantastic looking release that preserves the stunning vistas of the western locales as well as offering excellent detail and an organic looking grain field.

Cowboy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Cowboy's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track faithfully reproduces the sonic ambience of the film, offering some rather nicely full midrange and low end, elements that support the film's sound effects (especially once things venture into the great outdoors) and George Duning's enjoyable if derivative score. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly and there are some significant spikes in dynamic range courtesy of elements like gunshots.

Cowboy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:47) features a kind of funny marketing strategy which lambastes the then prevalent and fairly hokey westerns that populated much of the broadcast airwaves back in the day.


• Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Lovers of Aaron Copland's Americana scores, specifically Billy the Kid, should love George Duning's work on this film (Duning's main theme makes use of "Get Along, Little Dogies" in much the same way Copland's ballet did).


• Commentary features Paul Seydor hosted by Twilight Time's Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman.

Cowboy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Delmer Daves never really attained the reputation that legendary western directors like John Ford did, but his efforts (which include the original 3:10 to Yuma) are often quite interesting in their own way(s). Cowboy offers good roles for Ford and (especially) Lemmon, and its depiction of the hardscrabble life on a cattle drive is, if not perfectly accurate, rather nicely gritty and less romanticized than in many other genre pieces. This new release boasts excellent technical merits and comes Recommended.