LONELY ARE THE BRAVE

US, 1962, 92 minutes, Colour.
Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Carrol O'Connor, George Kennedy.
Directed by David Miller.

Lonely are the Brave is an offbeat Western which won critical acclaim at the time of its release. Time Magazine listed it as one of its Ten Best Films of 1962. However, it did poorly at the box-office. Released in 1969 or 1970, it might have had more success for its theme had become popular by this time. It shows the clash of the cowboy and his old standards and way of life clashing with the modern age, its pace and its machines. The cowboy loses. This is shown in symbolic ways, the aeroplane over the west, the chase where helicopter chases horse, the highway where speeding cars and trucks destroy the old way of life. Sam Peckinpah shows something of the same thing in Cable Hogue's being run over by a car in The Battle of Cable Hogue. These are the themes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, Monte Walsh and a number of other later westerns.

Kirk Douglas is at home in this kind of role after films like Paths of Glory and Spartacus. Walter Matthau is effective as the pursuing sheriff. This is not a popular film. It shows a man out of harmony, out of touch with his world. It is a western worth discussing.

1. Why is this not a typical Western? Does it have many features common to other Westerns?

2. Is this a 'symbolic' Western, a 'message' Western? Do you think the principal characters stand for attitudes or principles? Do various props or parts of the scenery have symbolic significance - e.g. highway, hills, horses and trucks, helicopters? Why?

3. Is John W. Byrne a hero? Why? He served with distinction in Korea - is this relevant to his heroism?

4. What is the significance of the title? Do you agree with it?

5. Comment on the mood set by the opening of the film - plane, man and horse, 'got to get going', fences, 'Closed areas', Byrne's cutting the wires and riding through closed areas, crossing the road and the pile of wrecked cars.

6. What image of the cowboy does Byrne give? Has he any, place or relevance in the 20th century or are his attitudes, behaviour, relics of last century and a less mechanised way of life?

7. Did Byrne live in a real world? Was he a hero for living his own way of life or was he unrealistic and a fool?

8. How did his behaviour throw light on his character (and on the brave cowboy myths)? - his relationship with Paul's wife, bathroom fixtures, 'Don't make trouble' - 'That's what I'm here for', his apologies for tripping to the one-armed man, his communicating by throwing bottles?

9. What identity did he have - especially in relationship to the law?

10. How were the sheriff and his deputies presented - too comically? Why?

11. How was the prison sequence symbolic - the spiritual man (what was Paul's crime?) who fought and did not win and was imprisoned, the brutality of the upholder of the law, 'breaking into jail for a friend', Byrne'e fight with the guard? The 'natural man' and 'freedom'.

12. The contrast between Paul and Jack. Paul grew up and changed, had wife and child for responsibility; Jack aid not. He is a child - (the Kirk Douglas grin) - 'a horse has more sense', says Paul's wife.

13. The symbolism of the hilly chose, the mechanised posse against the man on the horse - radio, helicopters, jeeps, army manoeuvres, planes and shooting the helicopter?

14. Contrast the pursuer and pursued and what they stood for?

15. How was Byrne 'a death prepared for? What was the significance of the build-up throughout the film of the truck-driver’s journey?

16. What was the significance of Byrne's being killed by a machine as he cut across a highway?

17. The people watch him after the accident and he is puzzled. Why?

18. Time Magazine, naming the film as one of the best of 1962, said it presented a picture of 'man as God made him in a world God never made'. Is this good comment?