Ray's last b/w film captures the life of rodeo players with vivid details, lyrical images, and melnacholy mood, centering on a romantic triangle, well played by Arthur Kennedy, Susan Hayward, and especially Robert Mitchum as the aging champ.
The Lusty Men (1952)
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Reviews Counted: 11
Fresh: 11
Rotten:0
Average Rating: 8.2/10
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Two rodeo stars begin a mentor/protegee relationship, but the men become rivals both on the rodeo circuit and for a woman's love.
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Susan Hayward, Arthur Kennedy, Arthur Hunnicutt
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Susan Hayward, Arthur Kennedy, Arthur Hunnicutt, Frank Faylen, Walter Coy, Carole Nugent, Lorna Thayer
Director: Nicholas Ray
Director: Nicholas Ray
Producer: Jerry Wald
Composer: Roy Webb
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Reviews for The Lusty Men
Ray's direction is superb, and all three leads give bravura performances.
A somewhat slow starter, once underway it is kept playing with growing interest under Nicholas Ray's firm direction.
Functions as mini-ethnography, laying bare the alluring and dangerous world of bronc- and braman-riding, while spinning an artful melodrama about aging, fame, and failure
The story isn't much (the security of family life versus the rootlessness and danger of working as a rodeo rider), but the situation is rich in emotional resonances which Ray conjures into life convincingly.
The punch of the film is in its details of rodeo life as it is, and for this R. K. O. and Producer Jerry Wald have a dynamic film.
Ray takes a thin story and enriches it with depth, complexity, and interesting characters.
[Ray] was happiest with personal stories where a confrontation between characters leads to a conclusion, however sombre. The confrontation here is complex.
The first few brief sequences in Nicholas Ray's rip-roaring rodeo flick tell us visually almost everything that we need to know about the director's interest in this story.
A masterpiece by Nicholas Ray -- perhaps the most melancholy and reflective of his films.
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