Lonely Are The Brave on DVD

It's well known that the worst thing you can do to an actor is to turn him into a symbol. Any script that demands that he or she be the very personification of something - goodness, vengeance or any other instantly recognizable value - is a license for the most damaging form of disarmament. Restricted to a single task, the actor is left with almost nothing to play. Thus, filmdom is filled with uninteresting Christs, uncomplicated fathers of democracy, and armies of unwaveringly patriotic dullards.

A glorious exception exists, however, thanks largely to the tricky mind of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo: John W. Burns, a.k.a. Kirk Douglas, in the 1963 modern-day Western Lonely Are The Brave, freshly issued on DVD.

John W. Burns

Burns is, no doubt about it, a symbol; a grizzled, self-satisfied cowhand, he is the pioneer spirit in bronze - the rugged individualist who built America, but who, at the outset of the film, is already the last of a dying breed. His only comrade-in-arms is in the throes of a major transition, from enterprising yahoo to responsible family man, though in prison for one last act of anti-establishmentarianism. Douglas engineers his way into the facility, via a memorable barroom brawl with a one-armed drunkard, in order to break his buddy out - but discovers instead that he and only he will be tasked with carrying on the tradition of the great nomadic knight. Douglas escapes, the authorities pursue, and our central metaphor disappears for awhile as Lonely Are The Brave becomes a chase film - at least until its chilling, poetic climax.

The Trumbo Touch

It's the combination of Trumbo's trademark take on genre (remember his Spartacus, the only Roman epic of its time without Jesus?), his quietly quirky dialogue, and Douglas' control over his usual mannerisms that create the many-sidedness of Burns.

Burns is, yes, every inch the traditional Western hero; the film's central struggle, in fact -the cowboy versus the contemporary- would have been more easily reinforced with say, a John Wayne or a Randolph Scott. But Trumbo's take on the character is offbeat: Burns is a noticeably pacifistic cowpoke, one who'd rather knock a man out than kill him, or bring down the chopper that is trailing him through the mountains with a gentle ricochet to the tail rather than the crash-prompting take down of its pilots.

Douglas Underplays It

Douglas' contribution consists largely of the subjugation of his trademark energy; the role appears to have convinced him that he could be just as showy underplaying as overplaying. Douglas inhabits Burns' sunburned skin with complete ease and confidence; as added bonus, the role affords him the best climactic scene of his career, even better, arguably, than his tour de force fainting spell in Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole: director David Miller's close up of a felled Douglas as the gun shot suggesting the mercy killing of his horse rings out off screen. Douglas' wide, roving eyes come to a complete stop in perfect synch with the shot. With that and only that, an entire world comes to an end.

Perfect?

Douglas has always made it a point to trumpet Lonely Are The Brave as his favourite film, citing that the first draft of the screenplay was so good, it made it all the way through production without a single change - a unique industry distinction. In truth, it's not quite that perfect - there is some soupy melodrama between Douglas and Gena Rowlands, some cliché back and forth between he and a sadistic prison warden (George Kennedy,) and a little sagginess in the center of the chase scene. And yet, to Douglas' credit, Lonely Are The Brave stands tall in the great Western canon as something admirable and unique...much like, for an hour and a quarter of its running time, John W. Burns.

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