"Lusty Men" is a peculiar title for the 1952 movie directed by Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar). I would say that it is a movie about knowing when to quit, and how macho posing interferes with such knowledge. And, insofar as there is lust on display, it is primarily lusty women rather than lusty men. (The men are sex objects for the women, and worn down more by broncos and bulls they ride than by the women's demands on their bodies.)

For me, the best parts of the movie show men knowing when to quit. The opening shows a former rodeo champion named Jeff McCloud (Robert Mitchum) riding a Brahma bull a ways, then being injured, and limping away. He returns to his childhood home, a derelict building that looks uninhabited. He crawls under it to retrieve the treasure he hid there as a child (two nickels) and a pistol that he presumably hid there later.

The current owner of the house and farm shows up and orders Jeff to back out slowly. (He leaves the gun on the ground and it is not retrieved later in the movie.) Once the 62-year-old learns who the prowler under his house is, he invites him in for coffee and talks about wanting to sell the place. Then Wes and Louise Merrit a young(ish) couple from the big cattle ranch (portrayed by Arthur Kennedy and Susan Hayward) drop in. Wes has seen Jeff in his rodeo glory days and offers to help him get a job at the ranch and invites him for supper (lamb chops).

Mitchum's McCloud is very subdued throughout the movie. Not nonchalant, but very aware that he has lost everything he ever won and saddened by being alone and washed up. Louise is determined to save the money to buy the old McCloud place. Wes has visions of glory and riches from becoming a rodeo star with Jeff's mentoring. He succeeds (and becomes the object of one rodeo groupie's attentions), but, even with Louise as a brake, finds it hard not to throw his earnings away.

Plot spoiler alert

Jeff McCloud watches and waits for Louise to switch riders as it were. The chemistry is between Hayward and Mitchum, and they were the stars, so moviegoer expectation is that their merger is inevitable. One of the interesting aspects of the movie is that this expectation is not met. Louise stands by her man, though Jeff seems to offer the maturity she wants (and presumably has more money by the end of the movie than Wes does).

Stung by taunts from Wes, Jeff gets back in the ring, and shows that, even after years of spills and with no conditioning, he is better than Wes will ever be. This demonstration seems to me his greatest gift to Louise (who has rejected his long-delayed proposal). The demonstration more than the fatal accident that follows cuts through Wes's megalomania, and Wes walks away with money, a still viable marriage, and even rescues a punchy rodeo veteran.

There is a very melodramatic deathbed scene in which Hayward and Mitchum seem like refugees from a Howard Hawks movie ("Only Angels Have Wings" springs to mind, and pilots put their women through worries like those the rodeo cowboys put their women through in many a movie).

End plot spoiler alert

There is more stock rodeo footage in "Lusty Men" than seems necessary to me, but it is well integrated. There is also too much explaining events from the rodeo announcer.

The black-and-white cinematography is sharp, as in other early Nicholas Ray movies such as "On Dangerous Ground" and "In a Lonely Place"). It is the work of Lee Garmes, who won an Oscar for photographing Marlene Dietrich et al. on the Shanghai Express (and also lensed her in "Morocco" for von Sternberg, and shot many other striking images, including the version of "The Jungle Book" with Sabu and Max Ophuls's great noir "Caught").

Mitchum had just worked with Ray as Ray finished shooting Macao (after Josef von Sternberg had been fired), a movie I like more than most viewers apparently do. Along with "The Story of G.I. Joe" and "Out of the Past," "Lusty Men" is one of the best incarnations of the stoic Mitchum. His McCloud is passive without being weak. Mitchum could overpower Kennedy, but maintains a father-like indulgence for Wes's swaggering, and doesn't try to poach Louise.

Hayward's Louise is the toughest of the three principals, keeping her eye on her goal and resisting her attraction to McCloud. The role seems more suited to Ida Lupino (who was in "On Dangerous Ground" and appeared on the rodeo circuit much later as Steve McQueen's mother in Junior Bonner), but I eventually admired Hayward's performance.

It is Arthur Kenned— rather than Susan Hayward—who strikes me as miscast. I think that Arthur Kennedy was superb as an urbane bemused observer (in such later outings as Elmer Gantry and "Lawrence of Arabia"), but as a simple cowhand and as the romantic lead here and in Fritz Lang's  Rancho Notorious he is less than convincing (Kennedy was effective as the second lead to James Stewart in two Anthony Mann westerns from the early 1950s, "Bend in the River" and The Man from Laramie). Kennedy was a very good actor, and illustrates the triumph of delusions, but it's hard to believe he could neglect and mistreat as strong-willed a woman as Susan Hayward's Louise and prevail in competition with Robert Mitchum('s Jeff McCloud).

(There are also fine performances by the supporting human, bovine, and equine cast.)

In conclusion, though a little too long, a little too melodramatic, and with somewhat implausible results, "The Lusty Men" is an outstanding modern-day western with superb cinematography and one of the great regret-filled Robert Mitchum turns.


Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age