Man of the West is a 1958 American Western film noir^[3] film starring Gary Cooper and directed by Anthony Mann, produced by Walter Mirisch and distributed by United Artists. The screenplay, written by Reginald Rose, is based on the 1955 novel The Border Jumpers, by Will C. Brown. Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Lord, and Arthur O'Connell co-star with John Dehner, Robert J. Wilke, and Royal Dano in supporting roles. The film is one of Cooper's final Westerns.

The film premiered on October 1, 1958. At the time of release, the film was largely panned by American critics, but it was praised by Jean-Luc Godard, who, before he became a director, was a film critic. Godard claimed that Man of the West was the best film of the year. Decades after the film's release, it has gained a cult following and greater acclaim, with film historian Philip French claiming the film to be Anthony Mann's masterpiece, containing Cooper's finest performance.

Link Jones (Gary Cooper) rides into Crosscut, Texas to have a bite to eat, then catch a train to Fort Worth, where he intends to use the savings of his community of Good Hope to hire a schoolteacher.

On the train platform Sam Beasley (Arthur O'Connell) speaks briefly with Link, rousing the suspicions of the town marshal, Sam being a known gambler and con man. When the lawman remarks that Link looks familiar, he gives a false name, Henry Wright.

Aboard the train Sam joins Link, learns of his mission in Fort Worth and claims he can be of help. Sam introduces him to the Crosscut saloon singer, Billie Ellis (Julie London), insisting she could make an ideal teacher.

Their conversation is overheard by Alcutt, a shady-looking passenger. When the train stops to pick up wood for additional fuel, male passengers help load it on to the train but Alcutt remains on board, feigning sleep. From a window he signals to three horsemen, Coaley Tobin (Jack Lord), Trout (Royal Dano) and Ponch (Robert J. Wilke), who attempt to rob the train. The armed guard on the train thwarts the attempt.

Link tries to intervene and is knocked unconscious. The train departs, with Alcutt riding off with Link's bag containing Good Hope's money. Alcutt is wounded as he and the three other robbers flee.

Link revives to discover that he, Sam and Billie have been left behind, many miles from the nearest town. Link leads them on foot to a ramshackle farm, admitting that he lived there years earlier. Link sends the others to wait in the barn, giving Billie his coat to wear. Link enters the rundown house and finds the train robbers hiding inside.

Coaley is suspicious of Link's claim that he simply wants to rest for the night. They are interrupted by ageing outlaw Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb), who is startled to see Link, his nephew, whom he raised to be a killer and a thief. More than a dozen years earlier, in order to go straight, Link abandoned Tobin, and the old man laments that nothing has been the same since. He introduces Link to the others, including Link's cousin, Coaley.

Disturbed by the revelation of Link's true identity, Coaley demonstrates his toughness by shooting Alcutt, who is near death from his wound. Realising the danger of his situation, Link brings Sam and Billie in from the barn and lies to Tobin, telling him that Billie is his woman and also that he purposely set out to find Dock after being left behind by the train.

Tobin reveals his long-held ambition to rob the bank in the town of Lassoo and asserts that Link's return to the gang makes that possible and will breathe new life into them all. To protect the lives of his companions Link agrees to participate in the holdup. After Link and Sam are sent outside to dig a grave and bury Alcutt, an increasingly drunken Coaley decides to force Billie to strip. Her cries alert Link and, when he returns to the cabin, Coaley holds a knife to his throat while continuing to demand Billie remove her clothes.

When she is nearly undressed, Tobin steps in and ends the situation. He tells everyone to go to sleep and sends Link and Billie to sleep in the barn.

Claude Tobin (John Dehner), another cousin, arrives the next morning and is displeased at finding Link there. Tobin rejects the suggestion of Claude and Coaley that it would be best to kill Link and the others. They all depart on the four-day trip to Lassoo in three wagons and two on horseback.

When they make camp on the trail, Link seeks revenge for the brutal treatment of Billie at the ranch and goads the brutal Coaley into a fistfight. Link beats his cousin severely, then forcibly strips him of his clothes as revenge for forcing Billie to strip at the barn. Deeply humiliated, Coaley attempts to shoot the unarmed Link, but Sam interferes and is shot dead instead. Tobin then shoots dead Coaley for disobeying him.

During the trip Billie bemoans the fact that Link is a man worth loving but that she cannot have him. He says he has a wife and two children in Good Hope.

With the town of Lassoo in sight, Link volunteers to go in and do the holdup job, secretly hoping that in town he can seek help. Tobin insists that he be accompanied by the mute Trout. It turns out that Lassoo is a ghost town, its bank deserted except for a frightened Mexican woman who has the two at gunpoint when Trout coldly shoots her. Link uses the woman’s gun to kill Trout. He then awaits the arrival of Claude and Ponch. In a drawn-out gun battle, Link kills Ponch first, then eventually and with some regret - because as children the two of them had been fairly close - Claude.

Returning to camp, Link discovers to his horror that Billie has been raped and beaten. He goes in search of Tobin, who is on a cliff nearby. Link calls out to his uncle that he, like Lassoo, is a ghost and is finished. Tobin starts ranting and firing his gun, and Link finally shoots him and reclaims the bag of Good Hope's money.

Riding back to civilisation, Billie tells Link she loves him but, knowing that he intends to return to his home and his family, she is resigned to the fact that she must resume her singing career and proceed alone.

The film reunited Gary Cooper and Robert J. Wilke, who were adversaries in High Noon.

Canadian film critic Robin Wood noted that Man of the West is director Anthony Mann's version of William Shakespeare's play King Lear, whose elements appeared in The Furies with Walter Huston, The Naked Spur and The Man From Laramie, with its sense of emotional whirlwind, and an older order crumbling. Man of the West, like most Mann films, is a tale of redemption. We are asked to consider the essential monstrousness of the hero, and whether redemption is a tenable idea. The noble frontiersman is made the Other, and one not very deserving of sympathy, a savage whose past ghoulishness seems unimaginable. Wood also noted that the film looks down the road to the contemporary horror film: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977), with their savage clans and desiccated American wasteland.^[6]

When first released, the film was largely ignored by American critics, though renowned French critic Jean-Luc Godard regarded it as the best film released that year, writing that "each shot of Man of the West gives one the impression that Anthony Mann is reinventing the western, exactly as Matisse’s portraits reinvent the features of Piero della Francesca...In other words, he both shows and demonstrates, innovates and copies, criticizes and creates."^[7] Howard Thompson, in The New York Times, gave it one of the few raves in the mainstream press.^[8] Variety's Powe called it "uneven but often powerful".^[9]

In the decades since the film's release, it has garnered a cult following as well as considerably greater acclaim. Some, such as The Guardian's Derek Malcolm consider the film Mann's best^[10] and a landmark in the western genre's canon. Malcolm included the film in his 2000 list The Century of Film. Critic and film historian Philip French cites Man of the West as Anthony Mann's masterpiece, containing Gary Cooper's greatest performance.^[11] Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader also hailed it as a "masterpiece," comparing it to "the grimness of Greek tragedy, its mountains and rock formations often suggesting the silent witness of an ancient amphitheater...the penultimate shoot-out in the ghost town is an appropriately eerie split-level confrontation between two wounded, supine men–one stretched out on a porch at screen left, the other stretched out underneath the porch at screen right, as if he were already buried. It’s a key example of the way that landscape and architecture, people and settings, painting and drama, image and idea, classicism and modernism all merge on Mann’s monumental canvases."^[12]

Man of the West maintains a 94% approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes film website, based on reviews from 17 critics.^[13]

• List of American films of 1958