Man Without a Star

comrade_yui5.0

the sensuality and barely concealed eroticism of frontier life divided by private property, of which barbed wire is the most twisted expression of -- the frontier of practical pleasures pitted against the profit motive. kirk douglas ripping open his shirt to reveal his scarred chest is such a shocking moment because he's been otherwise so genial and friendly. the barbed wire divides the nation just as those scars divide his life into pre- and post-traumatic -- vidor's heroes are all smiles because that's the way they remain sane in a world of over-stimlation and severance. man without a star anticipates the turn-on-tune-in-drop-out philosophy of the 60s, a post-heideggerian concern for the way in which industrial man has constructed a society which insists on reflecting all of his worst tendencies back at him -- the imperious hunger, the disposition towards self-destruction, the devaluation of value itself. vidor's star-less man wanders not into an unexplored land of possibility, but into a shrinking world already fenced-in by capital -- there's nowhere left to go.

Diogo Serafim4.5

A man without a star, a man with no certainties other than his ideals. He is against barbed wires, but he fights for them when he feels it’s right, he doesn’t meddle in other men’s affairs unless someone is in danger. What strikes me as the most affecting in this film other than its near perfect narrative and Douglas’ spectacular character is how fun it is, a film about a man and his life, friendship and fatherhood, just someone who loves singing songs and drinking and meeting women and going through life with his moral compass guiding his choices. Even when you are confused, do what you feel it’s right. A fabulous character study.

Avalyn Wu5.0

Like the rural version of Vidor's own H. M. Pulham, Esq., where romance with the bourgeoisie is always doomed to fail. Dempsey is right to revile the use of barbed wire and the enclosure of the commons that it represents. Conquest and privatization slowly leads to inter-settler conflict, a war that Dempsey wants no part in. Little does he know, this tendency will come to define the capitalist-imperialist world in a few short decades. There will be no place for him to run anymore.Seen on my computer