Much of his performance here consists of the non-verbal: through body language and facial expressions. In his performance as cowhand drifter and loner Jack Burns, Kirk Douglas gives arguably his greatest, and certainly his most nuanced, performance of his career. With both its theme of modernity eclipsing the way of the cowboy, and its overall aesthetic, Lonely Are the Brave has several similarities with Peter Bogdanovich’s excellent film The Last Picture Show (1971). Lathrop, and a terrific soundtrack by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith. The film is wonderfully directed by David Miller (whose spotty career has only the noir classic Sudden Fear (1952) as another high point), with crisp, black & white cinematography by Philip H. Despite this, and the screenplay’s romantic symbolism of borders being ‘against’ man’s nature, etc (which would normally get me to knock off at least a half-star from my score of the film), Trumbo’s raw talent as a wordsmith makes up for it. In the source novel, the Paul Bondi character is sentenced to 2 years in prison for refusing to register for the draft, while in this movie adaptation, Trumbo changes the reason to Bondi having aided some illegal immigrants from Mexico. After the success of that film, Douglas hired Trumbo to pen a screenplay for Lonely Are the Brave.

Douglas secured the rights to the film after reading the source novel, The Brave Cowboy (1956) by Edward Abbey, and proceeded to make the film through his own production company, Joel Productions, after making a production deal with Universal Pictures.Ī couple of years earlier, Douglas, as the production force behind Spartacus (1960), hired blacklisted communist sympathizer Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay, and effectively ‘broke’ this blacklist by having Trumbo’s name, rather than a pseudonym, placed in the movie’s credits. Of his own work in the movies, Lonely Are the Brave (1962) was Kirk Douglas’s favorite film, and for good reason.

Lonely are the brave cast