"The Lusty Men" is one of my all-time favorites and certainly one of Nicholas Ray's best. I love the strange and subtle relationship between Robert Mitchum's Jeff McCloud, Susan Hayward's Louise Merrit, and Arthur Kennedy's Wes Merrit. I love the audacity with which Ray puts it in everything: the painful and believable performances by three actors; the cinematography and the mis-en-scene have peculiar poetry and preciseness that often recalls John Ford's "Wagon Master"; the rodeo footages are daring and stunning.
The ending is not that hokey or fake as one critic suggested, but a daring act of poetry and subtlety. In Ray's work, there is always a strong need to constitute the couple and the family; the emotional pull this creates is always extremely strong, and never merely "formal" (even in "Bigger Than Life"). That high-angle shot, after Jeff's death, the word "EXIT", indicating both that the couple (Wes and Louise) are leaving this world, and that the film is about to end. The compression here is characteristic of melodrama and of Ray. Jeff's return performance makes Wes realize that he'll never be as good in the rodeo as Jeff. So, the competitive motive that has been driving Wes has been removed. Second, Jeff's death relieves Wes of the need to die in the arena. It's a symbolic sacrifice, Jeff in place of Wes.
The ending is not that hokey or fake as one critic suggested, but a daring act of poetry and subtlety. In Ray's work, there is always a strong need to constitute the couple and the family; the emotional pull this creates is always extremely strong, and never merely "formal" (even in "Bigger Than Life"). That high-angle shot, after Jeff's death, the word "EXIT", indicating both that the couple (Wes and Louise) are leaving this world, and that the film is about to end. The compression here is characteristic of melodrama and of Ray. Jeff's return performance makes Wes realize that he'll never be as good in the rodeo as Jeff. So, the competitive motive that has been driving Wes has been removed. Second, Jeff's death relieves Wes of the need to die in the arena. It's a symbolic sacrifice, Jeff in place of Wes.