Reformed gunman Gary Cooper is entrusted with the savings of his community for the purposes of hiring a schoolteacher for the town. When he is robbed by the members of his old gang, led by Lee J. Cobb, he takes refuge with Arthur O'Connell and singer Julie London in his former hideout, still, unfortunately, used by the bandits.

Anthony Mann's last great Western inspired Jean-Luc Godard to write: “Just as the director of Birth of a Nation gave one the impression that he was inventing the cinema with every shot, each shot of Man of the West gives one the impression that Anthony Mann is reinventing the Western... in other words, he both... innovates and copies, criticizes and creates. Man of the West, in short, is both course and discourse, or both beautiful landscapes and the explanation of this beauty, both the mystery of firearms and the secret of this mystery, both art and the theory of art... of the Western, the most cinematographic genre in the cinema....

“...One could also talk about the final gunfight, since this is the first time that the man shooting and the man shot are both kept constantly in frame at the same time. I spoke earlier of vegetal beauty. In Man of the West, Gary Cooper's amorphous face belongs to the mineral kingdom; thus proving that Anthony Mann is returning to the basic truths.”