Monte Walsh (Lee Marvin) and Chet Rollins (Jack Palance) are two old cow hands facing the extinction of their kind.
They come down out of the mountains from riding line for the winter to find that all the ranches have been devestated by the harsh winter and there are no jobs to be found.
Most of the spreads have been bought out by a company in the east. Their friend Cal Brennan (Jim Davis) gives them a job on the ranch he is running for the company.
Lay offs and other travails (some of the out of work cowboys turn to rustling and robbery) plague the cowboys.
Chet marries the widow who owns the hardware store and becomes a townie. Monte even proposes to his long time love Martine (Jeanne Moreau).
Marvin does a great job as Monte Walsh, a man who by the end of the movie has lost everything he loves but his freedom .
The best sequences in the movie are when Monte and Chet first start work and the ranch and have to help deal with the cook, who is a great cook, but evidently has some industrial strength BO.
The cow hands jump him one morning and force bathe him in the cattle trough. The cook gets his vengeance the next morning by lacing their pancakes with
croton oil. Some of the poor cowboys don't quite make it to outhouse.
There is a long sequence where Monte demolishes half the town breaking in a gray stallion.
If you enjoy westerns, this is a great one.
TNT produced an excellent remake in 2003 starring Tom Selleck as Monte Walsh, Keith Carradine as Chet,and Isabella Rossellini as Martine.
The remake was directed by Simon Wincer, who directed the original Lonesome Dove miniseries.
Both movies are well worth the time to watch.