RED RIVER (1948)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Adventure / Epic / Western

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: John Wayne / Montgomery Clift / Walter Brennan

Plot

Texas rancher Tom Dunson leads a crew of men on an unprecedented cattle drive.  When things turn desperate, Dunson becomes a tyrannical trail boss, leading to a clash with his adoptive son Matt.

What I Liked

“Red River” may be known for the epic scale of its quest and its imagery, but more important to this film than its scope is its focus on the conflict between characters.  Wayne shows previously unseen depth of acting ability in displaying Dunson’s transformation from paragon of the Old West to obsessed autocrat.  Montgomery Clift, as Dunson’s protégé Matt, develops from a swaggering youngster to a responsible adult with believable subtlety.  When the two innevitably wind up at odds, Matt’s escape with the herd and Dunson’s pursuit allows the film to transcend the cowboys-and-Indians fare typical of early Westerns and become something of a revenge film, spiced with a father-son conflict worthy of classical Greece.

Wayne’s performance in particular is what makes “Red River” such an important film historically. By 1948 he was already the single greatest star of Western films ever and his portrayals of characters like Ringo Kid and Stony Brooke set a standard for the cowboy hero in film that remains recognizable today.  As Dunson, Wayne took his first noteworthy step away from that typecasting to portray a man who can be frightened, emotionally hurt, and even villainous.  By testing the heroic mold that he himself built, Wayne almost single-handedly makes “Red River” a film ahead of its time, hinting at the reconstruction of the Western myth that was to come in the 1950s and 1960s.

What I Didn’t Like
*spoiler alert!*

Despite defying several conventions common to Westerns of its time, “Red River” still adheres to more clichés than it flouts.  The two female love interests – despite both having travelled through the desert as part of nineteenth century wagon trains – are impeccably clean, in full make-up, with flowing hair and romance ceaselessly on their minds.  The Native Americans are given no development beyond being hooting, howling terrorists; with the exception of one “civilized” man, who is mainly comic relief as the brunt of abuse and scorn from Walter Brennan’s equally cliché old coot.  While the grand musical score of chorus-sung, trumpeting cowboy songs does bring an epic feel to this cowboy odyssey, its sounds idealized, slick, and inauthentic to cynical, modern ears.  That the bitter conflict between its main characters is somehow wrapped up so handily in a matter of seconds where Wayne and Clift do everything but fall into each other’s arms and kiss, just doesn’t fit either.  It’s an unsatisfactory happy ending to a film that spent so much time trying to break away from the standard Western.

Most Memorable Scene

During a showdown with a nasty band of Indians, female lead Joanne Dru takes an arrow right through her shoulder and barely blinks.  First of all, the effect is unexpected, shocking, and exceptionally convincing.  It really seems like we watch that arrow go in and I resisted the temptation to rewind and watch in slow motion to see how they pulled the effect off, deciding to leave the movie magic magical.  Second, that Dru barely pays any attention to the injury, even seconds after it first occurred, and continues to smart-mouth Clift’s character is a terrific twist on the “damsel in distress” cliché.

My Rating: 4 out of 5