Red River (1948)

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Directed by Howard Hawks.

Starring Walter Brennan, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, Coleen Gray, John Wayne.

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Director Howard Hawks' second western was also his first collaboration with John Wayne. Officially based on Borden Chase's novel The Chisholm Trail, the film also owes a great deal to Mutiny on the Bounty, both structurally and in the adversarial relationship between the two leading characters. Wayne stars as headstrong frontiersman Tom Dunson, who is taking his leave of a westbound wagon train to seek his fortune in Texas. This impulsive act loses him the love of his fiancée Fen (Colleen Gray) but gains him a lifelong friend in the person of (occasionally) toothless old camp cook Groot Nadine (Walter Brennan). Not long afterward, Dunson discovers that Fen was killed in an Indian raid, a fact that leaves him an emotionless cipher. The only survivor of the tragedy is a young orphan named Matthew Garth (Mickey Kuhn), whom Dunson unofficially adopts as his son. As the years pass, the tactiturn Dunson becomes the most powerful and feared cattle baron in the territory, but the grown-up Garth (now played by Montgomery Clift, in his first film appearance) eventually rebels against Dunson's stubbornness and autocratic behavior, striking out on his own as his surrogate father growls: "Some day you'll turn around and I'll be there; I'm gonna kill ya, Matt." As time passes, Garth, leading his own cattle drive, becomes Dunson's most formidable rival. The huge cast includes John Ireland in perhaps his best role as the enigmatic gunman Cherry Valance; both Harry Carey, Sr. and Harry Carey, Jr.; and an uncredited Shelley Winters as a dance hall girl. Except for the sappy scenes with love interest Joanne Dru, everything works in Red River, from the stirring Dmitri Tiomkin score to Russell Harlan's brooding black-and-white cinematography. In his quest for perfection, Hawks went $1 million overbudget and several months over schedule, but the end result was a $4 million hit. Essential viewing for western buffs in particular and film buffs in general, Red River currently exists in two release versions: the preferable 133-minute directors' cut, and a 125-minute studio cut, narrated by Walter Brennan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Reviews and discussions

Cause & Effect
by theunemployedshortstop in Movie Games

loved it.

"An interesting thing happens when you study the arc of Westerns: one narrative template begins to inform the next. An example: The cattle drivers tame the land and pave the trails at the end of Red River. However ten years later those same cattle drivers are the jerks kicking the Homesteaders off of "their land" in Shane. A supposed "happy ending" results in a very real problem. Name a happy ending from one movie (the cause) and how it informs the problem of a second film (the effect). Like this: Sure the rebels win at the end of Return of the Jedi. But then what? The land is now lawless. Tribes will begin to splinter and argue over the new law. Power must be consolidated to ovoid further conflict. In the wake of war will the war hero remain noble or give in to the dark side and take advantage of the war torn lands... which is the plot to MacBeth (although I prefer Throne of Blood). Be as creative as you can! Show us how that happy ending actually has unforeseen conse ... " [More]

Re:A new pack of RESERVOIR DOGS ...
by theunemployedshortstop in Filmgaming

loved it.

"The Epic Tale of "The Wolves of Gomorrah Gorge." The Conceit: Due to a trans-dimensional rift caused by the AWESOMENESS of the Inglorious Bastards screenplay Quentin Tarantino is able to jump into a dimension where the world is perpetually in the early fifties. The impish auteur (also great collaborator) is eager to see what some of his favorite directors and writers would do with his material. He gives a vague outline of Reservoir Dogs to Carl Foreman. Bitter over the HUAC hearings of 1947, Forman takes the idea of the mole cop and turns it into a commentary on witch hunting (like the Crucible set in the American West… with action and no weeping, whining, or three hour yawn-fest… just kidding). Production: The studio loved the concept and saw Anthony Mann as the director. His surprising presentation of the morally grey double agents in T – Men and his success as a visual director of both noir and westerns would yield a fantastic visual motif. Forema ... " [More]

Top Hot Pride Pics
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Are you a supporter of gay marriage? “I know nothing about it. I don’t follow that.” Why doesn’t it interest you? “The same reason heterosexual marriage doesn’t seem to interest me.” –From Questions for Gore Vidal in The New York Times Magazine, 6/15/08. Amen, sister. One of the perks of being queer is that you’re not expected to engage in unnatural acts like high school proms and monogamy. So in honor of the hedonistic right to our own guilt-free, queer Mardi Gras, here are some subversive suggestions that will get you in the mood and take you back to that more innocent, less commercial “Over The Rainbow” time. For vintage gay porn nothing beats George Butler’s Pumping Iron (1977) – and not just because the governor of California unapologetically indulges in a big fat phallic joint straight to the camera. Ostensibly a smackdown between pre-Governator Schwarzenegger and pre-Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno, captured in a pre-reality show documentary about the pro-bodybuilding path ... " [More]

AFI's 10 Top 10: Western
by ShaunHuston in ShaunHuston filmblog

hasn't rated it.

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"The Western Top 10 is the toughest for me. As some of you may know, while I'm hardly Richard Slotkin or Jane Tompkins, I write, teach, and think about this genre on a regular basis, and, as a result, my views are not only fairly strong, but well-informed. And, where certain well regarded classics are concerned, they are also iconoclastic. This is probably nowhere more obvious than with The Searchers (1956), the film that tops the AFI list. This film does not resonate with me on any level. I have never found the ending credible. John Wayne does not portray Ethan Edwards with any of the complexity needed for his embrace of Debbie (Natalie Wood) to ring true after his 118 (or so) minutes of hard, racist ranting about Native Americans and his intent to kill her. I also find the photography and production design to be garish without purpose, and for all of its superficial sophistication about Native peoples, the talk of ritual, the use of indigenous language, it only serves to perpetuat ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

loved it.

In his first collaboration with John Wayne, Howard Hawks examines capitalism and dueling masculinities in the rousing context of a Western cattle drive. A Mutiny on the Bounty for Big Sky country, Red River features a challenge between Montgomery Clift's Matthew Garth and Wayne's Tom Dunson that becomes a contest between new and old models of Western manhood -- a clash enhanced by the different performance styles of ambiguous, Method-acting, proto-rebel Clift and stolidly imposing star Wayne. Young and adaptable, Garth sees the necessity of finding new markets and cooperating with a community, including such potential adversaries as John Ireland's gun-loving Cherry, while Dunson's Old West individualism becomes an inflexible, economically ruinous monomania. The unsympathetic Dunson challenged the traditional Wayne persona, presaging the disturbed Western heroes that proliferated in the 1950s and 1960s, including Wayne's later role as psychotic Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and in the films that Red River writer Borden Chase wrote for director Anthony Mann. Powered by Russell Harlan's dynamic yet moody black-and-white cinematography and Dimitri Tiomkin's score, Red River became a substantial hit, confirming Clift's star quality in his film debut and earning Oscar nominations for Chase and action editor Christian Nyby; it still stands as one of Hawks's top Westerns. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Tags: western , johnwayne , moving , Classic , cattlemen
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