Red River.

Review #1773: Red River.

Cast: 

John Wayne (Thomas Dunson), Montgomery Clift (Matthew "Matt" Garth), Walter Brennan (Nadine Groot), Joanne Dru (Tess Millay), Coleen Gray (Fen), Harry Carey (Mr. Melville), John Ireland (Cherry Valance), Noah Beery Jr. (Buster McGee), Harry Carey Jr. (Dan Latimer), (Two Jaw Quo), and Paul Fix (Teeler Yacey) Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks (#951 - The Big Sleep, #1352 - His Girl Friday, #1399 - Rio Bravo, #1687 - O. Henry's Full House), with co-direction by Arthur Rosson.

Review: 

I'm sure we all know the name Howard Hawks as a director. At least, I would hope so, in part because how diverse he managed to be within his filmmaking that spanned four decades within all of the major studios and multiple genres. He did films in his particular way that inspired plenty of future directors even after his death. Red River (1948) was the first of five Westerns that he would direct in his career, and it also would be the first of five films Hawks directed with Wayne as star. The film is adapted from Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail, a 1946 novel originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post (albeit without the "Blazing Guns" part of the title, which was added for the hardcover publication) that was written by Borden Chase. When Chase chafed at changes to the story (one that resembled Mutiny on the Bounty, albeit with a fictionalized angle at a cattle drive), Charles Schnee was brought in to do the screenplay as well, with the two not actually writing together. Chase would write a variety of screenplays and stories, such as with Winchester '73 while Schnee would write and produce for films such as The Bad and the Beautiful. By this point in time, Arthur Rosson had moved from featuredirecting to do work as a second unit director, most notably for Cecil B. DeMille, but for this film he was given credit as a co-director, as he had shot some of the cattle drive and action sequences (as such, he gets credit here as a director, instead of using that weasely "co-director" label that is still present with certain animated features). The film was shot in 1946 but was delayed for two years, with a great deal of editing done by Christian Nyby. Somehow, right as the film had premiered in 1948, Howard Hughes claimed similarities between this film and The Outlaw (1943) with its climatic fight, and you may remember Hawks had been fired from the earlier film. This resulted in a few seconds being cut out in order to fast-track the film for the studio rather than deal with a frivolous lawsuit they would have won handily over Hughes and the content of his alleged Western. There existed two different versions of the film: The pre-release cut lasted 133 minutes while featuring shots of a diary for transition shots; the cuts forced by the lawsuit resulted in a 127 minute film (Hawks also commissioned Brennan to provide a voiceover instead of those shots). When interviewed late in his life (specifically an interview with Peter Bogdanovich), Hawks stated his preference for the shorter version, but it has not stopped the debate over just what version seems better.

You have to remember that Wayne is a movie star bigger than life, an icon that certainly stood differently in presence depending on just who was directing him. The lasting quote about him in this film comes from long-time collaborator John Ford, who famously stated (whether facetious or not) that he didn't know he could act. Well, Wayne does what he does in terms of handling the frontier front and center, only this time with an imitation of Captain Ahab with a granite foundation that works quite well with a look at a different Wayne (if only slightly): middle age. 1948 was the first year folks could see Clift on screen as an actor (he had starred on the stage for over ten years), with this coming out after The Search. He does quite well here, standing well against Wayne in conviction in not getting lost within such presence. You see the conflict within him about the measure of what being a man is, especially after being part of a makeshift family only to leave and comeback from it. It may be a Western, but it also could be thought of as a family tragedy too, since this involves the inevitability of what has to happen between father and son when it comes to being a man. Brennan accompanies the two with the expected supporting presence that matches with both with resourceful chemistry (as would be expected from a semi-regular on Hawks films). When Dru finally comes onto the screen, she brings an added edge needed when either paired with Clift or Wayne in a scene (the best one is the first though, involving her mood during a fight before casually taking an arrow to the arm). The rest of the character presences make their parts count well, whether that means a casual Ireland or the various associates that stand starkly to the granite-laced Wayne in terms of drive, which only makes the build to the climax all the more interesting. Apparently, Clift didn't care much for the overall conclusion (or his overall acting), which is strange, because it actually is quite interesting in sticking out from just being a fistfight. It doesn't seem like the "farce" that he thought it was in my mind - besides, Chase's story has one of them die, and we are talking about a film involving both family conflict amid a clash of relentless drive and youth along with moving cattle (Hawks and Chase did not exactly get along anyway). It seems quite foolish to learn a lesson right before they die anyway, and the film is called "Red River", not "Showdown at Red River", so there. The movie isn't perfect, but the ending isn't a letdown in the long run. It is an odyssey, pure and simple.

At any rate, Hawks created a worthy epic that isn't weighed down by needing a large scope or folks to try and reach over the presence of Wayne, because he has the skills of editor Nyby to go with Dimitri Tiomkin as a driving music composer and Russell Harlan in sweeping cinematographer to go with a dynamic cast that does what is needed in worthy entertainment. It is the classic imperfect Western for its time, one that moves steadfast for what Hawks wants to display about the nature of being a man that couldn't have been done by anyone else but him. In that sense, he did it exactly to his standards.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars

All the King's Men (1949).

Review #1373: All the King's Men.

Cast: 
Broderick Crawford (Willie Stark), John Ireland (Jack Burden), Joanne Dru (Anne Stanton), John Derek (Tom Stark), Mercedes McCambridge (Sadie Burke), Shepperd Strudwick (Adam Stanton), Ralph Dumke (Tiny Duffy), Anne Seymour (Mrs. Lucy Stark), Katharine Warren (Mrs. Burden), Raymond Greenleaf (Judge Monte Stanton), and Walter Burke (Sugar Boy) Directed, Written and Produced by Robert Rossen (#702 - The Hustler)

Review: 
One can hope to make at least one great film or at least hope to be part of a prestige picture worth talking about. This is a film to be proud of in terms of its directing and acting. Robert Rossen directed just ten films before his death at the age of 57, but he managed to make films in a variety of genres successfully, such as noir, drama and thriller. He had gone from hustling pool as a youth to being a stage manager, with the passage of time leading to him writing and directing his own plays. He went to Hollywood as a screenwriter after being discovered by Mervyn LeRoy of Warner Brothers in 1936. In the eleven years that followed before his directorial debut, he served as a writer for a few films along with being chair of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization during World War II. He jumped around a few studios before finding himself with Columbia Pictures. If you can believe it, Crawford was not the first choice for the main role. It was actually John Wayne who was offered the role first. He angrily rejected the role in a letter, calling the script an acidic one on the "American way of life" (among other statements that make me roll my eyes). The son (and grandson) of vaudevillians, Crawford found himself on stage and film by the time he was in his twenties, with usual roles being in B-moves or in supporting roles. It was this film that he became a star, and he would later find himself with further notability with Highway Patrol in the following decade. The film was based off the 1946 novel of the same name by Robert Penn Warren, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year. There has been considerable discussion about the novel over its themes and inspirations, with the most notable being over the resemblance of its main character to governor/senator Huey Long, since Warren had taught at Louisiana State University at the time of Long's unexpected death, although Warren once said that book was never intended to be a book about politics, since to his eyes it merely served as a provider to the framework story to work out the deeper concerns. The book has had two further adaptations, in terms of an opera (named after the lead character), and a 2006 adaptation from Steven Zaillian that attempted to be more faithful to the general structure of the novel while changing the setting to the early 1950s.

One is swept into the film fairly quickly, a drama that plays like a noir with a sense of urgency and furor that sweeps a viewer away in making compelling entertainment. Crawford proves to be a master of intimidation, one who leaves an imprint on you every time he appears, a presence that strikes at you with all of his might that has the right mix of brashness alongside insecurity. Ireland follows along just fine, an observer of the noir kind that we follow through his brooding eyes. Dru and Derek accompany him just as carefully. McCambridge (a noted radio actress in her debut) proves to be quite electrifying, a hardboiled presence that resonates with rough versatility. The others prove to be worthy supporting presences that seem like pawns in the hands of material that desires as such. It is an urgent film, wrapped in cynical honesty that still works in relevancy for the most part after seven decades. The biggest achievement is that the film came out the way it did at all. There were problems in whittling the film to salvageability because of how much footage Rossen shot. Editor Al Clark could only edit it down to 250 minutes (in part because of Rossen's reluctance to really cut anything), so it fell to the hands of Robert Parrish to help with edits. Together, Rossen and Parrish agreed to edit the film like a series of impressions, where they would roll the film on the synchronizer and find the center of each scene and cut arbitrarily 100 feet before and after each center, regardless of dialogue or music. The result is a 110 minute quickfire winner. The film was certainly a deserving hit, and it later won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards the following year, beating out such films like A Letter to Three Wives (which won director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz awards over Rossen for directing and writing) for the main prize alongside Crawford and McCambridge. On the whole, this is a film that has plenty of blunt force in terms of what it wants to say about the nature of power and how one can find themselves ensnared in the same traps they held others to if they reach that point, headlined by Crawford and his domineering presence that makes this a fair one to recommend.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

And now, the list for next month. Several faces join the crowd for the 1950s, a mix of directors and stars that have either been covered before or haven't before, complete with a rollout of world cinema debuts.