Red River

MGM (Video & DVD) - MGM (Video & DVD)

Release date: 1997-11-19
DVD
Director:Arthur Rosson
Actors: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, Walter Brennan, Coleen Gray

Available in Colorized Version, B&W, Cattle Ranchers, Earthy, English, Epic Western, Fathers and Sons, Feature, Forceful, Generation Gap, High Artistic Quality, High Historical Importance, Lone Wolves, Movie, Poignant, Rousing, Sweeping, Taming the West, Tense, USA

average reviews

0 vote

Review it!

React and review

Guest

Red River

Date undefined

An epic masterpiece filled with some of the greatest character actors of all time..Like Charlton Heston, John Wayne was cheated out of many honors because of his poltics...
Any who sees The Quiet Man, True Grit,Sands of Iwo Jima, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, The Long Voyage Home, The Shootest and naturally The Searchers must recognize that the Duke was much more than a movie star but a fantastic actor who could create unique characters..(granted, there was no way he could have portrayed a weakling anymore than Tracy or Gable could..it just wasn't in their natures..)
Like Maureen O'Hara, Joanne Dru was a strong enough actress to go line for line with the Duke....and of course the ole scene stealer Walter Brennan stands out AGAIN!..
The film is like a beautiful symphony with each character adding a beautiful note....filled with memorable minor characters, one cannot take their eyes off the screen...A gift for the ages...

Guest

Red River

Date undefined

A great genre film is not necessarily a great piece of cinema, for the dictates of genre often run counter to the dictates of art; namely that genre demands familiar elements (aka clichés). As good an example of this dictum that can be found is director Howard Hawks' 1948 (although filmed in 1946) black and white western Red River. There is great debate amongst western aficionados as to who was the greater director of westerns, John Ford or Howard Hawks? Well, if one compares the two westerns most consider the two directors' apexes in the genre, Ford's The Searchers and this film, it's no contest. Red River and Hawks win in a walk. That's because Hawks was basically concerned with narrative and characters while Ford obsessed over myth making and caricatures. Even Ford tacitly admitted Hawks was the superior craftsman, for when he first saw Red River he is reputed to have exclaimed, of star John Wayne: `I didn't know the big son of a bitch could act.' Both films, of course, feature Wayne in an anti-hero role, and both are sweeping tales. But, Red River features realistic characterization, great dialogue and comedy in a first rate screenplay written by Charles Schnee and Borden Chase, which was adapted from Chase's tale The Chisholm Trail. But, above all, the film benefits from the screen debut of Montgomery Clift, who steals the film from Wayne as easily as his character does the cattle herd they are driving north to sell. Note the scene where Matt steps inside a cattleman's office in Abilene. Watch Clift's face as he ducks, because it's been months since he was under a roof. That's the sort of realistic reaction that takes little effort in writing or acting, but adds up to lifting a pedestrian film into a greater realism.... The film reaches out and scrapes greatness in the scenes between Wayne and Clift, as Dunson and Matt. Rarely have two macho male roles been so convincingly written- and considering this was the 1940s, it makes that fact all the more special. Wayne actually emotes a bit above his usual monosyllabics, and Clift acts and reacts to Wayne better than any co-star I've seen. One really gets the sense of their having known each other for years. Two other relationships that work are the ones between Groot and Dunson, especially when Groot finally stands up to Dunson, after years of cowering, and the one between Matt and Cherry, as young gunslingers whose guns stand in for penises in one well written and acted scene that prefigures, albeit far more realistically, some of the homoeroticism that would end up in the laughable vomitus of Brokeback Mountain.
But, make no mistake, the major theme of Red River is the classic Oedipal one, where the figurative son must supplant the father, and until the very end, this is the core of the film, and what pushes it well above most westerns. It is a complex film that rises above its genre, but not far enough to reach that ineffable area reserved for the greatest of artworks, even if it can legitimately make a claim to being a great western. Whether or not it would have succeeded in reaching that lofty status without the feminine element is debatable, but that the female element drags it down from unadulterated greatness is not. Now there's a classic trope: blame it on the broads! Yeehah!

Guest