Another Shootout
About 21 months ago Peter Bogdanovich wrote a New York Observer piece extolling the rich, classic, sophisticated virtues of Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo. Being a much bigger fan of High Noon than Rio Bravo, I got fairly upset about the Bogdanovich article, and particularly about the inexplicable attitude of righteousness from the Rio Bravo clique. I responded with a July 2007 piece that explained very clearly why all the RB freaks need to shake it off and give it up.
“Goddamn it, the Rio Bravo cult has gone on long enough,” I declared with a contained fury. “Bogdanovich calls it ‘a life-affirming, raucous, profound masterpiece.’ I’m going to respond politely and call that a reach. I admire Hawks’ movies and the whole Hawks ethos as much as the next guy, but it’s time to end this crap here and now.” And then I explained the ins and outs, ups and downs, why and wherefores, etc.
That seemed like the end of it — but no. 2009 being the 50th anniversary of Rio Bravo‘s release, another rabid fan — Wall Street Journal columnist Allen Barra — has picked up where Bogdanovich left off with a 3.26 article called “Rio Bravo, Still Popular and Hip and Hip at 50.” Tenacious little buggers, these Hawksians.
“It wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards,” Barra begins. “It was scarcely taken seriously by the critics on its release, and it’s never made into the American Film Institute’s top 100. But Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo, which had its premiere half a century ago this month, may be the most popular cult film ever made.
“The phrase ‘cult favorite’ conjures up images of wobbly hand-held camera shots and little-known actors. But Rio Bravo was shot in glorious [Eastman]color and starred perhaps the most popular star in movie history. Most cult films are too hip to be popular, and most big hits are too popular to be hip. But Rio Bravo is that rarest of films — both popular and hip.”
Popular among the Rio Bravo monk-elites, he means. Ask yourself honestly, HE readers — have any of your friends ever suggested watching it over a pizza on a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon? I’m enough of a Rio Bravo admirer to have bought the Bluray version, but if I were Barra or some other WSJ writer I wouldn’t be delusional enough to think it worthy of a big 50th anniversary fanfare salute like this.
“The first 10 or 12 minutes of Rio Bravo are terrific,” I wrote in ’07, “in the way Hawks introduces character and mood and a complex situation without dialogue. I also love the way John Wayne rifle-butts a guy early on and then goes, ‘Aww, I didn’t hurt him.’ But once the Duke and Walter Brennan, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson settle into their routines and the easy-going pace of the thing, Rio Bravo becomes, at best, a somewhat entertaining sit-around-and-talk-and-occasionally-shoot-a-bad-guy movie.
“More than anything else, Rio Bravo just ambles along. Wayne and the guys hang out in the jailhouse and talk things over. Wayne walks up to the hotel to bark at (i.e., hit on) Dickinson. It tries to sell you on the idea of the big, hulking, 51 year- old Wayne being a suitable romantic match for Dickinson, who was willow slender and maybe 27 at the time but looking more like 22 or 23.
“Plus the villains have no bite or flavor — they’re shooting gallery ducks played by run-of-the-mill TV actors. Most of Rio Bravo is lit too brightly. And it seems too colorfully decorated, like some old west tourist town. It has a dippy ‘downtime’ singing sequence that was thrown in to give Nelson and Martin, big singers at the time, a chance to show their stuff. Then comes the big shootout at the end that’s okay but nothing legendary.
“Does Rio Bravo have a sequence that equals the gripping metronomic ticking- clock montage near the end of High Noon? Is the dialogue in Rio Bravo up to the better passages in Fred Zinneman‘s film? No. (There’s nothing close to the scene between Gary Cooper and Lon Chaney, Jr., or the brief one between Cooper and Katy Jurado.)
“Is there a moment in Rio Bravo that comes close to Cooper throwing his tin star into the dust at the end? Is there a ‘yes!’ payoff moment in Rio Bravo as good as the one in High Noon when Grace Kelly, playing a Quaker who abhors violence, drills bad guy Robert Wilke in the back?
“Floyd Crosby‘s High Noon photography is choice and precise and gets the job done. It doesn’t exactly call attention to itself, but it’s continually striking and well-framed. To me, the black-and-white images have always seemed grittier and less Hollywood ‘pretty’ than Russell Harlan‘s lensing in Rio Bravo, which I would file under ‘pleasing and acceptable but no great shakes.’
“Dimitri Tomkin wrote the scores for High Noon and Rio Bravo, but they don’t exist in the same realm. The Bravo score is settled and kindly, a sleepy, end-of-the-day campfire score. High Noon‘s is strong, pronounced, ‘dramatic’ — so clear and unified it’s like a character in itself. And I’ve never gotten over the way the rhythm in that Tex Ritter song, ‘Do Not Forsake Me O My Darling,’ sounds like a heartbeat.”
I think both ‘High Noon’ and ‘Rio Bravo’ are two terrific, completely different films that have somehow become a Cubs/White Sox rivalry where you have to take sides.
I don’t think either are masterpieces — not even for their genre — but ‘Rio Bravo’ is definitely a good 15 minutes too long and it sure doesn’t have a scene as great as Cooper’s badge-slinging “F-you” at the end of “High Noon”.
Here is another movie I don’t get what people are going on and on about.
John Wayne once called “High Noon” the least patriotic thing he’d ever seen. “Rio Bravo” was largely a response to it. I prefer the latter. I enjoy both. Neither holds a place in my top 10 of the genre.
Onward.
Two things I don’t understand: pineapple slices on pizza and “Rio Bravo.” “Johnny Guitar” is pretty bad as well, but much more interesting in a demented way.
“High Noon” is terrific but definitely not in my top ten westerns.
Let’s see: Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Man of the West, One Eyed Jacks, My Darling Clementine, Nevada Smith, Shane, The Misfits (I know, I’m cheating), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Gunfighter. That’s a start…
Oops, damn, can’t hurry through these things: “Red River,” for sure.
BO CATLETT
Only this time it ain’t no John Wayne and Dean Martin shooting bad guys in “El Dorado.”
CHIILI PALMER
That was “Rio Bravo.” Robert Mitchum played the drunk in “El Dorado.” Dean Martin played the drunk in “Rio Bravo.” Basically, it was the same part. Now John Wayne, he did the same in both. He played John Wayne.
Can I put in a kind word for Jules Furthman (1888-1960), the co-screenwriter of “Rio Bravo”? The film was his last credit. His first was a story credit in 1915 on “Steady Company”. In the 1974 book , “Talking Piictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema”, author Richard Corliss notes Pauline Kael’s remark that Furthman wrote “about half of the most entertaining pictures to come out of Hollywood.” Hyperbole, yes. But his credits include Morocco, To Have and Have Not, Mutiny on the Bounty, Only Angels Have Wings and The Big Sleep.
I was searching through this post trying to see if Wells had mistakenly thought that Spielberg had directed this film.
I can sort of get people comparing these two films. They are both in essence about the breakdown of a community and the building up of a community, respecitvely. High Noon may be more technically and thematically richer, but I’ll always prefer Rio Bravo. Its one of those rare films where you can watch the characters just hanging out and enjoying each other and its riveting. Rio Bravo is a warm film and High Noon strikes me as kind of cold.
And Dickinson may be young, but she has real chemistry with Wayne, something only gutsy ladies like Maureen O’Hara and Dickinson could generate.
Manitoba: thanks for that. It’s nuggets like that keep me coming to HE for the enlightenment. That’s one hell of a writing resume for Mr. Furthman and I will actually look at Rio Bravo again. Hell, I may even try pineapple pizza.
I guess all that’s left is for Wells and Barra to meet for a duel at twenty paces at the time of their convenience, huh?
Seriously – a current blogging war about the value (or lack thereof) of neo-realist films between the New York Times and the New Yorker doesn’t rate a mention here, but this continues to get play? They’re both terrific films. This is not red-state vs. blue-state where you have to be on one side or the other. You are allowed to like both.
Quention Tarantino’s favorite movie. Says Jackie Brown is his Rio Bravo — his hang out movie.
While I admire and respect “High Noon”…
sorry, it’s RB that I’ll always return to watch
again and again. It’s that gol-darned leisurely
comfortable-as-an-old-pair-of-slippers
Hawksian camaradierie between the characters……it’s like coming back and spending time with old familiar friends….I get the same
vibe when I’m watching “Hatari”, “El Dorado”
and of course the high tension version of
Hawks-world, “The Thing” And the arguments about the non-descript villians…..understand this,
villains were nothing but Hitchcock ‘Maguffins’ to
Hawks….they served their function as neccessary pressure points on the band of men
who the movie was all about…and the shootouts were of interest to Hawks only in their ability to
further display the teamwork and friendship of his characters.
And that’s why I’ll aways prefer a sentimental journey with the Hawks guys over
the severe moral lesson of “High Noon” ….it’s
simply more damned fun to watch.
I wonder if I could correct my earlier comment’s date for the death of the great screenwriter, Jules Furthman.? I was using my copy of the Corliss book which gives 1888 to 1960. But other sources state Furthman died of a cerebral hemmorrhage in the United Kingdom on Sept. 25, 1966 and his body was moved to Glendale, California for burial.At any rate ,Rio Bravo was his final screen credit.
RIO BRAVO is a CLASSIC!!!
Heck, I even like El Dorado and it’s the same damn movie.
I love High Noon. Classic Hawks goodness.
But I’ve gotta say I get much more re-watch value out of John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 (an admitted Rio Bravo revamp) than I do out of the original RB. Never been much of a John Wayne fan (& the casual WTF nature of the girl @ the ice cream truck scene still shocks me every time).
RIO BRAVO is my dad’s favorite movie, and I imagine it’s the same for a lot of people. I’ve always found it to be a lot of fun. Angie was stunning, Dean was charming as hell, The Duke was The Duke. And it always stirs me when they start playing that sinister version of Deguello. HIGH NOON is a classic, but it’s a film studies movie to me. It’s not something I would ever call enjoyable. So in that sense, I guess I respect it being much better, but I like RIO BRAVO more.
Oh yeah and THE SEARCHERS is the greatest Western ever made.
“/3rtfu11 says …
Quention Tarantino’s favorite movie. Says Jackie Brown is his Rio Bravo — his hang out movie.”
For DZ:
Happy 46th Birthday, Quentin Tarantino!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000233/
“”Johnny Guitar” is pretty bad as well, but much more interesting in a demented way.”
You do realize it was an over-the-top response to McCarthyism, right? In a way, the absurdity of it all is a nice artistic comment. McCambridge can be grating, but hey, so could McCarthy.
Anyway, my top ten westerns:
1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. Unforgiven
3. Shane
4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
5. Stagecoach
6. The Ox-Bow Incident
7. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
8. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
9. Red River
10. The Searchers
Open Range is also an underrated gem.
I used to own RIO BRAVO, but I never was able to get through it. RED RIVER, except for a few scenes, is pretty boring.
What about Frank Perry’s DOC?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyHVKHMh5Fw
Good list Tapley, except I’d remove Shane and Butch Cassidy and insert The Wild Bunch and My Darling Clementine.
Tapley, no love for High Plains Drifter? It’s actually my favorite Eastwood western, neck-and-neck with Unforgiven.
RB isn’t even the best oater from ’59. “Day of the Outlaw” gets my vote for that. you can also make a case for “Last Train from Gun Hill.”
RIO BRAVO: Greatest. Western. Ever.
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