Posted by Randy Barnett:
Rio Bravo Reconsidered:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_17-2009_05_23.shtml#1243113659
Rio Bravo was never one of my favorite westerns but, but after reading
[1]Haunted by the Memory of Her Song: Fifty Years of �Rio Bravo�, I
may have to see it again. Here is how it begins:
Exquisitely crafted, but never ostentatious. Pleasantly mellow, but
never lazy. Thematically rich, but never preachy. Respectful of
tradition, but never stolid. Deeply compassionate, but never
descending into schmaltz. Five decades ago, a group of men now
long-dead (and, it must be said, one smokin�-hot woman,
still-living) followed an aged veteran director into the Arizona
desert to make a humble, heartfelt western based firmly on
quintessentially American notions of courage, decency, and good
humor. The result of their collaboration, Rio Bravo (1959), remains
one of the great visceral pleasures of cinema.
Howard Hawks� masterpiece stemmed from his disgust with the joyless
anti-heroics of uptight, melodramatic westerns like Fred
Zinnemann�s High Noon (1952) and Delmer Daves� 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
� dark �message movies� that seemed to revel in smugly depicting
small-town Americans as cynics and cowards. The man behind such
classics as Scarface (1932), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have
and Have Not (1944), Red River (1948), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(1953) was in his early sixties in 1958, his career winding down
after decades of constant production. He had interned for Famous
Players-Lasky way back in 1916, and directed his first features in
the mid-1920s. Thirty years later he was old and tired, and his
last film, Land of the Pharaohs (1955), had been a disheartening
flop. Since then, the previously prolific director hadn�t helmed a
picture in three years, an unheard-of period of self-exile for a
man who had cranked out movies regularly for decades. But the
brazen slap across the face that High Noon had given America�s
western mythology had bothered him. �I made Rio Bravo,� he later
told an interviewer, �because I didn�t like High Noon. Neither did
Duke. I didn�t think a good town marshal was going to run around
town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help.
And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn�t my idea of a good
western.�
I found this point particularly interesting:
Most crucially, it was director Hawks who crafted John Wayne�s
character into a master not only of action but of reaction, in the
process establishing an overriding feeling of camaraderie that
makes the film endlessly rewatchable. �John Wayne represents more
force, more power than anyone else on screen,� Hawks claimed, and
yet by dint of directorial will the star of Rio Bravo becomes
everyone else�s straight man. During the course of the plot the
Duke gets socked by Dean Martin (twice!), is verbally out-dueled by
the precocious Ricky Nelson, suffers the outrageous behavior of
Walter Brennan, is relentlessly teased by the ever-flirtatious
Angie Dickinson, and is continuously rescued by all of the above.
�You give everybody else the fireworks,� Wayne grumbled to Hawks at
one point, �but I have to carry the damn thing.�
And yet Hawks knew that, with a universe of talents at his
disposal, Wayne�s secret weapon was always his generosity and
humility as an actor, his penchant for binding himself and his ego
to the needs of a picture. He was unparalleled in his ability to
lend his potent movie-star glow to others in a scene, holding up
the entire business like a grizzled, enduring Atlas. For Rio Bravo,
the breakthrough came during one of Dean Martin�s many set-pieces,
while Wayne was standing aside and watching glumly as Martin got to
once again chew up the scenery with his performance. �What do I do
while he�s playing all of these good scenes?� he finally asked
Hawks in frustration.
�Well,� Hawks replied, �you look at him as a friend.�
Suddenly everything Hawks had been striving for, the entire
emotional spectrum he was meticulously constructing, became clear.
And throughout the finished Rio Bravo, you can go to any point and
see the spectacular results of Wayne embracing Hawks� perceptive
direction. Watch, for instance, the scene after Walter Brennan�s
character Stumpy has almost killed Dean Martin by carelessly
shooting at him through the jailhouse door. Wayne stands by as
Brennan, one of the all-time great scene-stealing character actors,
goes through an entire blabbering monologue of words and emotions
that covers denial, mortification, and finally a resigned
acceptance of responsibility. It�s all great stuff, hugely
entertaining � but look closely at Wayne. Not a word spoken, not a
single word. And yet his pitch-perfect reactions to each of
Brennan�s lines gives the scene its touching pathos and power.
Wayne spends virtually the entire film loaning his star power to
others in this fashion, not acting so much as reacting, and using
those reactions to give his co-stars a much brighter spotlight in
which to shine. Indisputably, we have Howard Hawks to thank for
that. The Duke was known to sometimes distrust and argue with
lesser directors, but along with John Ford only Howard Hawks
commanded his absolute respect. �Hawks I trust with my life,� he
once declared, a sentiment amply proven by the fearless
bigheartedness of his performance in Rio Bravo. Both star and
director were so happy with the way their collaboration went (only
their second time working together after Red River eleven years
before) that they more or less remade the same plot twice more in
later years, as El Dorado (1966) and Rio Lobo (1970). The
relationship was a special one. Long after both Hawks and Wayne had
died, Peter Bogdanovich (who knew both) recalled in an interview
that �The last times I saw both Cary Grant and John Wayne, they
both talked about Howard, about missing him.�
While on the subject of John Wayne, consider this: [2]Guess Who�s the
Third Most Popular Movie Star in America Today?
No, it�s not any of those celebrities we�re told are stars.
DiCaprio and George Clooney didn�t even make the top 10. Neither
did Ashton Kutcher, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Seth Rogen, Matt Damon,
Will Farrell, or Tom Cruise.
Every year for about 15 years now, Harris Interactive has conducted
a nationwide poll and asked a very simple question: �Who is your
favorite movie star?� And every year since the taking of the poll
one particular individual has placed in the top ten � 13 of those
years in the top 3.
This year, 2,388 U.S. adults were surveyed and this star rose three
places to tie Will Smith for third. Only Denzel Washington and
Clint Eastwood rank as more popular.
One last hint before the reveal: This star is the only actor in the
history of the poll to rank posthumously:
John Wayne
References
1.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2009/05/03/haunted-by-the-memory-of-her-song-fifty-years-of-rio-bravo/
2.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/03/18/guess-whos-the-third-most-popular-movie-star-in-america-today/
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
