RED RIVER (1948) (****)

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In the opinion of many critics and film scholars Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER is one of, if not the best, Western ever made. It’s hard for me to say if it’s better than HIGH NOON, STAGE COACH, WILD BUNCH or THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, but it ranks up there with them.

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne, THE QUIET MAN) is a grizzled frontier man who leaves his wagon train and his woman to set up a ranch in Texas. After he sees the burning of the wagons in the far distance, he knows his love Fen (Coleen Gray, RIDING HIGH) is dead. Soon he encounters a boy, who survived the attack, named Matt Garth who has a cow. With Dunson’s bull and Matt’s cow, Dunson adopts the boy and starts their ranch. After 10 years, Dunson has built, by any means necessary, his ranch into the biggest in Texas.

Matt (Montgomery Clift, A PLACE IN THE SUN) returns from the Civil War as a skilled gunfighter, but more reserved about Dunson’s harsh ways. Because the price of cattle in Texas is so low, Dunson decides to drive his herd of 9,000 to Missouri in a last chance effort to save his ranch. So in the grand fashion of the Western, Dunson and Garth lead a group of men on a cattle drive more than 1,000 miles long.

The story is fairly simple. The film crams in everything that is signature to Westerns – cowboys, Indians attacks, stampedes, the posse chasing a man and the final showdown in the streets. If any genre of film is by definition archetypically male it’s the Western. The genre defines male stereotypes of tough swagger.

Dunson is a man’s man, but he’s also brutal and when Garth takes control of the herd after Dunson slips into insanity, Dunson sets his mind to killing Garth. Hawks is so subtle about Dunson’s slip into insanity that it feels natural. Most people won’t even notice that Dunson starts by wearing a white hat and eventually changes to a black hat. The dynamic that is built between Dunson and Garth is amazing and deals with issues like father vs. son, the generation gap and changing morality. Whether Hawks intended it or not, Dunson represents the idea that the white man’s claim on land is divinely allowed.

Unlike John Ford, Hawks isn’t solely identified with Westerns. He also filmed classic comedies like BRINGING UP BABY and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES as well as other genre flicks like THE BIG SLEEP, SERGENT YORK and SCARFACE. The battle between the genders is prevalent in many of his films like in HIS GIRL FRIDAY. This is where I’m going to discuss the role of women in the film, which includes the ending, so be warned of SPOLIERS.

Garth meets Tess Millay (Joanne Dru, ALL THE KING’S MEN) after her wagon train is attacked by Indians. In their first meeting, Tess doesn’t like Matt’s bossy male attitude. She even hits him. Matt still saves her and afterward she begins to fall for him when she learns his story and talks to him about his fears regarding Dunson. Because the Western is typically in support of a lot of macho attitudes, it’s interesting that an emotionally sensitive and vulnerable cowboy wins the girl. It’s in strict contrast to Dunson’s attitude toward Fen. Tess later meets Dunson and tries to persuade him from killing Matt, but Dunson just suggests that Tess bare him a son because he doesn’t have one anymore. In the final battle between, Dunson and Matt, Dunson is infuriated that Matt won’t draw his gun and fight. Once they do begin to beat each other up, it takes a tongue lashing by Tess, who finds the whole macho BS stupid, to make them stop.

I’ve read other critics say this is a weak ending, because it undermines the deep conflict between Dunson and Matt. I couldn’t disagree more. We know that the father isn’t going to really kill the son and visa versa. If anyone really believes that than they’ve fallen for the macho male stereotypes completely. So what’s better than a woman telling them that their male ego issues are silly and pointless? It throws the whole “I’ll meet you at dawn” concept, which the Western established, on its ear. The natural approach to the way Hawks shows the cowboys doing their work is wonderful. It’s the macho conflict that is ridiculous in some ways. It’s like Hawks took a testosterone filled genre and made the first case for the sensitive, but still strong, male. I love the ending. It’s like Hawks was making a sly comment about the whole genre. It's an excellent film that must me seen.