Holden & mafo at Movie Forums

I still have a ton of films to see so I would be very interested in hearing (*reading) you guys talk about them and what I should look out for or stay away from.

The wiseman and the wiseass - this should be grand.



Looking forward to your first review guys.

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It sounds interesting guys, go for it.

Oh no, I'd say their both wise asses.

And yes anytime we can have two film elitist bastards argue it out... I'm all for it. Especially when its these two.

As for a first film... I'm not sure. If I brush out the cobwebs of ancient MovieJustice history, it seemed like these two disagreed very much on the film Taxi Driver. Of course I could be wrong.

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Member since Fall 2002
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This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast Network. Holds, I know you've seen My Winnipeg. I've seen it twice today. What a crazy, semi-original, flippin' wacko, hilarious, beautifully-conceived, visually-flamboyant, incredibly-personal, and still-sad flick! Maybe we can start something about this one, even though I realize that you still need to get your personal PC fixed to be able to discuss in the evenings. Hopefully, you can say something because I would take the lead here, but I want to know when the response will show. Hey. Justin, if you or anyone else who has seen it wants to post something, feel free.



The internet only posts images of this shot upside down and backwards! HA!

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

When are you two crazy kids going to really kick this bad boy off? The call just now poured in from your rabid fan. OK, not really. But I still would like to see you two get this bird off the ground.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

^ ditto (lord that is so geeky of a word to use outside of a printing press"

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

OK, Mark and I are finally going to give this a shot, see how it goes. We're going to start with a true classic in the Western genre...


RED RIVER
1948, Howard Hawks

Where to begin with Red River? It's a tale of an epic cattle drive from Texas to the plains of Kansas, along the Chisholm Trail, stars John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, and was the first Western made by the great director Howard Hawks, who worked in just about every genre there was over his long, brilliant career. It loosely takes some cues from Mutiny On the Bounty, with Wayne's tough-minded and sometimes even tyrannical Tom Dunson at constant odds with his informally adopted son Matthew (Clift), who is more gentle and beloved by the other cowhands. For those who have never seen Red River it was referenced in the hit comedy City Slickers, the "Yee Haw!" scene they replicate at the beginning of their cattle drive. It's also the last picture show in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.

In general I have problems with John Wayne, but that doesn't mean I don't think he was in some all-time great films, [Red River being near the top of the list for me. For those who only know Montgomery Clift by name, this was his first movie and he quickly became a movie star in the 1950s, often grouped together with Brando and James Dean as the new crop of Hollywood stars who employed "Method" acting. The mixture of his off-center vulnerability with a version of Wayne's iconic persona is a winner. One of the reasons I like Wayne in this is he isn't a perfect good guy, but a rather monsterous sonofabitch. It's the kind of role I wish he had chosen more often.


So, I'll let Mark get in here and hopefully start a conversation....

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

To show a perfect example of what Holds is talking about, check this:

Please forgive the crummy audio; it's much better on the DVD.



Red River is a Star Wars-type experience for some people I know. My brother, who was five when Red River came out, said that the only movie he could compare it to in the theatrical experience was Star Wars (1977), and no matter how much I disagree with him on other things, I can see what he's talking about concerning Red River (I've see it on the big screen). Hawks goes out of his way to film everything in a spectacular manner, even including the scenes which were obviously shot on sets. Much of Red River is shot out on the Plains in the middle of nowhere, and according to Pauline Kael, the budget for the film almost doubled because Hawks rented the cattle and then a rain storm occurred, causing the film to be unable to shoot the appropriate scenes until after about 1.5 million dollars got washed away. Even so, most everybody loved Red River, and it's one of the greatest adventure films I've ever seen.

It's really interesting to see the interaction between Wayne and Clift. The kid they have playing the young Clift is really good at getting pissed at the Wayne (Dunson) character, but Clift, himself, tries to play everthing low-key, at least until he's forced to act in the video shown. I also love the relationship between Walter Brennan and John Wayne. The characters in Red River just seem to have lived together for years.

Holden?

I've never gotten to see Red River on the big screen, but I hope to someday. I've seen it many times on television and DVD, of course. It does have some impressive epic shots, that's for sure. In a way I wish it had been made five or six years later so it might have been a widescreen color spectacular like his epic Land of the Pharaohs, which isn't much of a movie beyond its scope. But for non-widescreen-format Westerns, you can't do much better than Red River for spectacle. And he didn't even use Ford's Monument Valley.

It has some familiar Hawks themes in it about manhood and loyalty and the meaning of courage. I'd say one Hawks trademark it doesn't have a whole lot of his humor, other than some of the great Walter Brennan's moments. And Joanne Dru as Tess, she certainly has many of the traits of a no nonsense tough Hawks woman, especially evident in that scene at the end where she breaks up their dramatic fight to the death before it gets that far.





There are some great character actors in some of the supporting roles too, not just the aforementioned Brennan but also Harry Carey Senior and Junior, Hank Worden as well as Noah Beery Jr., who late in his career got the role of his life as Jim's father Rocky on "The Rockford Files".

Wayne was best known as the Western movie star, and most of his reputation and legend is tied to his many movies with John Ford. But he made four with Howard Hawks. The others aren't masterpieces like Red River and come late in both The Duck (I says) and Hawks' careers, but this collaboration has to stand boot to boot with the best of the Ford/Wayne pairings, though if forced to choose I'd put the myth-examining of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance just slightly ahead of it.

Yep, that scene where Joanne Dru's arm is pinned to a wagon by an Indian's arrow isn't probably meant to be funny, but the way she just keeps pitching her sex is, so who's responsible for that? There is something of a motif in the film about the Dunson (I respectfully will call him The Duke) character losing his women. At the beginning of the film, Dunson makes the mistake of sending off the woman who would give him "all that he needs a woman to give him to be a man". It's this guilt over his lost love which seems to later help fuel Dunson's megalomanical ideas, but Matt does seem to warm his heart as a father, at least until he "turns" against the old man.

One other thing I find interesting about Red River is that it came out the same year as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and although the two films obviously have different agendas, it's amazing how much they're able to compliment each other. Both films have almost paranoid lead characters who are actually not really bad people but turn increasingly dangerous the more they get closer to their dreams coming true. Fred C. Dobbs isn't really that far off from Dunson when you get right down to it, but Dobbs goes all primeval (Alfonso Bedoyaish) and doesn't need to do bad things according to some "higher authority" where he "reads over" the men he's killed.

Yeah, it does have some character parallels with John Huston's Sierra Madre, though I think Dunson's paranoia and anger is somewhat more justified on a basic level. He brings the "mutiny" on himself, but it comes from his single-minded determination to accomplish the Herculean task of the massive drive the only way he knows how, even if it is too dictatorial and insensitive to the other men on the drive. Dobbs, on the other hand, has classic "gold fever" and his paranoia that grows to madness is really unfounded in any reality, as Tim Holt's Curtain and Walter Huston's Howard have given absolutely no reasons for him to distrust them. But both movies do have the big movie stars of Wayne and Bogart going mad in a largely unsympathetic ways, which is unusual for movie stars of any era but especially the late 1940s.

As for the later Wayne and Hawks Westerns, Rio Bravo and El Dorado are nice enough entertainments, but they don't do much for me and don't have the kind of ambition and characters as Red River. I don't really groove to the gimmicky Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson casting with song break in Bravo, I much prefer Mitchum and Jimmy Caan in Dorado. But considering El Dorado came out in '66, after Leone burst onto the international scene and just before he and Peckinpah really changed the genre, it seems very out of step and tired. Considering a movie we both love, Richard Brooks' endlessly enjoyable The Professionals with Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, et al. came out the same year as El Dorado, to me it shows how Wayne was truly'waning, even as king of the movie Western. It's still a few years before The Duck is given his Oscar for True Grit, which I think even the most ardent Wayne fans can see is mostly a career achievement acknowledgment rather than an award for being amazing in that particular flick. I mean, he beat out Hoffman and Voight for Midnight Cowboy! I know even as a John Wayne fan, that has to dumbfound you (in an awards sense) considering your love for the Schlesinger movie.

"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.”
- Chili Palmer, Get Shorty


So Mark, where would you put Red River in the Wayne Western pantheon or in comparison to the John Ford titles?

Nice thread guys

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Buddha

First of all, I will absolutely pimp The Professionals again. I love (or is it lurve, Woody Allen?) that movie. It seems like it was made yesterday, not 43 years ago! I will also say that even though I agree with you and believe that Wayne got his Oscar for "career accomplishment" for True Grit that I enjoy that performance and don't really begrudge him that win, at least anymore. Wayne did quite a bit of against-type acting in that flick too, and his sense of humor there is really quite excellent.

I know that you have problems with The Quiet Man, but that's easily my Best Ford and Best Wayne flick, and what d'ya know, St. Patrick's Day is turning up in about a week! I'd probably rate Wayne's performances as follows:

1. The Quiet Man
2. Red River
3. The Searchers
4. Island in the Sky
5. True Grit

I'd probably rate his best films as follows:

1. The Quiet Man
2. Red River
3. The Searchers
4. True Grit
5. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

I like Wayne as an actor a lot. I don't feel he ever really "phoned it in", Big Jim McLain notwithstanding. The Duke was just being himself, and I realize that if you don't like his politics that could grate on you, but I believe he created some great characters (whether it was by accident or not), and I'm not going to belittle him for giving me and countless millions pleasure, even if you want to say it was because he walked or talked "funny".

if i haven't seen Red River should i read all that? ^^^^^ i want to...but i haven't seen it

Where's The Shootist in that list hmmm?

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Of course, rice. The Shootist is probably somewhere around #6 on both of MY lists, but Holden will have to answer for himself.

Great discussion, folks. I have added Red River to my queue...

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Yeah, The Shootist is up there. It's the perfect way for Wayne to have gone out on film, and Don Siegel does a good job mixing wistful nostalgia with some of the myth-breaking of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Footage from Red River is used in the opening, as well as bits from Rio Bravo and El Dorado, in establishing Wayne's character's exploits in younger days. It also wound up as the final Western for Jimmy Stewart, The Duck's Liberty Valance co-star who made his mark in the genre mostly in flicks made by Anthony Mann.

I'd like to see which one of you can make it to 100% on the movie lists first, you are both very close. Actually Holden has seen 101% of the Oscar Winners, which is impossible, maybe something Yoda needs to fix?

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."