Red River movie review & film summary (1948) | Roger Ebert (2024)

When Peter Bogdanovich needed a movie to play as the finalfeature in the doomed small-town theater in “The Last Picture Show,” he choseHoward Hawks' “Red River” (1948). He selected the scene where John Wayne tellsMontgomery Clift, “Take 'em to Missouri, Matt!” And then there is Hawks' famousmontage of weathered cowboy faces in closeup and exaltation, as they cry “Hee-yaw!”and wave their hats in the air.

Themoment is as quintessentially Western as any ever filmed, capturing theexhilaration of being on a horse under the big sky with a job to do and apaycheck at the other end. And “Red River” is one of the greatest of allWesterns when it stays with its central story about an older man and a youngerone, and the first cattle drive down the Chisholm Trail. It is only in its fewscenes involving women that it goes wrong.

Thefilm's hero and villain is Tom Dunson (Wayne), who heads West with a wagontrain in 1851 and then peels off for Texas to start a cattle ranch. He takesalong only his wagon driver, Groot Nadine (Walter Brennan). Dunson'ssweetheart, Fen (Coleen Gray), wants to join them, but he rejects her almostabsentmindedly, promising to send for her later. Later, from miles away, Tomand Groot see smoke rising: Indians have destroyed the wagon train. Groot, agrizzled codger, fulminates about how Indians “always want to be burning upgood wagons,” and Tom observes that it would take them too long to go back andtry to help. Their manner is surprisingly distant, considering that Dunson hasjust lost the woman he loved.

Soonafter, the men encounter a boy who survived the Indian attack. This is MattGarth, who is adopted by Dunson and brought up as the eventual heir to hisranch. Played as an adult by Montgomery Clift (his first screen role), Mattgoes away to school, but returns in 1866 just as Dunson is preparing an epicdrive to take 9,000 head of cattle north to Missouri.

Imentioned that Dunson is both hero and villain. It's a sign of the movie'scomplexity that John Wayne, often typecast, is given a tortured, conflictedcharacter to play. He starts with “a boy with a cow and a man with a bull,” andbuilds up a great herd. But then he faces ruin; he must drive the cattle northor go bankrupt.

He'sa stubborn man; all through the movie people tell him he's wrong, and usuallythey're right. They're especially right in wanting to take the cattle toAbilene, which is closer and reportedly has a railroad line, instead of on thelonger trek to Missouri. As the cattle drive grows grueling, Dunson growsirascible, and finally whiskey and lack of sleep drive him a little mad; thereare attempted mutinies before Matt finally rebels and takes the cattle to Abilene.

Thecritic Tim Dirks has pointed out the parallels between their conflict and thestandoff between Capt. Bligh and Fletcher Christian in “Mutiny on the Bounty.”And indeed, the Borden Chase screenplay makes much of the older man's pride andthe younger one's need to prove himself.

Alsoestablished, but never really developed, is a rivalry between young Matt and atough cowboy named Cherry Valance (John Ireland), who signs up for the cattledrive and becomes Matt's rival. There's gonna be trouble between those two, oldGroot predicts, but the film never delivers, leaving them stranded in themiddle of a peculiar ambivalence that drew the attention of “The CelluloidCloset,” a documentary about hidden hom*osexuality in the movies. (“You know,”Cherry says, handling Matt's gun, “there are only two things more beautifulthan a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. You ever had a Swisswatch?”)

Theshifting emotional attachments are tracked by a silver bracelet, which Dunsongives to Fen before leaving her. It later turns up on the wrist of an Indian hekills, and Dunson then gives it to Matt, who later gives it to Tess Millay(Joanne Dru), a woman he rescues and falls in love with. The three scenes withTess are the movie's low points, in part because of her prattle (listen to howshe chats distractingly with Matt during an Indian attack), in part because sheis all too obviously the deus ex machina the plot needs to avoid an unhappyending. The final scene is the weakest in the film, and Borden Chase reportedlyhated it, with good reason: Two men act out a fierce psychological rivalry fortwo hours, only to cave in instantly to a female's glib tongue-lashing.

Whatwe remember with “Red River” is not, however, the silly ending, but the setupand the majestic central portions. The tragic rivalry is so well establishedthat somehow it keeps its weight and dignity in our memories, even though theending undercuts it.

Justas memorable are the scenes of the cattle drive itself, as a handful of mencontrol a herd so large it takes all night to ford a river. Russell Harlan'scinematography finds classical compositions in the drive, arrangements of men,sky and trees, and then in the famous stampede scene he shows a river of cattleflowing down a hill. It is an outdoor movie (we never go inside the ranch houseDunson must have built), and when young Matt steps inside the cattle buyer'soffice in Abilene, he ducks, observing how long it's been since he was under aroof.

Hawksis wonderful at setting moods. Notice the ominous atmosphere he brews on thenight of the stampede--the silence, the restlessness of the cattle, the loweredvoices. Notice Matt's nervousness during a night of thick fog, when everyshadow may be Tom, come to kill him. And the tension earlier, when Dunson holdsa kangaroo court.

Andwatch the subtle way Hawks modulates Tom Dunson's gradual collapse. John Wayneis tall and steady at the beginning of the picture, but by the end his hair isgray and lank, and his eyes are haunted; the transition is so gradual we mightnot even notice he wears a white hat at the outset but a black one at the end.Wayne is sometimes considered more of a natural force than an actor, but herehis understated acting is right on the money; the critic Joseph McBride saysJohn Ford, who had directed Wayne many times, saw “Red River” and told Hawks, “Inever knew the big son of a bitch could act.”

BetweenWayne and Clift there is a clear tension, not only between an older man and ayounger one, but between an actor who started in 1929 and another whor*presented the leading edge of the Method. It's almost as if Wayne, who couldgo over a flamboyant actor, was trying to go under a quiet one: He meets thechallenge, and matches it.

Thetheme of “Red River” is from classical tragedy: the need of the son to slay thefather, literally or symbolically, in order to clear the way for his ownascendancy. And the father's desire to gain immortality through a child (theone moment with a woman that does work is when Dunson asks Tess to bear a sonfor him). The majesty of the cattle drive, and all of its expert details about “takingthe point” and keeping the cowhands fed and happy, is atmosphere surroundingthese themes.

Underlyingeverything else is an attitude that must have been invisible to the filmmakersat the time: the unstated assumption that it is the white man's right to takewhat he wants. Dunson shoots a Mexican who comes to tell him “Don Diego” ownsthe land. Told the land had been granted to Diego by the king of Spain, Dunsonsays, “You mean he took it away from whoever was here before--Indians, maybe.Well, I'm takin' it away from him.” In throwaway dialogue, we learn of sevenmore men Dunson has killed for his ranch, and there's a grimly humorous motifas he shoots people and then “reads over 'em” from the Bible.

Dunsonis a law of his own, until Matt stops a hanging and ends his reign. If allWesterns are about the inevitable encroachment of civilization, this is onewhere it seems like a pretty good idea.