Rio Bravo (1959)

Thanks for sharing that article, May. It was an enjoyable read. And the film is so enjoyable, I hadn't actually noticed that it was over 2 hours long.

Mark

Wow! Who'd have thought to see such an article in the Wall Street Journal? A most enjoyable read; I had never made the connection between the music of Rio Bravo and The Alamo!

Thanks, May!

Mrs. C

Hi
Tiomkin must have been in a lazy mood when he scored Ri Bravo, besides My Rifle My Pony and Me he also took the theme from Blowing Wild (Marina Mine) in the opening scene in the saloon when all you hear is the guitar.

Regards

Arthur

He wrote some Great Music for the Films !
:teeth_smile:
Chilibill

Having a collection of 98 of his films on VHS and 108 of them on DVD, going to Blu Ray is going to wait. That was a very good and enjoyable article from the Wall Street Journal, thanks very much for the link and the read. No wonder Rio Bravo made this site's number one favorite list in this it's 50th year.

The song from Red River, Settle Down by Dimitri T, sounds very similar to the song Dude sings before Colorado sings his song in the jailhouse.

Hello All
I have an idea that this film is going to look pretty amazing to anyone who makes it down to Winterset Iowa this year. First indoors on Friday night then outdoors on Saturday night. What is that little town going to be like when its chock-er block full of John Wayne fans. Kind of makes you wonder what you might be missing don't it ? take care

I love this movie, but I can't watch it without obsessing on the continuity problems every time Duke goes from indoors to outdoors. His hat is always different! There's a lot of walking through doors in this movie, and the front rim of his hat always goes from bent upwards to straight, or vice-versa. Now everyone will notice it! Sorry!

Quote from Yakima1

I love this movie, but I can't watch it without obsessing on the continuity problems every time Duke goes from indoors to outdoors. His hat is always different! There's a lot of walking through doors in this movie, and the front rim of his hat always goes from bent upwards to straight, or vice-versa. Now everyone will notice it! Sorry!

Interesting, I never noticed that before. Will haveto check it out.

There are alot of movies that I watch over and over again and after awhile I notice little things that are out of place. Just try to remember what it was that endured you to the movie in the first place and forget about the little goofy things.

Roger Ebert on Rio Bravo.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com…90715/REVIEWS08/907159989


John Wayne, Ricky Nelson and Angie Dickinson in "Rio Bravo."


Rio Bravo (1959)


/ / / July 15, 2009





by Roger Ebert

Howard Hawks didn’t direct a film for four years after the failure of his "Land of the Pharaohs" in 1955. He thought maybe he had lost it. When he came back to work on "Rio Bravo" in 1958, he was 62 years old, would be working on his 41st film and was so nervous on the first day of shooting that he stood behind a set and vomited. Then he walked out and directed a masterpiece.
To watch "Rio Bravo" is to see a master craftsman at work. The film is seamless. There is not a shot that is wrong. It is uncommonly absorbing, and the 141-minute running time flows past like running water. It contains one of John Wayne’s best performances. It has surprisingly warm romantic chemistry between Wayne and Angie Dickinson. Dean Martin is touching. Ricky Nelson, then a rival of Elvis’ and with a pompadour that would have been laughed out of the Old West, improbably works in the role of a kid gunslinger. Old Walter Brennan, as the peg-legged deputy, provides comic support that never oversteps.

Wayne and the other men and the gambling lady inhabit a town that is populous and even crowded, but not a single citizen, except for an early victim, a friendly hotel owner and his wife and of course the villain, ever says a word to them. The shadows are filled with hired killers with $50 gold pieces in their pockets — "the price of a human life." All that buys Wayne and his deputies a stay of execution is the prisoner they precariously hold as a hostage. In a film with suspenseful standoffs and looming peril, even a scene where Wayne and Martin walk down Main Street after nightfall is frightening.

The story situation was fashioned by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett, two veterans who wrote Hawks’ great film "The Big Sleep" in 1946. It centers on four men holed up inside a sheriff’s office: a seasoned lawman, a drunk, an old coot and a kid. This formula would prove so resilient that Hawks would remake it in "El Dorado" (1966), John Carpenter would remake it as "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976) and directors from Scorsese to Tarantino to Stone would directly reference it. It is a Western with all of the artifice of the genre, but the characters and their connections take on a curious reality; within this closed system, their relationships have a psychological plausibility.

Hawks and Angie Dickinson on the set.


Wayne, as Sheriff John T. Chance, plays what he himself called "the John Wayne role." He even wears the same hat, now battered and torn, that he had worn in Westerns ever since John Ford’s "Stagecoach" (1939). Yet here he calls upon the role and his own history to bring nuance and depth to the character. Grumpy old Ford, seeing the film, told Hawks, "I never knew the big son of a bitch could act."

Wayne is effective above all when he simply stands and regards people. "I don’t act, I react," he liked to say, and here you see what he meant. His Chance doesn’t feel it necessary to impose himself, apart from the formidable fact of his presence. He never sweet-talks Feathers (Dickinson), indeed tends to be gruff toward her, but his eyes and body language speak for him. There is a moment when he is angered that she didn’t get on the stage out of town, stalks upstairs to her hotel room, barges through the door and then — in the reverse shot — sees her and transforms his whole demeanor. Can you say a man "softens" simply by the way he holds himself? With the most subtle of body movements, he unwinds into the faintest beginning of a courtly bow. You don’t see it. You feel it.

Dickinson was 27, looked younger, when she made the film — her first significant feature role after bit parts and TV. Wayne was 51. No matter. They fit together. They liked each other. They make this palpable without throwing themselves at each other. If you will go to chapter 21 of the DVD, you will see a romantic scene so sweet and unexpected, it may make you hold your breath. Dickinson absolutely holds the screen against the big man. Her carriage and deep, rich voice project a sense of who she is — not a saloon floozy but a competent professional gambler accustomed to sparring with men.



She was the type of woman Hawks liked, and returned to time and again: Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, indeed the future studio executive Sherry Lansing. He loved to use again what had worked for him earlier; when Dickinson asks Wayne to kiss her a second time, because "it’s even better when two people do it," there’s an echo of Bacall in "To Have and Have Not," telling Bogart, "It’s even better when you help." Peter Bogdanovich notices this in a supplement on the DVD and praises the long opening sequence in "Rio Bravo," which runs, he says, five minutes without dialogue. And no wonder: Hawks used the business of a coin thrown into a spittoon in the silent film "Underworld" (1927), for which he wrote the scenario. And where might Hawks have found inspiration for the scene where Wayne lifts Dickinson in his arms and carries her upstairs?

Much of the strength of the Chance character comes from the way he holds himself in reserve, not feeling the need to comment on everything. His delicate relationship with Dean Martin’s alcoholic character Dude involves a minimum of lectures and a lot of simply waiting to see what Dude will do. When Dude and old Stumpy (Brennan) get in a loud argument, Hawks holds Chance in center background, observing, not interfering. Chance is always the unspoken source of authority, the audience the others hope to impress.

The score by Dimitri Tiomkin evokes a frontier spirit when it wants to but also helps deepen the film, which rarely for a Western marks the passage of days with sunsets and sunrises, and makes the town streets seem lonely and exposed. There is also the introduction of a theme known to the Mexicans as "The Cutthroat Song," which the villain Burdette (John Russell) orders the band to play. Chance reads it as a message: "No quarter taken." The song haunts the film.

John Wayne's "Stagecoach" hat.


There is another use of music that some will question. In a lull in the action, the men relax inside the barricaded sheriff’s office, and Martin, resting on his back with his hat shielding his eyes, begins to sing about a cowboy’s loneliness. Nelson picks up his guitar and accompanies him. Then Ricky sings an uptempo song of his own, with Martin and even Brennan in harmony. Does this scene feel airlifted in? Maybe, but I wouldn’t do without it. Martin and Nelson were two of the most popular singers of the time, and the interlude functions well as an affectionate reprise for the men before the final showdown. Needless to say, Sheriff Chance doesn’t sing along.

The brave sheriff takes a stand against the outlaws who threaten a town. It is a familiar Western situation, which may remind you of "High Noon" (1952). In 1972, I interviewed Wayne on the set of his "Cahill, U.S. Marshal" in Durango, Mexico. "High Noon" came up, as it will when Westerns are being discussed.

"What a piece of you-know-what that was," he told me. "I think it was popular because of the music. Think about it this way. Here’s a town full of people who have ridden in covered wagons all the way across the plains, fightin’ off Indians and drought and wild animals in order to settle down and make themselves a homestead. And then when three no-good bad guys walk into town and the marshal asks for a little help, everybody in town gets shy. If I’d been the marshal, I would have been so goddamned disgusted with those chicken-livered yellow sons of bitches that I would have just taken my wife and saddled up and rode out of there."

may, you have done it again! GREAT article - thanks for sharing!

Chester

May has represented a glimpse into the mindset of the man. I'm grateful.

Quote from may2

Wayne, as Sheriff John T. Chance, plays what he himself called "the John Wayne role." He even wears the same hat, now battered and torn, that he had worn in Westerns ever since John Ford’s "Stagecoach" (1939). Yet here he calls upon the role and his own history to bring nuance and depth to the character. Grumpy old Ford, seeing the film, told Hawks, "I never knew the big son of a bitch could act."

I think the above statement is incorrect, I believe Ford made the statement after watching John Waynes towering performance in "Red River".

Based on the number of top ten polls that JW was in the top ten, or even the number one actor, I would have to agree with Ford. Even 30 years after his death and not making a movie he still is in the top ten. That's a superstar.

great film, the casting was perfect, and Angie is not to tough to look at!!!!

I always felt that Hawks made a bad decision in the opening sequences. The way it exists, the theme and titles play on Wheeler's wagon train moving through the desert. Then the film continues with the nighttime silent sequence culminating in Chance bashing in Burdett's head. Cut to the daytime funeral of Bing Russell, Dude in the street and Wheeler arriving.
It makes more sense to me to open with the silent sequence, then cutting to the titles and Wheeler's arrival in town. It flows better that way but I think Hawks was too leery of beginning the film in such an unorthodox manner.

We deal in lead, friend.

About 70 minutes into the film, just after the Mexican band in the saloon starts playing their haunting tune, the scene cuts to the sheriff's office where Duke is sitting and his left foot is keeping time with the tempo of the tune. And then Stumpy starts playing along with his mouth
organ.

I noticed from the bit with his left foot keeping time that what looks like a large paper clip is in the turn-up of his trousers. It looks as if it is keeping the turn-up tidy.

Anyone else noticed this?

Bob