RIO BRAVO (1959) C widescreen 141m dir: Howard Hawks

w/John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, John Russell, Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Estelita Rodriguez, Claude Akins, Malcolm Atterbury, Harry Carey Jr., Sheb Wooley

From The Movie Guide: "Annoyed that the acclaimed and popular HIGH NOON portrayed a sheriff so afraid of his adversaries that he spends most of the movie asking the townsfolk for help, director Howard Hawks decided to make a filmed response, namely RIO BRAVO. A lengthy, leisurely-paced film, RIO BRAVO is set in a small Texas border town, Rio Bravo, that is under the control of evil cattle baron Russell and his dim-witted brother, Akins. When Akins commits a murder, the sheriff (Wayne) throws him in jail to await the arrival of a US Marshall. Russell lays siege to the jailhouse, and Wayne is forced to rely on the town drunk (Martin), a cranky old cripple (Brennan), and an untested young gunslinger (Nelson) for help.

"With its simple plotline, familiar characters, songs, and frequent humor, RIO BRAVO is outstanding entertainment. However, the film has been overrated by some zealous critics, who either ignore its weak points or defend them as praiseworthy oddities. As enjoyable as the film is, it has its flaws that prevent it from reaching the classic status of RED RIVER --- particularly the casting. Pop star Ricky Nelson was cast on the basis of his great popularity with teenagers rather than because of any acting talent, a decision that ensured additional box office from young girls who wouldn't normally think of going to see a western. Despite his moneymaking potential, however, Nelson simply couldn't act, and Hawks must have known it. The singer is given the fewest lines possible for a third-billed actor, and he is physically restricted to the background or alongside the other leads. He is never given center stage alone --- this is no Montgomery Clift (Wayne's costar in RED RIVER). Also somewhat weak is Angie Dickinson. While she is given all the right Hawksian dialog and her character is the quintessential Hawks woman, tough enough to stand up to any man who comes her way, she doesn't possess the spunkiness of a Jean Arthur or the sultriness of a Lauren Bacall. Wayne, however, turns in a fine performance (though not as good as his work in RED RIVER), and Walter Brennan is superb as the grouchy, nasty old man who is undyingly loyal to his friends. The real revelation, however, is Dean Martin, in a part he obviously understood well. His role as the drunken deputy who redeems himself is crucial to the film, and the singer-actor handles his part with skill. Hawks enjoyed working with Martin, whom he found eager and willing to take direction.

"RIO BRAVO was very successful commercially, and Hawks later used two variations of the story (with the same character types, similar situations, sometimes even the same sets) in his last two westerns (EL DORADO and RIO LOBO). All cowritten by Leigh Brackett, the films form a sort of informal trilogy, although they become successively weaker. Though Hawks was inspired to make RIO BRAVO as a rebuttal to HIGH NOON, his daughter, Barbara Hawks McCampbell, an aspiring writer, came up with the basic plotline that later became the film's climax --- outlaws holed up in a house, while the heroes explode sticks of dynamite by shooting them like clay targets --- and was paid and given screen credit for the story. Overall, RIO BRAVO is an excellent film featuring strong, proud, but very human characters who fight against their various handicaps and pull together to do a job and do it right. The people in RIO BRAVO have the same kind of deep affection and understanding for one another as do close family members who are not afraid to speak truthfully for fear of hurting each other's feelings, and it is that aspect of the film that is so appealing. Director John Carpenter's second feature ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, is an updated remake of RIO BRAVO."

From Roger Ebert's website (www.rogerebert.com), his 2009 review of the film:

"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 (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.

"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 Hawks' Red River, said '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.

"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.'"