Red River

Wednesday, June 28 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

RED RIVER
Directed by Howard Hawks • 1948
“You’re fast with that gun, Matt. Awful fast. But your heart’s soft. Too soft. Might get you hurt some day.” Howard Hawks’s first western is an Oedipal road movie of sorts, depicting an epic cattle drive from Texas to Missouri along the Chisholm Trail during which a tyrannical rancher Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) becomes increasingly at odds with his more rational and sensitive adopted son Matt Garth, played by Montgomery Clift. It was a career-defining role for Wayne, whose performance as a complicated and often deeply unlikable character allegedly prompted John Ford (who had already directed Wayne in several films) to comment to Hawks, “I never knew the big son of a bitch could act.” Red River has what we’ve come to expect from a great classic American Western, all gorgeous vistas, hard-working men around the fire, your land is actually my land etc., but it sets itself apart as a nuanced film about the intricacies of male love and friendship. It’s so deeply focused on the men in the film, it often fails its female characters (although Joanne Dru takes an arrow in the arm as well as any John Carpenter heroine), almost as if it doesn’t have room left to hold those relationships. Yet there’s enough rage and love and unspoken words simmering under the surface to keep you on your toes for the long drive to Missouri. A shooting contest between Clift and John Ireland (as a character aptly named ‘Cherry Valance’) might send you looking for a cold shower. Peter Bogdanovich called it “the best epic Western ever made,” and it’s the final movie playing at the soon-to-be shuttered theater in his film The Last Picture Show, implying that if you’re going to show one last movie, it might as well be something tremendous. (RL)
133 min • United Artists • 35mm from Park Circus

Preceded by: Howard Hawks trailer reel – ~10 min – 35mm from Chicago Film Society Collections