Rio Bravo — Directed and Produced by Howard Hawks. Western. A sheriff, a teen-aged gunslinger, a drunken deputy, and a crippled coot hold out for justice while keeping the land baron’s brother captive. 241 minutes Color 1959.
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People often confuse an actor with the role he plays, and this was never more plainly illustrated than in the case of John Wayne. Because everyone could play cowboys and Indians when they were kids, they assumed John Wayne didn’t have to be a very good actor to do it too. Besides, they learned it from him. He pretty much all the time played a cowboy and never got killed and was the hero. And so everyone who liked him got caught up with those constant features of his roles. He shed the light of the role he played. He mesmerized males. Which means he was beyond examination. Which means he was beyond criticism. He was larger than life which means he was a God. But if you look at Wayne in this, or probably any picture after Red River, you can see what a good actor he was. How he listens to the other characters, how he restrains himself, how he gives over scenes to other actors. In this one he has some particularly effective scenes with Angie Dickinson, who is no relation to Emily Dickinson, and who plays an itinerant gambling lady of indeterminate virtue. Watch how he responds to her, how baffled he is, yet how well timed with his lines. Watch to see how well the scene plays, not because of her skill, although she is the aggressor, but because of his. She herself was not well established in her craft as yet. And so she tends to perfume her part, although it is written as though it were written for Lauren Bacall, that is, for the sort of slim deep-voiced actress Hawks liked who could play sexual insolence without turning a hair. Another actor we take for granted is Walter Brennan. Hawks made many films with him. “With or without?’ he asked Hawks when he first turned up for work. “With or without what?” said Hawks. “My teeth,” said Brennan. This performance is without and it is a shack, one of many he erected in his long and beautiful career. Brennan is the only actor to win three supporting role Oscars, and those roles are well worth examination. What he brings here is Life! Ricky Nelson cannot do likewise because he is seventeen; he has not gelled as a male yet; he is not yet a thing. And Dean Martin cannot do it either, because he is inherently not an actor at all. He is a darling man, of course, but he only comes alive half asleep on a bunk singing a little song, comes alive because he is most natural when singing. The difference between a comic and a humorist was never so well illustrated as in Martin and Lewis. Lewis is a comic; Martin a humorist, but this shows only once in a moment when he laughs with delight at the foolishness of Brennan. But he is likable enough, and so is the picture, though it is tolerably long. For 2 1/2 hours it dawdles from episode to episode, each one taking place indoors, and each one either at the saloon, the hotel, or the jail. Wayne must carry it all. But look at him. Sex feet four, long of torso, pigeon toed, and toting a presence that no actor of the present day can even come close to.
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