John Wayne, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan are supremely unbothered by danger in Hawks' High Noon riposte, Rio Bravo |
When they saw High Noon Hawks and Wayne were
unimpressed. Who was this sissy cry-baby, blubbing in his office, begging all
and sundry to join him in an impending gunfight with an outraged gang? This
wasn’t the West they knew. How un-American was that? So, heads went together
and they came up with their counterpoint: Rio Bravo, where the Duke does
the right thing, locks up the bad man, is supremely unruffled by threats of
violence from his gang, turns down offers of help from across the town (he
doesn’t need to worry, they all help anyway) and even finds time for an
unfazed, late-night jail-room sing-along with his deputies. Take that Fred
Zinnemann and Carl Foreman!
The Duke is John T Chance, a grizzled, experienced sheriff,
still in-his-prime, who arrests the brother of Nathan Burdette (John Russell)
after he shoots an unarmed man in a bar brawl. When Nathan demands his release
– or there will be hell to pay – Chance relies on the men he can trust:
old-timer Stumpy (Walter Brennan), recovering alcoholic former-deputy Dude
(Dean Martin) and (eventually) plucky young gunslinger Colorado (Ricky Nelson).
The three simply have to wait for the Marshalls to arrive and take Burdette
away – but will the Burdette’s strike first? On top of which, Chance’s eye is
caught by the widow of a cheating gambler, Feathers (Angie Dickinson) – does he
also have time for a bit of love?
Rio Bravo is possibly one of the most
“shooting-the-breeze” films ever made – even though the general air of manly
cool is punctuated by the odd gun-fight. Wayne and his gang are far too cool,
confident and quick on the draw to ever be that worried about the approaching
threat of the Burdette family – not that you can blame them, since Hawks spends
only the minimum amount of time fleshing them out. Instead, the film is a
chronicle of a few days where they hole-up and basically shoot-the-breeze –
their banter carrying over to exchanging bon-mots during the final
gunfight (“You took two shots!” “I didn’t take the wind into account”). It’s
the sort of unfazed cool against the odds that you can see has carried across
to a whole host of modern action and superhero films, heroes who are so
confident in their skills they crack wise even under fire.
Rio Bravo is directed at a gentle pace but complete
assurance by Hawks. It occasionally has a feel of settling down and watching a
relaxed after-show party, with a group of actors so comfortable in each other’s
company, that they simply filmed themselves having a whale of a time. Wayne
marshals the whole thing on screen with authority and confident precision: the
part is far from a stretch, but he hits the beats with a naturalness that
really works, from a fatherly mix of encouragement and disappointment in Dude’s
slow turnaround from his drunken collapse, to a crusty flirtatiousness with
Feathers (Angie Dickinson at her most radiant here).
The film is full of delightful little moments that pop-up
with a perfectly judged regularity. Colorado and Feathers save Chance’s bacon
with a perfectly timed flower-pot through the window, matched with Colorado’s pitch-perfect
shooting skills. Dude judges exactly the location of sharp-shooter through the
drops of blood on a full beer-glass (a lovely image from Hawks). Chance and
Colorado confront a card cheat. Chance is so cool under fire, that pinned with
two guns on his back in a small room, he never once feels like he thinks there
is any real danger.
Either side of these events, the film is full of a sublime
lackadaisical charm, as our heroes riff off each other, never once letting
events get too heavy. You couldn’t cast Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson without
having them break into song – so of course, they do just that in a late-night
sing-along. It seems to be about blocking out the sound of Degüello, the
cut-throat Mexican song that plays non-stop outside the town overnight, warning
them of the perils to come. But really it’s just because we are watching three
blokes chilling and simply too cool to be that flustered by scare-tactics. (The
Degüello here, by-the-way, was composed by High Noon’s composer
Dimitri Tiomkin – another one in the eye for that film).
Wayne’s charges all do a fine job on screen, with Dean
Martin in particular fitting the role like a glove and bringing a wonderful
sense of sixties brashness as well as a surprisingly affecting struggle with
alcohol. Ricky Nelson does his duty when pushed. Walter Brennan wheezes and
cackles as only he can. Angie Dickinson is wonderfully vibrant and sexy –
surely, with those tights, she’s too much for even the Duke to handle?
Duty is what it is all about, and these are men’s-men who
knuckle down and get on with it rather than complain. People may offer to help,
but only those qualified will do so (two of them rock-up to help at the final
gunfight anyway). That film’s concluding shoot-out is rousing, dramatic and literally
explosive. Hawks shoots it all with assured skill – the film’s long silent
opening, is a wordless delight of reaction, implication and careful character
development (Chance and Dude are wordlessly, but perfectly, established).
Rio Bravo is one of those films people has have their
“favourite” – and that might be because it’s laid-back, fun and invites you to
join on it. It’s free of pretension and shows you the sort of men you’d like to
be, going about effortlessly the sort of things you’d like to do. No wonder
people love it so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.