Red River (1948)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Directors:

Howard Hawks
Arthur Rosson (co-director)

Writers:

Borden Chase (screenplay) and
Charles Schnee (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

26 August 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Western | Action | Adventure

Tagline:

Greatest Spectacle Ever!

Plot:

Dunson is driving his cattle to Red River when his adopted son, Matthew, turns against him.

Plot Keywords:

Cattle | Texas | Cattle Drive | Kansas | River Crossing

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 1 win & 2 nominations

US Showtimes:

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Cast

John Wayne	...	Thomas Dunson
Montgomery Clift	...	Matthew 'Matt' Garth
Joanne Dru	...	Tess Millay
Walter Brennan	...	'Groot' Nadine
Coleen Gray	...	Fen (also as Colleen Gray)
Harry Carey	...	Mr. Melville (as Harry Carey Sr.)
John Ireland	...	Cherry Valance
Noah Beery Jr.	...	Buster McGee
Harry Carey Jr.	...	Dan Latimer
Chief Yowlachie	...	Quo
Paul Fix	...	Teeler Yacey
Hank Worden	...	Simms Reeves
Mickey Kuhn	...	Matt, as a boy
Ray Hyke	...	Walt Jergens
Hal Taliaferro	...	Old Leather (as Hal Talliaferro)

Also Known As:

The River Is Red (USA) (working title)
La rivière rouge (Belgium: French title) (France) [fr]
Panik am roten Fluß (Austria) (West Germany) [de]
Red River (Austria) (Germany) [de]
De rode rivier (Belgium: Flemish title) [un]
Fiume rosso (Italy) [it]
Ha-Nahar Ha-Adom (Israel: Hebrew title) [iw]
Kanli nehir (Turkey: Turkish title) [tr]
O Rio Vermelho (Portugal) [pt]
Punainen virta (Finland) [fi]
Río rojo (Spain) [es]
Red River (Denmark) [da]
Rio Vermelho (Brazil) [pt]
Rzeka czerwona (Poland) [pl]

Runtime:

133 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Australia:G (original rating) | Australia:PG (TV rating) | West Germany:12 (nf) | Sweden:15 (cut) | Finland:K-12 | Germany:12 | Norway:16 | USA:Unrated | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Elgin, Arizona, USA

Company:

Charles K. Feldman Group

Trivia:

Five dams were built to bring the San Pedro River in Arizona, where the crossings were shot, to flood stage.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Dunson is standing next to his horse after Mathew Garth takes the herd from him, he clearly has a belt full of cartridges, but later on Mathew confirms to Groot that he took all of Dunson's cartridges.

Quotes:

Mr. Melville: I'll buy the drinks when it's over.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Last Picture Show (1971)

Soundtrack:

Settle Down

"Let's Take 'Em to Missouri."

In the pantheon of great performances by John Wayne, Red River ranks as one of the great ones, probably in the top five of his films. It's what the publicity folks mean when they talk about epic westerns.

John Wayne is a driven man, he's got to get that gigantic herd of cattle to market in Missouri or face ruin. He's not going to be selling them in Texas at carpetbagger prices so he's putting together the biggest, longest cattle drive on record to get to the railroad terminus in Missouri. He does it with the able assistance of his stepson Montgomery Clift newly returned from the Civil War.

A prologue to the main film shows what happened to Wayne years before. He left a wagon train going to California with good friend Walter Brennan and later that train is massacred with Wayne's fiancé Coleen Gray along with it. On the way to Texas, Wayne and Brennan pick up Mickey Kuhn who is playing a younger version of Monty Clift. They settle in Texas and Wayne puts together the biggest cattle ranch in the state which is where the main film starts.

Wayne and Clift play beautifully off against each other. Father and surrogate son, first working together and then having a big difference of opinion on the cattle drive. Clift started a film career in Red River playing sensitive people who you can only trod on just so long before they take action. You can see the inner workings of such later Clift roles as Robert E. Lee Prewitt and Noah Ackerman. Monty made a grand screen debut. And it was his debut, Red River was filmed first, but held up in release and Clift's The Search was released first to the public.

John Wayne had one of the best faces for movie closeups ever. In his best performances, top directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Bill Wellman realized this. He has a few in this film and they tell the audience more about what's going on inside this man than ten pages of dialog.

With Joanne Dru, Howard Hawks tries to repeat the magic he had with Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. Joanne is no Bacall, but she's good and had a pretty good career on her own. Her scenes with both Wayne and Clift have some of the same bite that Bacall's do with Bogey.

Dimitri Tiomkin's score deserves star billing right up there with the human cast. It is one of the great movie scores of all time period. let alone in the western genre. For me I've always noticed the similarity with the cattle drive beginning with the great use of Tiomkin's music and what Cecil B. DeMille did in the sound version of Ten Commandments as Charlton Heston tells the Hebrew children, he's takin' 'em to Canaan with Elmer Bernstein's score in the background as DeMille's cast of thousands moves out. I've often wondered whether DeMille copied Hawks, or Hawks was influenced by DeMille's silent Ten Commandments.

Red River is a must, for John Wayne fans, for Monty Clift fans, for fans of both and of great movie music like I am.