by Jake Hjort, Contributing Writer
Welcome back, fellow time travelers, to another edition of 20th Century Flicks! This month, in a continued effort to check classic cinema off of my list of shame, I’ve delved back to 1959 to watch Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo. Westerns are definitely a big blind spot in my film watching history, so I figured it was due time to take a look at one from this column and this John Wayne classic made by one of my favorite Golden Age directors would be a great place to start.
After sheriff John Chance (Wayne) arrests a man for murder, he finds himself facing the ire of the man’s older brother Nathan (John Russell), a wealthy land baron. With Nathan’s gangs causing trouble in town wanting the brother freed from jail, Chance and his disabled deputy Stumpy (Walter Brennan) realize they’re going to need help to hold off the outlaws until the Marshalls arrive. They recruit Dude (Dean Martin), the disgraced town drunk who used to serve as a deputy, and Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson), a young, travelling gunslinger to their cause. Amidst the skirmishes, Chance also finds himself tied up with a woman known as Feathers (Angie Dickinson), the widow of a former gambler.
This is now the third Howard Hawks film that I’ve covered for this column, after His Girl Friday and Ball of Fire, and he has quickly become one of my favorite directors. Though they all have underpinnings of comedy, these are three very different films in very different genres, really serving to highlight Hawks’ versatility as a director. Though known for his simplicity and grounded approach—Orson Welles once described his work more as prose than as poetry—he does have a great sense for storytelling. The first few minutes of Rio Bravo are an excellent example of this, establishing the major characters, their narrative arcs, and the driving plot of the movie in about three minutes without a word of spoken dialogue.
Of course, that brings me to those major characters and their narrative arcs. Though this is the first John Wayne I can recall having seen, I was very aware of his reputation as the western star. He definitely has the leading man machismo that I expected from him but, although I cannot deny his charisma, I ultimately found him to be rather dull. Sheriff Chance is not a character with a ton of nuance or growth: he begins as the stoic, macho cowboy and he ends the story as a stoic, macho cowboy. Sure, he faces some adversity from the outlaws and is challenged by Feathers, but the character falls a bit flat and there wasn’t anything about the performance that really wowed me.
In contrast, I was absolutely wowed by Dean Martin’s performance as Dude. I’ve long known and respected Martin for his singing career but honestly wasn’t aware that he had done much acting outside of his involvement with the Rat Pack and was surprised to see him with a leading role in a western such as this. That being said, he gives what is far and away the standout performance as the most interesting character in the film. Dude is an equally sympathetic yet frustrating character, clearly talented and trying to do some good in the world but held back by his addiction and struggles. I’m not someone who’s really drawn to the hypermasculine, suave cowboy—a big reason why I’ve never really sought out to watch westerns—but even I was rooting for Dude to get his nerve back and succeed as a deputy. Much of this is due to Martin’s innate skill and charisma as a performer, instantly getting you to root for him even though his character begins the story at rock bottom.
Ricky Nelson, another performer known more for his singing now than for his acting, is perfectly serviceable as our third lead. I didn’t find Colorado to be nearly as charming as Dude, though his youth and cocksure attitude made him more interesting than Chance. I also greatly appreciate that Hawks gave Nelson and Martin the opportunity to duet with their incredible performance of My Rifle, My Pony, and Me, another standout moment in the film. In terms of supporting performances, three-time Academy Award winner Walter Brennan is excellent in a comic relief role as the deputy Stumpy and Angie Dickinson is great as Feathers, continuing a tradition of strong female characters in Hawks’ films played by the likes of Rosalind Russell and Barbara Stanwyck in his previous, aforementioned films.
Now, I’m far from an expert on westerns and I certainly don’t feel like watching this one film gives me the ability to make sweeping statements on the genre as a whole, but I can’t say that Rio Bravo has inspired me to do a much deeper dive. There’s a lot that I really enjoyed, from Martin’s performance to the comedy to the visual storytelling, but all of the macho cowboy and John Wayne-ness of it all just doesn’t speak to me.
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