Join Now Already a member? Log-In 
Home > Blog > 100 Greatest Movies > MovieRetriever's 100 Greatest Movies: #23 Rio BravoFollow Us: 
Blogs Home Hound News Awards Watch Features Movie Reviews DVD Reviews Lists Interviews Trailer Watch 100 Greatest Movies Recent Blog Posts 1. Movie Review: Sucker Punch 2. Movie Review: Jane Eyre 3. Movie Review: Paul Videohound Blog Archives March 2011February 2011January 2011December 2010November 2010View more >>October 2010September 2010August 2010July 2010June 2010May 2010April 2010March 2010February 2010January 2010December 2009November 2009October 2009September 2009August 2009July 2009June 2009May 2009April 2009March 2009February 2009January 2009December 2008November 2008October 2008September 2008August 2008July 2008June 2008May 2008April 2008January 2008December 2007 
Print 
Email 
Del.icio.us 
Digg it 
100 Greatest Movies 
January 26, 2011MovieRetriever's 100 Greatest Movies: #23 Rio BravoPosted by Turk182 in 100 Greatest MoviesRio Bravo is one of the supreme achievements (hence justifications) of "classical Hollywood," that complex network of determinants that includes the star system, the studio system, the system of genres and conventions, a highly developed grammar and syntax of shooting and editing, the interaction of which made possible an art at once personal and collaborative, one nourished by a rich and vital tradition: it is an art that belongs now to the past; the period of Rio Bravo was its last flowering.
The film at once is one of the greatest westerns and the most complete statements of the themes of director Howard Hawks. One can distinguish two main currents within the western genre, the "historical" and the "conventional": the western that is concerned with the American past (albeit with its mythology as much as its reality), and the western that plays with and develops a set of conventions, archetypes, "stock" figures. Ford's westerns are the finest examples of the former impulse, and in the westerns of Anthony Mann (for example, Man of the West) the two achieve perfect fusion. Rio Bravo is among the purest of all "conventional" westerns. Here, history and the American past are of no concern, a point amply demonstrated by the fact that the film is a virtual remake (in its thematic pattern, its characters and character relationships, even down to sketches of dialogue) of Hawks's earlier Only Angels Have Wings (set in the Andes mountains) and To Have and Have Not (set on Martinique). Hawks's stylized and anonymous western town is not a microcosm of American civilization at a certain point in its development but an abstract setting within which his recurrent concerns and relationships can be played out. All the characters are on one level "western" archetypes: the infallible sheriff, the fallible friend, the "travelling lady," the garrulous sidekick, the comic Mexican, the evil land-baron. On another level, however, they are Hawksian archetypes: the overlay makes possible the richness of characterization, the detail of the acting, so that here the archetypes (western and Hawksian) achieve their ultimate elaboration. With this goes the remarkable and varied use Hawks makes of actors' personas: Martin, Dickinson, and Brennan have never surpassed (perhaps never equalled) their performances here, and the use of Wayne is extremely subtle and idiosyncratic, at once drawing on his "heroic" status and satirizing its limitations.
The film represents Hawks's most successful transcendence of the chief "binary opposition" of his work, its division into adventure films and comedies. Here the thematic concerns of the action pictures – self-respect, personal integrity, loyalty, stoicism, the interplay of mutual respect and affection – combines with the sexual tensions of the comedies (Wayne's vulnerability to women permitting a fuller development of this than is possible with, for example, Bogart in To Have and Have Not). The ambiguous relationship of Hawks's work to dominant American ideological assumptions (on the one hand the endorsement of individualism and personal initiative, on the other the rejection of established society in favour of the "primitive" male group, the total lack of interest in such central American ideals as marriage, home and family) permeates the whole film. The "gay subtext" that many critics have sensed in Hawks's films – their tendency to become (in his own words) "love stories between men" – surfaces quite clearly in the Dean Martin-Ricky Nelson relationship, though it is never allowed expression beyond the exchange of looks and is swiftly "contained" within the group (a progression beautifully enacted in the famous song-sequence). Within a system necessarily committed, at least on surface level, to reinforcing the status quo, Hawks's cinema continuously suggests the possibility of alternative forms of social and sexual organization.
Essay by Robin WoodRelease Date: 1959
Rating: Unrated
Starring: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, John Russell, Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Estelita Rodriguez, Claude Akins, Malcolm Atterbury, Harry Carey, Jr., Bob Steele, Myron Healey, Fred Graham, Tom Monroe, and Riley Hill
Director: Howard Hawks
Writers: Jules Furthman and Leigh Bracket
Source Citation: Wood, Robin. "Rio Bravo." International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. 4th ed. Vol. 1: Films. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 1024-1026.
********** Check out the complete list ofMovieRetriever's 100 Greatest Movies here! ********** Sign up for a My MovieRetriever account today,
post a comment, and let us know what YOU think. **********
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Posted by Turk182 in 100 Greatest Movies - January 26, 2011 at 10:01 AM
Write a comment. Be the first to comment on this blog. Tell a Friend about MovieRetriever.com Email your friends, Invite them to join the MovieRetriever.com community to create and share movie lists and review them. 
MovieRetriever.com members can:Rate moviesWrite your own reviewsCreate your movie watch listsShare lists with the community Already a member?
Community Favorites 1 Toy Story 3 (2010) G 
2 Inception (2010) 3 How to Train Your Dragon (2010) 4 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) PG-13 5 Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach (2009) R 
About Us | Contact Us | FAQs | Help | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Advertise with Us Subscribe to our email newsletter Visit the MovieRetriever Stores - DVDs - Soundtracks - Books - Gear ©2011 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
Няма коментари:
Публикуване на коментар