Rio Bravo, staring John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson to name a few, was released in 1959 and is the perfect example of a classic American Western genre film. The film blends American political and gender role ideologies with the classic genre conventions of a Western help Rio Bravo to deliver its somewhat understated message.
I believe that the film does indeed conform to a certain type of narrative structure expected by other films of this style. This film, through and through, is a Western, even starring one of biggest names in Hollywood Westerns, John Wayne. We’re thrown into a world of sturdy, rugged men riding around on horses, decked out in cowboy hats and belt buckles. Wayne portrays the archetypal man, honorable, reliable and
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tenacious, but with a twist. While Rio Bravo generally sticks to the common Western “archetypical conflicts of good vs.
bad, virtue vs. evil, man vs. man, villains vs. heroes, law and order vs. anarchy, the rugged individualist vs. the community”, it does stray in one area, which I think is the hero rescuing a damsel in distress ("Westerns Films”). I would like to argue that John T. Chance is actually the damsel in distress and Feathers is the hero who ends up saving him. Chance is the tough, damaged hero, and only the smart female protagonist can get through to him. Typical of films, including Westerns, the cowboy or sheriff usually tries to woo the woman, and then ultimately ends up rescuing her from the set of train tracks she’s tied to, or the bad guy who’s got a gun to her head. Rio Bravo did not conform to the type of narrative structure of a Western in that sense. In a way, Chance is the one playing hard to get. This struck me as odd because back in the west, or even in the 1950’s when the film was made, men were hardly ever portrayed as the guarded, emotionally unstable characters. That was the female’s job (along with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children, according to the 1950’s). Feathers is the one who guards Chance’s door while he’s asleep. She’s the one, even though instructed by Colorado, who throws the flower pot out of the window, striking one of the Burdette men. At no point in the film is Feathers portrayed as the damsel in distress who needs Chance to come riding in on …show more content…
a white stallion to save her. She saves him. She gets him to finally open up and tell her (barely) how he feels about her. Now back to how it conforms to Western conventions.
One of the main story lines throughout the film is Dude’s alcoholism, which fits into the typical Western conflict of the rugged individualist vs. the community. Dude is played by Dean Martin (who knew a member of the Rat Pack did Westerns?), and his character earns the nickname Borrachón, which is Spanish for drunk. We follow Dude as he goes from desperation to acceptance, his redemption being clearly visualized as he struggles to stay sober throughout the
film. Ideology is a very abstract term that can be hard to understand. In short, it’s how stories tell us about the ethics of society. In Rio Bravo, John T. Chance is a mouthpiece for law and order, and interestingly enough, this film was made for very political reasons. The dominant ideology of the film is trusting your government. Rio Bravo was a direct (although seven years later) rebuttal to the film High Noon, which focuses on mistrust of the government and features numerous McCarthyism analogies and hints at communism. Wayne and director Howard Hawks didn’t agree with how High Noon portrayed government, so they decided to show their ideologies of trust in the government through Rio Bravo. High Noon chooses to have the friends of the protagonist leave him when he’s faced with danger. On the other hand, in Rio Bravo, Chance, at first, refuses help, and then ultimately accepts it from his friends so that he can succeed. According to Katie Kulzick’s article, “‘High Noon’, ‘Rio Bravo’, and the Blacklist”: High Noon depicts an untrustworthy federal government and a local sheriff who has respect for and is a strict adherent to the law. Rio Bravo on the other hand shows a supportive federal government and a local sheriff willing to sidestep the law, if needed, to pursue justice. One film asks the audience to distrust the government and the law of the land, while the other asks the audience to trust the government and its representatives to act in the best interests of the community, regardless of technicalities (Kulzick). McCarthyism originated in the 1950’s, the same decade in which both of these movies were released. During this time, government employees were accused of being communists, which lead to a mistrust in the federal government. Now, this term generally refers to reckless attacks on political opponents.
In the 1959 Film Rio Bravo, a western, we see four men who stand alone in the face of adversity in the name of the law. In the 1966 film El Dorado, also a western, we can see this same scenario played out again. Both films were written by Leigh Brackett and directed by Howard Hawks. Although they are similar in there plot, there are some very obvious differences.
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
The writing of Secret of the Andes is beautifully, descriptively and simply written by Ann Nolan Clark.
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” Robert Ray explains how there are two vastly different heroes: the outlaw hero and the official hero. The official hero has common values and traditional beliefs. The outlaw hero has a clear view of right and wrong but unlike the official hero, works above the law. Ray explains how the role of an outlaw hero has many traits. The morals of these heroes can be compared clearly. Films that contain official heroes and outlaw heroes are effective because they promise viewer’s strength, power, intelligence, and authority whether you are above the law or below it.
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
A more modern outlook on the film recognizes the film's flaws but gives it, it’s credit as the last fully realized work of one of the most important directors in American cinema history. Ford understood that an audience's recollections of older, less complex Westerns would add a layer of expressiveness to the viewing experience. The black-and-white structure helps him achieve this. Ford’s decision to shoot the film in black and white in 1962 produced a dark, anachronistic look, while the unconcealed soundstage effects of the film’s opening scene reinforced Ford’s vision of a wilderness, interiored Western frontier. Just as Ford intended, many of the flashback scenes are masked in darkness, whereas the frame tale is immersed in light. This con...
The story is an Eastern take on the Hollywood western with a dash of satire,
Parallels of Latin American Culture in Pedro Paramo and No One Writes to the Colonel
The portrayal of art cinema is to some extent accurate when considering the time period of this film. Art film was first introduced to the American film industry during the period of time when this film came out. Art cinema utilizes its own set of artistic expression. Hollywood classical films on the other hand, are at odds with the artistic concept, and are considered to be mainstream. When we look at Classical films, we think of the basic Hollywood movie where there is a beginning, middle and end, and the whole movie comes together at the end, with a little bit of romance. In this specific movie, the audience is faced with a confusing dilemma of choosing whether this movie is an art film or a classical film. Most even think it has a documentary approach, but what makes this movie even more successful and even more entertaining, is that it is both art cinema and classical cinema.
Further exploring the similarities on the surface, a true western always has the same type of characters and props. Blake is shown in the same outfit throughout the film much like the one outfit that a westerner wears. Blake encounters a whore in the town who is not opposed to the usage of guns, which also goes along with a whore’s values in a true western film. The town of Machine is desolate, dirty, and ruled by guns. In western movies there is always a dirty town with the same characteristics. All of those similarities are not used in the same way, however; they are used as tools to give this surface western a deeper meaning that no true western film ever explored. The themes are pessimistic as they deal with death and afterlife, rather than hope and rebirth. The killings in the movie mock the way people are killed in westerns. Blake doesn’t kill to protect his honor; he kills to survive and in turn mocks the system.
The storyline is normally about a hero who comes to a town to bring peace and drive the villains out. A hero is usually seen as a vigilante as he is not told to come to help but does anyway. The hero often appears as a quiet, secretive, mysterious person who may make the audience admire him one minute and dislike him the next, he is also a very smart, cunning and adaptable which are all good values in a hero. The villain is usually fixed to one idea he thinks it is a smart cunning person but in the end is always defeated. Many scenes are set around the Saloon (bar) and there is quite often a romance involved with the hero and a local girl, the villain competing for her affections! There are two different types of villains in typical westerns Native Americans and white villains (cowboys).
Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.
Dirty Harry(1971) is the movie my arguments are based around along with these Westerns that portray white male power, traditional values, and vigilantism such as McLintock! (1963) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Clint Eastwood the star in Dirty Harry and A Fistful of Dollars shows the white, masculine male as the strength and the man who brings justice, law, and order to the city where a lot of change has taken place recently with the hippie counter culture movement.. John Wayne the star of McLintock! brings the same values to the table as Clint Eastwood and shows the values of a Western through his McLintock character.. Both of their careers have been made through portraying characters that are conservative and this does not change with Clint
Contrary to the story’s focus on horses, the movie focuses on the romance between John Grady and Alejandra as its poster has the couple with a greater presence compared to the miniscule graphic of horses shoved on the bottom; whereas the book’s cover is graced with the image of a horse and only of that horse. Of all the events that were absent from the movie, the romance scenes are the most kept intact as well as an odd addition of an onlooker dancing when John Grady finishes talking with Alejandra on the phone after being bailed out of jail. In fact, it feels like horses are more of an afterthought in this adaptation because John Grady does not put any emphasis on them as he does in the novel. While in jail, John Grady had a dream about horses, “… in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses …” (McCarthy 161) In the fashion of flickering images for a subliminal message, brief, flashing visions of Alejandra are injected into this dream when there were none. Romance is pushed as the main focus of the story, but it fails to make the couple fulfilling since the dynamic between John Grady and Alejandra is not developed well enough to make it
The western is one of my personal favorite genres, not in the sense that I particularly like it but because it was one of the categories of movies I was raised on. I watched a host of John Wayne’s westerns, somewhere around two dozen, along with a few other movies from the genre. I still enjoy some of Wayne’s films, though I haven’t seen them in their entirety in years. What I’m trying to say is, I was excited to watch “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a purported classic of the genre. And while I liked the film, I was let down by it.