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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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…
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
The writing of Secret of the Andes is beautifully, descriptively and simply written by Ann Nolan Clark.
"Relocating the Cowboy: American Privilege in "All the Pretty Horses"" Pepperdine University: Global Tides Seaver Journal of Arts and Sciences. Maia Y. Rodriguez, 2014. Web. 2 May 2016. . The Western typically illustrates the journey of a man, usually a horse riding cowboy, into the Western frontier where he must conquer nature "in the name of civilization or [confiscate] the territorial rights of the original inhabitants... Native Americans" (Newman 150). What this brand of mythology promotes is precisely the values of American culture: rugged individualism, achievement and success, activtity and work, democracy and enterprise, and--most importantly--
In reading “All the pretty horses” by Cormac McCarthy, we are introduced to the protagonist John Grady Cole. At the beginning of the story, John Grady is attending his grandfathers funeral in the ranch that he now shares with his mother. John Grady Cole, grew up in world where being a cowboy meant freedom and a ever growing relationship with the one thing he cared about more than anything… horses. The story seems to unravel in the early 1950s when the old west began to evolve to the new ways of the west and the definition of what made a man a cowboy increasingly blurred. As the story evolves, it becomes evident that the selling of his grandfather’s ranch leaves Grady feeling adrift and incomplete. Henceforth, he deicides to set foot on his own and find a new place to call his home. We see that the loss of his grandfathers ranch and the passing of the old west he knew, serves as a reflection of how John Grady’s character attempts to maintain this cowboy lifestyle that he witnessed growing up . John Grady Cole’s character tough young, serves as a hero in his journey of becoming a man. Combined with his passion and idealistic mentality, his love for horses and the open plains of Texas/Mexico sets him off into new adventures. Realizing that each scenario encountered paves the way towards a journey of harsh reality, this story serves as one of growth and the passionate search of the old cowboy life. Grady sets out on a journey to Mexico with his comrade Rawlins riding off into the sun with hopes of finding a new home; they rode in hopes of regaining their sense of beloning.
The story is an Eastern take on the Hollywood western with a dash of satire,
The movie La Jaula de Oro, is a life story of a journey of three kids from Guatemala to the United States. In the movie there are three kids Sara, Samuel, and Juan, they first embark on the journey through Mexico. When they first arrive to Chiapas, the kids put on a play to collect money for food, after the play Sara befriends this boy named Chauk. Who is an indigenous boy from Tzotzil, and also plans to get to America, and convinces them to come join the group. This group of kids is put through a lot during the film, it’s a very interesting journey for 4 kids to experience. This film shows the struggles and difficulties immigrants succumb and sheds some light into the harsh realities of what people don’t think about when they hear the word
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.
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
Westerns are split down into sub genres for example classical westerns like "The Great Train Robbery" but there are also other western genres like revisionist westerns. Revisionist westerns occurred after the early 1960's, American film-makers began to change many traditional elements of Westerns. One major change was the increasingly positive representation of Native Americans who had been treated as "savages" in earlier films. Another example is Spaghetti westerns, Spaghetti westerns first came during the 1960's and 1970's, The changes were a new European, larger-than-life visual style, a harsher, more violent depiction of frontier life, choreographed gunfights and wide-screen close-ups.
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.
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.
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.
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
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...