Touches You

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Blistering performances.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Most people are going to enjoy this film. The story builds up well with some wonderful action set-pieces and montages, even though it could certainly benefit from further trimming. Coleen Gray making too much of her one scene would be twice as effective at half the length; and as for Joanne Dru, she doesn't belong in the film at all. True, she makes an extremely late entrance, but the story got along quite effectively without her. All she does is to slow down the pace and dissipate most of the tension. Mind you, the plot has some gaping holes. For instance, Wayne claims that he's too poor to buy some sacks of flour and few pounds of beans, yet he has no trouble engaging a band of badmen and buying them ammunition! And what a neat co-incidence that one of the pursuing Indians was wearing that charm bracelet that belonged - of course - to Wayne's mother! Wayne is his usual ruggedly roughshod self, Clift is less neurotic than usual, Brennan minus more teeth is more talkative than ever and even has an off-camera commentary as well! A fascinating assembly of support players includes the Careys, father and son (though the two never meet), Tom Tyler (briefly glimpsed), Paul Fix as a whinger saved from a hanging and Chief Yowlachie surprisingly amusing as a comic relief assistant cook and bottlewasher!

. . . explains how RED RIVER director Howard Hawks tried to coach "Tess" actress Joanne Dru to pull off a Lauren Bacall impression during the John Wane-Montgomery Clift Western simply because Hawks had directed Bacall opposite Humphrey Bogart a few months earlier in THE BIG SLEEP. Apparently, Hawks thought of actors as interchangeable widgets (being akin to their cattle co-stars of RED RIVER), a viewpoint he shared with director Alfred Hitchcock. Sadly, Hawks was not Hitchcock, Dru couldn't lift Bacall's jockstrap, and RED RIVER ranch mobster Wayne wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a Bogart gang. Only Trump voters would try to shoehorn RED RIVER between THE MALTESE FALCON and CASABLANCA on a list of Classic American flicks. Maybe there's an Alternate Universe in which Ms. Dru would NOT stick out like a sore thumb if positioned between Mary Astor and Ingrid Bergman, but I'm mighty glad I don't live there. TENSIONS AND TRADITIONS: MOLLY HASKELL ON RED RIVER is a catch-all sort of title, but there's no danger of anyone catching a whiff of Critical Thinking here.

I knew the genre, I knew the popular leading actor, and I knew it was listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it was rated highly by critics, so I looked forward to watching it, directed by Howard Hawks (Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, To Have and Have Not, Monkey Business, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Basically set during the time of the end of the American Civil War, stubborn man Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) wants to start up a successful cattle ranch in Texas, he manages to do so with the help old cowpoke Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan), and his unofficially adopted young man Matthew 'Matt' Garth (Montgomery Clift). Dunson's dream has not been without its hitches and adversities, including the situation where he met Matt when the wagon train he and Grrot had accompanied for some time from St. Louis was ambushed by Indians, Dunson's love Fen (Coleen Gray) was one of the victims. It has also not been easy to take over the unoccupied land and establish the ranch, north of the Rio Grande in west Texas, the result of the war has left many poor, including Dunson, but many men and ex-soldiers are willing to work as cowboys to rebuild their lives for themselves and their families. Dunson hires a group of men willing to accompany him, Groot and Matt on a potentially lucrative cattle drive to Missouri to sell close to a thousand heads of cattle, including some cattle from neighbouring ranchers, to stockade operating companies at the end of the known railroad line, along the way there will be potential hazards, including ambushing Indians. The journey begins for Dunson and the many hired men, the drive progresses across desert, country and rivers, but with his unyielding ways and single- mindedness to the task Dunson alienates himself from the other men, including Matt, he is generally softer, while Dunson has a "shoot now, ask questions later" attitude and mentality. Dunson and Matt do truly love each other as father and son, but they clash heads with their growing adversarial natures, they will have to reconcile if they are both to survive the drive and beyond, especially as they both will not stand down from their beliefs. On the journey members of the team threaten to quit before the end, to which Dunson kills them, the cattle are almost scared away by clumsiness, members are killed in the stampede, and of course the rivalry between Dunson and Matt reaches the point when they part ways, but they reach Missouri, Dunson and Matt reunite and have a furious fight, before being broken up by Matt's love Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), they realise the error of their ways and make peace. Also starring John Ireland as Cherry Valance, Noah Beery Jr. as Buster McGee, Chief Yowlachie as Quo, Harry Carey as Mr. Melville, Harry Carey Jr. as Dan Latimer, Paul Fix as Teeler Yacey, Mickey Kuhn as Matt as a Boy, Misery's Richard Farnsworth as Dunston Rider and Shelley Winters as Dance Hall Girl. Wayne gives a great performance as the uncompromising and unreasonably persistent but noble cattle rancher, Clift is also good as his young fast-on-the-draw ward, the action all plays out like an all boys' adventure, with many tense situations and tough moments along the way, with marvellous music score by Dimitri Tiomkin and sweeping landscape backgrounds, all combined make a masterpiece western. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story and Best Film Editing. John Wayne was number 56 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars, and he was number 13 on 100 Years, 100 Stars - Men. Very good!

This is one of my least favorites of John Wayne's "big" pictures. I've watched it before, but this time around I wanted to pay more attention to why I dislike it.Reason number one: Americans today can't really relate to cattle drives. We all can relate to the story in "Rio Bravo" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence", because we all still know bullies. What do Americans today know about cattle? Well, they see the steak or the hamburger, but can't relate to farming and cattle drives. Usually there might be a love story in the mix, but that angle is killed off in the first few minutes of the movie, and love doesn't resurface until late in the picture. And by the way, when they have a freshly killed steer, why not eat the meat and relieve the men of one crisis -- the constant complaints of beans, beans, beans.Reason Number two: This is one of several John Wayne films where Wayne's character goes over to the dark side, but here for no apparent reason. Three men want to quit the cattle drive, but Wayne doesn't want to lose any cowboys, so he murders them. How exactly does that make him not lose cowboys? And then he announces that he's going to kill has "adopted" son because he doesn't constantly kiss his butt. Wayne is awfully unlikable here.Reason number three: The audience isn't dumb. We can see the same ridge in the shots in what is supposedly action covering several separate days.That's not to say that there aren't some good things in this film. And the most important of all is the surprisingly fine performance of a young Montgomery Clift. Not surprising in that he was a very fine actor, but surprising because who really sees him as a cowboy? And then there's the blessing of another superb performance by one of Hollywood's most dependable actors ever -- Walter Brennan. There are several other fine character actors here, as well -- Noah Berry, Jr., Harry Carey Jr. and Sr. (!), and Paul Fix, among others.The cattle drive is looooooooong, and the ending, when Wayne catches up with is son in Abilene ends in a totally unrealistic way. He's ready to beat and murder his son, but a silly and frantic speech by the boy's girlfriend takes away all his anger.If you can overlook the inconsistencies, it's a pretty good film.