Rio Bravo
Screening on Film
Directed by Howard Hawks.
With John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson.
US, 1959, 35mm, color, 141 min.
With John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson.
US, 1959, 35mm, color, 141 min.
After imprisoning a man for committing murder in a local saloon, a small-town sheriff (Wayne) enlists the help of the town drunk (Martin) and a “bum-legged old man” (Walter Brennan) to prevent the killer’s powerful brother from aiding his escape. Wayne’s unflappable sheriff was motivated largely by Hawks’s angry response to the “weak-willed” characters he perceived in Fred Zinneman’s High Noon. One of the rare comic westerns, Hawks’s work joyously ambles its way toward its climactic final shootout.