The final entry in Ford’s “Cavalry Trilogy” is one of his few films to reveal darker tensions at work within a family unit, here the dysfunctional marriage of John Wayne’s battle weary Colonel Yorke and his estranged wife Maureen O’Hara - only a few years before their dynamic union in The Quiet Man. The simmering familial tensions - brought to boil by the arrival of the Colonel’s wayward son - are mirrored in the deep distrust and racist violence that pits the Cavalry against the Indians. One of the more important “Cold War Westerns,” Rio Grande provides a fascinating counterpoint to the more pluralistic vision of the West seen in the earlier Fort Apache. For Rio Grande’s dramatic locations, Ford returned once more to his favorite location, Monument Valley, while also exploring other striking landscapes in remotest Utah.