It should not have come as much of a surprise that Red River’s (1948) Thomas Dunson and Matthew Garth struggled to understand each other. Characters played by John Wayne and Montgomery Clift were never going to see eye to eye. In Red River, the opposition between them becomes central to the film's post-mortem of the American West.
Wayne’s Dunson is a rancher. He accepts that his time in Texas has come to an end, but refuses to look for something different. Instead, he wants to move his cattle to Missouri and start all over again. His refusal to move with the times makes Dunson a typical Wayne character. When his workers hear of a railroad track opening Kansas, they see it as an opportunity to sell the cattle. Dunson refuses, insisting they must carry on.
Clift’s Matthew Garth attempts to convince him otherwise. A younger man, he finds the flaws in Dunson’s rigid ideology, challenging the authoritarian leadership style of his mentor. This clash symbolises the shift in Hollywood values that occurred throughout the post-war period.
Peter Biskind gives the most insightful description of this shift in his book about 1950s American cinema, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 50s. He examines post-war Hollywood as ideologically centrist, with films such as Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) celebrating the importance of the logical, moderate and thoughtful individual to the rebuilding of society.
For Biskind, ‘50s Hollywood (often used in the analysis as a blanket term for the post-war cinema) was involved in the self-mythologizing of post-war America as a time of rationalism rather than reactionism. This liberal ideology made its way into Howard Hawks’ west, with its fight between outdated, headstrong masculinity and pragmatism becoming a core theme in Red River.
Unlike many of John Ford’s collaborations with Wayne, Hawks’ film does not take the side of his character’s stubborn attitude. His downfall is telegraphed – everyone around Dunson can see that one day his refusal to listen to others will result in his undoing. He is certainly given enough opportunities to learn his lesson.
One person who sees his downfall coming is his protégé, the sharpshooting, ambitious, and confident Matthew Garth. Dunson raises Garth from a boy to a man, and they develop a father-son relationship over the years on the Texas ranch. To Garth, Dunson is a pioneer, a powerful man of business who built up a successful ranch, who also demonstrates the power to stop anyone from taking what he has earned.
However, over the course of the journey, Garth learns that Dunson has been left behind by the times. He is a ruthless leader, preferring to shoot a worker than let one of his men leave. “I don’t like quitters,” Wayne’s character states. That turns out to be an understatement. Dunson murders “deserters” in cold blood, even proposing that those who leave the cattle drive should be hanged for their betrayal. This is the breaking point for Garth. He engineers a mutiny, taking the cattle and heading towards Kansas. Everyone else goes with him, leaving Dunson alone to lick his wounds.
Striking images of hundreds of cattle being driven across wide expanses are juxtaposed with intimate close-ups that examine the interior anguish of two men who cannot seem to impose their worldview on each other. Hawks’ camera soars through the beauty and ugliness of the American west. Their journey takes us through breathtaking landscapes, and harsh conditions.
It is significant that in this seemingly impossible cattle drive, the group of men turn to a man of thought, rather than a man of toughness. “You’re soft,” Dunson tells Garth, but what he does not realise is that his men won’t respond to strength. In post-war Hollywood, it is men of sensitivity like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Paul Newman who get to be the hero. Garth does not rule with an iron fist, suggesting that the men should be allowed breaks to rest. He doesn’t punish people for leaving, instead offering them reasons to stay.
The west was a place of stubborn masculinity, of shoot first, ask questions later. Films like Red River symbolise a shift in this ideology. In the end, the drive reaches the railroad in Abilene, Kansas. Garth’s moderate leadership has brought them the success that Dunson had been aiming for. The film’s final showdown between a man and his father figure unfolds in a demonstration of the hostility between them, but also the love for each other that still remains. They swap their guns for their fists, until they are stopped by Garth’s love interest, Tess Millay (Joanne Dru).
A case could be made that the film’s screenwriter, Charles Schnee, is just as important to the film as Hawks, Wayne, or Clift. Working with novelist Borden Chase to adapt his story Blazing Guns on the Chisholm Trail, Schnee managed to perfectly present the clashing character profiles on screen. The crowning achievement of his screenwriting career would be another script centred on the downfall of a stubborn and outdated masculine archetype, Kirk Douglas’ Jonathan Shields in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). For this film, he would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
The collaboration of several post-war Hollywood titans would prove to be central to the greatness of Red River. An epic journey which pits two attitudes against each other, resulting in a rivalry that nearly ends in bloodshed. The film is ultimately rooted in forties and fifties optimism, and the concept that wisdom and reason will eventually overcome any natural forces from a bygone era that still hang on.
This proves to be true at the end of Red River – the fighting stops, and Garth and Dunson resolve their differences. That’s the mythology of post-war America. That’s Hollywood.
-Luke
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