Red River (1948)
A western about a tough rancher played by John Wayne. After losing his fiancee to an Indian raid, the rancher, Duston, encounters a lone boy, Matt, and his cow. Duston informally adopts Matt and starts a ranch in Texas. Years later, lack of market for cattle in Texas means Dunston and Matt need to drive 9000 head of cattle hundreds of miles to Missouri and the railroad. On the way, Dunston kills some ranch hands who want to desert. Matt realizes Dunston is doing wrong and takes action.
Montgomery Clift plays Matt. It was Clift’s second feature film. I suppose John Wayne has always played a tough man’s man, but it’s hard to see women liking the guy (which I suppose is exactly the point, but), even in this film where he appears relatively young in the beginning, he’s almost revolting to look at. Probably it’s just my anti- chauvinist , anti- macho-man biases acting in some weird way. On the other hand, Clift’s character is much more sympathetic and interesting. Clift is young and pretty in this film. As I’ve noted in other posts, Clift was known among his friends as a homosexual, but I wonder if John Wayne was aware of this. It sort of puts an ironic real-life matchup on the story with Wayne’s Dunston pledging the ranch to gay Clift’s ’soft’/ good hearted Matt.
And how could I omit mention of the wonderful gun scene, where two young male hotties admire each other’s guns and shooting skills.
