Directed by Howard Hawks • 1948 • United States
Starring John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan
No matter what genre he worked in, Howard Hawks played by his own rules, and never was this more evident than in his first western, the rowdy and whip-smart RED RIVER. In it, John Wayne found one of his greatest roles, as an embittered, tyrannical Texas rancher whose tensions with his independent-minded adopted son—played by Montgomery Clift, in a breakout performance—reach epic proportions during a cattle drive to Missouri. The film is based on a novel that dramatizes the real-life late nineteenth-century expeditions along the Chisholm Trail, but Hawks is less interested in historical accuracy than in tweaking the codes of masculinity that propel the myths of the American West. The unerringly macho Wayne and the neurotic, boyish Clift make for an improbably perfect pair, held aloft by a quick-witted, multilayered screenplay and Hawks’s formidable direction.
Up Next in Season 1
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The Boys from Brazil
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner • 1978 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James MasonHistory has shown how one man with a dream can turn the world into a nightmare—can history repeat itself? Elderly Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) has made a...
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Angel Face
Directed by Otto Preminger • 1953 • United States
Starring Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona FreemanClosing out the landmark cycle of noirs he began with LAURA, Otto Preminger directs this tale of a passion gone haywire. Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) is a regular guy with a steady girl and a d...
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Night Must Fall
Directed by Richard Thorpe • 1937 • United States
Starring Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Dame May WhittyThe original screen version of playwright Emelyn Williams’s oft-adapted stage mystery gave Robert Montgomery—tired of his casting as rich playboys in light comedies—a chance to prove h...
