We watched the 1969 western, Rio Bravo, and were crushed with disappointment. How could a film with such famous actors, directed by Howard Hawks (Red River 1948), amount to such piffle? We could not restrain ourselves from jeering at its flagrant, grotesque failings. A thin, cliched plot, pieced out with obvious meaningless padding. Incoherent, contradictory notions and "themes." An unconscionable reveling in mass slaughter -- the bodies of Nathan Burdette's gang falling as thickly as the leaves in Vallombrosa. We adjudicated what seemed like a contest: who is a worse actor, Dean Martin or Ricky Nelson? (Martin plays a drunken former gunfighter (named Dude!!) whose shaky hands can only be stilled when the Mexican band plays his favorite tune!!! Honest to goodness!!) Nelson is a ridiculously young hotshot gunslinger who would have been better off staying home drinking his afternoon milk and cookies under the supervision of Ozzie and Harriet.
We hooted, I'm sorry to say, when impassive reluctant John Wayne kissed Angie Dickinson with all the passion of a man sucking on moldy lemons. We were offended by the racist caricatures of the Mexican innkeepers. And we guffawed when the film allowed both Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson to burst into song -- utterly violating their screen characters but perhaps throwing a sorry bone to the ticket-buying audience. (Allow me to confess that we fast-forwarded through the musical interlude.) The irrelevant crooning lost the film any remaining pretense or shred of integrity.
In short, here was a film that had no reason for being, or so we thought. A travesty, a mere catchpenny.
Baffled, we turned to the internet for the story. Because there had to be a story.
And now comes the surprise. Rio Bravo was the second highest ranking western in the 2012 Sight and Sound critics' poll. Robin Wood, a generally trustworthy critic and the man who wrote the book on Howard Hawks, rated it as his top film of all time. What's going on here? We though the film was ludicrous and embarrassing; others think very differently. Are we completely out of touch? Are we nuts, intolerant. Has our taste been vitiated by age and mental decay? Are there beauties hidden the film that are sufficiently subtle that our grosser intellects could not detect them? Or does this would-be emperor of a film lack clothes and the critics and journals and the tomatoes are all blinded and deceived.
And now comes some more internet info, which may or may not explain the opposing views of us and them.
"The film was made as a response to High Noon," says Wikipedia. Why? Because High Noon was thought to be a leftist movie, an allegory for Hollywood blacklisting, as well as a critique of McCarthyism. John Wayne called High Noon "un-American." (I've always thought of it as quintessentially American; what could possibly be more American than a Quaker's turn to violence, as when Amy Kane picks us a rifle and shoots one of Frank MIller's kin. And especially when that turn to violence is portrayed as a step toward a higher morality.
I'm wondering whether the folks who praise Rio Bravo like it not for aesthetic but for political reasons. I'm suspicious.
Next step: get my hands on Robin Wood's book on Howard Hawks. Stay tuned, Metablogians.