Rio bravo (1959)

Rio bravo is full of western artificiality but it succeeds, somehow, in filling its limited (this is almost a 'chamber western', no great plains here) world with life and even, a bit surprisingly, sweetness. Sweetness is not perhaps the description one would usually assign to a western movie and here I was also taken aback by this peculiar character of the film. It does have its quota of macho bravura - this is, after all, a John Wayne move - but even Wayne is a bit peculiar in that his role as a sheriff is very physical in a quite unusual way. Physical in the sense not of showing the standard range of masculine posture, but rather in displaying how toughness is suddenly broken down by tenderness. Howard Hawks directed the film and he uses a long format to tell a rather banal story about people gathered in a prison: a drunk, an old guy and a kid gunslinger (bunch of misfits, basically) who all try to protect the town against outlaws that are trying to free a bad guy from jail. Then there is a female gambler for whom the sheriff falls, played by Angie Dickinson with a beautiful range of emotions: she is a woman who shows a resiliant desire for the man, and it is she who pursues him, not the other way around.

However, Rio bravo offers standard fare when it comes to ideology. John Wayne's character is the all-American authority figure protecting the community and above all its female members against external threats. He is brave and he is manly and he is solid - but at least he cannot act on his own, but needs help from figures who might seem weak, but are shown not to be that. This lends some much needed complexity to the story. He is the man who wants to be independent, but this is shown to be a weakness, not a sign of brave strength. The sweetness I talked about is present in the relation between the sheriff and his flawed friends.

The representative of the law, the sheriff is also an image of civilization and social mores. But as I said, the film also shatters the common images of the stone-faced man a bit, and that, perhaps, saves it. (Some moments of random crooning by Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson provide some good cheesiness.)