Cinema
Rio Bravo
Howard Hawks · 1959
Synopsis
Rio Bravo, a small border town in Texas. Sheriff John T. Chance arrests Joe Burdette, who has killed an unarmed man, and keeps him in jail until the federal marshal arrives. Nathan Burdette, a wealthy rancher and the prisoner's brother, hires gunmen and seals off the town. Chance turns down the help offered by his friend Pat Wheeler and the townspeople, and holds the jail with Dude, a former deputy turned drunk, Stumpy, an old lame deputy, and then Colorado, a young gunman. Feathers, a professional gambler passing through, falls in love with him.
Context
The director conceived the film as a response to a 1952 western in which the sheriff runs around town asking for help: a good sheriff, he said, would not do that, and John Wayne also hated that film. The singer Ricky Nelson, a teenage idol, turned eighteen during the shoot, and Hawks cut his lines to a minimum. The exteriors were shot at Old Tucson, in Arizona. Hawks later reused the same plot twice, with other actors and under other titles.
Who it is for
A western of two hours twenty-one minutes, confined to a jail and a hotel, which rests on the relationships between its characters more than on gunfire.
Prizes and reception
John Carpenter paid tribute to it in 1976 with a siege film, and Hawks himself twice reused its plot.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.