Watching "Red River" tonight ...

at local art theater with Vonne, and remembering watching "The Searchers " a bit back at home (the famous silhouetted shot of Wayne at the end is shamelessly copied by that rabid cinephile Quentin Tarantino in "Kill Bill, Part 2"). That movie presents the at-one-time classic American definition of an acceptable form of "honor killing" of a female "ruined" by "infidels" (in this instance, Native Americans), except. of course, John Wayne's dark anti-hero actually refrains at the very end, instead lovingly embracing his long-lost niece played by Natalie Wood following her rescue from the Indians who had raised her following the raid that ended with the death of her immediate family.

Still, no surprise you find the example from the Old West, when our codes were often just as harsh as the enemies we face today.

Why so? Survival, baby.

In "Red River," Duke plays another awfully harsh character who plots right to the suddenly light-hearted ending to kill his adopted son (Montgomery Clift) for toppling his dictatorship of a cattle drive (they actually refer to his character as a "tyrant") and finishing the drive without him (they make up in the end, after beating each other some and taking some well-intentioned bullets).

But it's the DeSoto-ish begining I find fascinating: Duke and pal Walter Brennan simply show up in Texas in 1851 and lay claim to all this land just north of the Rio Grande. Almost immediately upon settling in, a couple of Mexicans show up and say "Diego" controls all these lands, despite living 400 miles south. So Brennan says to the Mexican, "That's too much land for one man!" and Duke asks the Mexican how Diego got the land. The Mexican answers that it was given to him by the King of Spain long ago, and Duke retorts, "That just means you stole it from somebody after they left--Indians I'm guessing." So Duke tells the Mexican to go tell Diego that everything north of the Rio Grande is now his. Naturally, they duel, Duke kills him, and then lets his compadre live and leave to deliver the message to Diego (Diego and Duke eventually become okay neighbors I guess, because in a later scene their cattle get a bit mixed up and Diego's name is invoked without rancor). What's cool is that the Duke buries the Mexican the next morning and "reads over him" with the Bible. Having killed his coreligionist from another tribe, Duke snatches the land associated with this poor fellow, but feels the need to mark his passing in religious terms.

Again, an interesting bit of "ethnic cleansing" from our past, not viewed typically in that light, of course, because we "won the West." But, of course, that meant somebody lost it.

Later, after Duke's killed a few of his own men who tried to leave the drive (he is a bit of a hard-ass, mind you), he tells the others he'll "read over them" in the morning too. One guy replies, "First we plant them and then we read to them. Why does he have to go and try to make God a partner in all of this?"

Really an amazing line, no?

Great Howard Hawks movie, "Red River." Lots of great character actors, all when they were still young. Many also appear in "The Searchers" too.

Comments

[historyguy99]

Tom,Your analogies of the 19th century American West, mirror much of what is going on in Iraq today. Other's might nitpick you on the details, but the broad scope of the conflict that took place in our own history as a new rule set was introduced across North America, gives a careful thinker much to ponder.