Hacker Cinema
Rio Bravo
1959 · Film · 141 min
Directed by Howard Hawks
A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.
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4 comments on Hacker News
Thanks for that! I count only about seventeen of those that I've seen, despite having seen old movies in the hundreds.
Funnily enough, my favourite old Hollywood genres are musicals and westerns.
I grew up only really being exposed to post 1960 movie musicals which I never really liked. About seven years ago I thought, "I've never really watched any old movie musicals", and just started watching them. It was a revelation to discover the (to me) amazing stuff from the 30s, 40s and 50s. My ideal movie musical was made in the 1930s, stars Fred Astaire, and has songs by the Gershwins, Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.
Some highlights for me would be:
42nd Street (1933) Not the first `backstage musical' but sets the template. One of the things I love about old movie musicals is that people don't randomly start singing and dancing: they sing and/or dance because they are singers or songwriters or dancers or choreographers creating or rehearsing or performing.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) More Busby Berkeley.
Footlight Parade (1933) More Busby Berkeley. James Cagney stars.
On the Avenue (1937)
Shall we Dance (1937)
Lady be Good (1941)
You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
The Gang's All Here (1943)
Anchors Aweigh (1945)
The Pirate (1948) Don't listen to the naysayers, this film to me is pretty much perfect.
An American in Paris (1951) Contains the amazing sequence in which Oscar Levant is portrayed conducting, playing every instrument, and being the audience of Gershwin's Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra (which I think is much better than the more famous Rhapsody in Blue).
The Band Wagon (1953)
Daddy Long Legs (1955)
High Society (1956)
Funny Face (1957)
Gypsy (1962)
And then a couple of years ago, I asked myself: which film genres have I never really watched? Westerns (and Horror, still haven't gone there) being my answer. Turns out I really love westerns.
Some favourites:
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Stagecoach (1939)
Fort Apache (1948) To me, this is the best of John Ford's `cavalry trilogy'
Red River (1948)
Winchester '73 (1950) My favourite of the Anthony Mann / James Stewart westerns.
Vera Cruz (1954) Action movies weren't invented in the 1980s.
The Man from Laramie (1955)
Seven Men from Now (1956) The best of the Budd Boetticher / Randolph Scott westerns.
Man of the West (1958)
The Horse Soldiers (1959)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
Two Rode Together (1961)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
El Dorado (1966) Rio Bravo gets all the love, but this is the more satisfying result for me.
I believe it. As a film fan, this is why I really dislike Netflix—they seem a repeat offender at ripping off other artists. A few of their shows like Stranger Things (Alien, Poltergeist, Akira, Goonies) and especially Godless (Rio Bravo; Magnificent Seven; Good, Bad, and the Ugly) go beyond homage and into outright copying and stealing ideas. I understand tropes and references, but I think Netflix has shown a pattern of basically just making imitation products of other successful products. I can watch nearly anything on HBO, but can hardly find anything half worth watching on Netflix and it’s nearly all derivative of something else more interesting.
This is one of those movies I used to watch every now and then with my dad when I was a teenager (although it's way too long to watch in one sitting). It's one of my father's favorites, along with Rio Bravo, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Deliverance (I wholeheartedly recommend all of them, the last one is some heavy shit). Such a shame that most people get to experience it in the butchered version. And to think we were getting the real thing on Polish cable TV and didn't even appreciate it...
Any comprehensive study of the genre must include movies directed by John Ford; and movies starring John Wayne. There will be much overlap in these two sets. Wayne was not a versatile actor, but any study of The American Western without significant attention to him would be incomplete. "Stagecoach" and "The Searchers" are good examples of their early and later collaborations, respectively. Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo". Anthony Mann's westerns starring James Stewart. More recent suggestions would include Lawrence Kasdan's "Silverado" and Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven".