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Sight and Sound — the premiere film magazine in Britain — did not review Rio Bravo. Is that to suggest that it was not worth reviewing, that it was an oversight or that there was a deliberate overlapping of these two positions in which the worth of the film was implied by a 'may or may not have been intended' oversight? In no position to answer accurately we can only be left to wonder at S&S's omission, though we can look back at Howard Hawks's great Western love story and wonder out loud what we think of it today.

Rio Bravo is certainly deceptive: since everyone wears a cowboy hat, drinks in bars with swinging doors, has spurs on their boots and answers to John Wayne as sheriff, we can safely assume that this is a Western. But in John Wayne's obstinacy and unwillingness to accept any help, we also have a study of pride and prejudice — directed at women, the old and the drunk. Viewed from this saloon, then, we find Hawks's studied brilliance: a calm, effective take on the Western that transcends the boundaries of genre and provides something for the viewer to ponder. As David Thomson says in his New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Hawks being the great critic's favourite director):

The 'style' of Hawks rests in [his] commenting astuteness; no other director so bridges the contrived plots of genre and the responses of a mature spectator.

It also provides performances from John Wayne and Dean Martin that you simply do not see elsewhere: their assured, relaxed roles are arguably their best turns in mediums that they both, in their ways, dominated at different points. Far from being just another Western, therefore, Rio Bravo should be welcomed by everyone when it turns up on a Sunday afternoon on some obscure television channel, a testament not only to the classic conflicts of the genre but also the process of relaxed and intelligent film-making. In Thomson's words, it is proof that:

... men are more comfortable rolling a cigarette than saving the world.

Directed by Howard Hawks • imdb and amazon

Tags — Film