“You want that gun, pick it up. I wish you would.”

    1959 can be summed up as the most important turning point in the history of cinema. The last stand of the Hollywood vanguard. The final moment before international cinema would return to prominence. At Cannes, Francois Truffaut and Alain Renais would shake the foundation of cinema with The 400 Blows and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. A year later would see the emergence of Godard, Antonioni, and Fellini. In the United States, 1959 is the last great year of Hollywood: Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Ben-Hur, though the independent wave was taking notice with John Cassavetes’ Shadows. But there is one film that for me continually surprises me, mainly because even as a Hollywood film, it lacks that charm that defines the classics. That film comes from Howard Hawks, and it is called Rio Bravo.

    For some, the title which obviously calls attention that is a Western might make people think that is must be outdated. Westerns have been dead since the late 60s, after the masterworks of Sergio Leone and Sam Pekinpah put a nail in the generic coffin. But Hawks’ films are not what you would think—he’s never about creating legends, nor about star studded casts (though there are still many stars). Hawks grounds himself in realism, professionalism, and a term I call “group dynamic.” Thus, Hawks makes himself timeless—at least in the American sense—of traditional values in a number of situations.

    That’s what makes Rio Bravo—as well as his other classic western, 1947’s Red River, such an interesting character. This is a genre defined by mythology and a time that has long and gone, but he plays it like a modern working man’s tale. While Red River parodies the legend by telling the story of a cattle drive, Rio Bravo sets a modern day cop tale in a border town in the 1800s. The best way is to see how Hawks plays against John Ford, and his classics like The Searchers and My Darling Clementine. While Ford tries to define the West—the clash of civilizations, frontier justice, and of course the cowboy itself, Hawks makes no attempt to do so.

    But realism doesn’t stop Hawks from putting John Wayne, the definition of the genre in terms of acting, in the center role as John T. Chance. Hawks has been often quoted that Rio Bravo is a response to the Gary Cooper-McCarthy Era Western High Noon, and its amazing to see how the two sheriffs are defined. Chance is all-powerful, all intelligent, and simply the best at what he does. Hawks’ first shot of him—a surprisingly low angle shot from a director known for keeping his camera eye level—establishes his power over the audience, as well as Dean Martin’s character Dude. This doesn’t sound so different from his role in his Ford films, except that despite his power, Hawks is willing to have fun and let Chance fall into…well, chance. Consider the first scene with bombshell Angie Dickinson’s Feathers emasculates Chance in their first scene together. Hawks often plays for comedy, but not at the sense of parody.

    Like many of Hawks’ great films—Only Angels Have Wings, Ball of Fire, His Girl Friday—Hawks is not about the individual, something defined in the Western. Although he has someone who becomes the leader because of his professional ability that is better than all the rest, he often concerns himself with the actions and interactions of groups together—group dynamic. He will rarely use close-ups, instead preferring medium and long shots to bring more characters into the frame. And Rio Bravo has its cast of characters—Dude as the recovering alcoholic, Walter Brennan’s disabled Stumpy, Ricky Nelosn’s young hotshot Colorado. These men each bring a unique perspective that helps Chance accomplish his goals. Consider during the final fight—Stumpy throws dynamite while Dude and Chance shoot it.

    One thing I have seemingly avoided so far is explaining exactly what Rio Bravo is about, which is another trick that Hawks, as well as screenwriters Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman pull. The premise is simple—Chance arrests the brother of a local gang, and has to hold him in his jail cell until the federal marshal can come in, stopping the attacks of the gang from breaking him out. That could be a thirty minute film (and in his semi-remake El Dorado, the Rio Bravo story only takes an hour), but Hawks draws the film out for two and a half hours. But then again, Rio Bravo is not about plot—its mood, characters, and comedy. Plot is a trademark of the old Hollywood, which Hawks may have helped defined, but always pushed against the grain at the same time. There’s even enough time for a song (which you kind of have to do if you have both Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in your film), but it also works thematically. After listening to the Mexican death song, they men combat it in the only way they can, with their own, uplifting song.

    But of all the factors, there is truly one thing that defines Hawks as a non-Western, Western maker, which you can easily miss—Space and background. In the opening shot of Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers, he defines the space between inside and outside as frontier space and modern space. Hawks stays completely within interiors, with modern space. There are maybe two shots that show what is outside the town, and it is never properly defined. Hawks is about interiors and city space, and not about the space outside (Also in Red River, Hawks keeps his exteriors out of focus and his characters always predominately defined within the frame).

    There are a few great Hollywood westerns that come after Rio Bravo, most notably Ford’s final farewell The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But what Rio Bravo does is make a modern movie in a Western world. Cops, alcoholics, singing, and city space—Hawks is often considered one of the great American directors, and that American-ness that defines him is often a telling sign. Hawks was obsessed with American men and their work, even when they weren’t legends, because real people are much more mythological about American than their actual legendary counterparts