A Film Canon

To a certain extent, Red River shares the epic aspirations of Ford's Westerns, particularly evident in its panoramic vision of the Chisholm Trail ("one of the greatest cattle runs in the world"), stretching from Texas to Kansas. However, rather than generate sublimity, this epic scope is used as the mere counterpoint to a pervasive domesticity whose most explicit index is the relationship between the three male protagonists - Thomas Dunson (John Wayne), a self-made rancher who builds the enormous, 'Red River' herd from a single cow and bull, 'Groot' Nadine (Walter Brennan), his friend and partner in business, and Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift), his adopted son - that lends an odd, casual, informality to their proceedings, even in the midst of the wildest scrub or most expansive valley; or, perhaps more accurately, gestures towards a genuine fraternity, rather than the (in)communication between rugged individualists that characterises Ford. Hence the extraordinary narrative trajectory, in which Dunson's increasingly totalitarian demands of his cattle team, and concomitant vow to kill Matt when he launches a (completely justified) coup - that is, his gradual movement towards the persona of his Fordian films - is completely undermined by the final, bathetic intervention of his son's fiancee (Joanne Dru), who comically - and abruptly - demystifies the gravitas of their final stand-off by clarifying the extent to which each party's behaviour was a mere pose, designed to conceal that they loved each other, as well as implying that the majority of analogous, 'heroic' deaths may simply be the result of emotional clumsiness. The result is a conclusion that approaches screwball - at least by comparison to the epic backdrop - in its affirmation both of an idiosyncratic equality between men and women, and an unconventional family structure, in which Dunson, adopted son, and prospective daughter-in-law are gathered under the very sign of the 'Red River' brand that started the conflict, as are the various Indians encountered on the trail, who are more demystified, individuated and collected than in any major Western to date.