Red River (#709)

No matter what genre he worked in, Howard Hawks played by his own rules, and never was this more evident than in his first western, the rowdy and whip-smartRed River.In it, John Wayne found one of his greatest roles, as an embittered, tyrannical Texas rancher whose tensions with his independent-minded adopted sonplayed by Montgomery Clift, in a breakout performancereach epic proportions during a cattle drive to Missouri. The film is based on a novel that dramatizes the real-life late nineteenth-century expeditions along the Chisholm Trail, but Hawks is less interested in historical accuracy than in tweaking the codes of masculinity that propel the myths of the American West. The unerringly macho Wayne and the neurotic, boyish Clift make for an improbably perfect pair, held aloft by a quick-witted, multilayered screenplay and Hawkss formidable direction.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• 2K digital restoration of the rarely presented original theatrical release version, the preferred cut of director Howard Hawks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• 2K digital restoration of the longer, prerelease version ofRed River,with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interview from 2014 with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich aboutRed Riverand the two versions
• Interview from 2014 with critic Molly Haskell about Hawks andRed River
• Interview from 2014 with film scholar Lee Clark Mitchell about the western genre
• Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich
• Audio excerpts from a 1970 interview with novelist and screenwriter Borden Chase
• Lux Radio Theatreadaptation ofRed Riverfrom 1949, featuring John Wayne, Joanne Dru, and Walter Brennan
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey OBrien and, for the Blu-ray edition, a 1991 interview with Hawkss longtime editor Christian Nyby