Screenshot for the Week of 24 August 2020: "RIO BRAVO" (1959)

Dude (Dean Martin) firing his six-gun at the Burdette henchman in the rafters as John T. (John Wayne, in tan leather jacket) and others look on in Rio Bravo (1959)

Ever heard of Russell Harlan?  No?  He was the Director of Photography for this movie.  He was the one who chose this camera position to film Dude (Dean Martin) shooting the man in the rafters.  Another DoP probably would've set the camera up behind the line of Burdette's men, filming Dude from ground level.  Harlan's choice allowed me to take this screenshot.

I'll bet you've seen or at least heard of some of the other movies for which he served as DoP or Cinematographer: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962); Witness for the Prosecution (1957); Red River (1948); The Blackboard Jungle (1955); Run Silent, Run Deep (1958); Hatari! (1962), Pollyanna (1960); Operation Petticoat (1959); Sunrise at Campobello (1960); and Lust for Life (1956), among others.

(By the way, hundreds of movies have been made—from good to great—with brilliant camerawork that gets little or no notice from the audience and none from the Motion Picture Academy.)

Be on the lookout for the following cinematographers from the Golden Age:

• Gregg Toland
• Jack Cardiff
• Karl Struss
• James Wong Howe
• Karl Freund
• Leon Shamroy
• Arthur C. Miller
• Joseph Ruttenburg
• Russell Harlan
• Arthur Edeson
• Robert Burks
• Robert Surtees
• Rudolph Maté
• Sol Polito

Be on the lookout for the following cinematographers from the Modern Era.

• Gordon Willis
• Freddie Young
• Haskell Wexler
• Conrad Hall
• Vittorio Storaro
• Geoffrey Unsworth
• Janusz Kaminiski
• Roger Deakins
• Robert Richardson
• Robert Yeoman
• Darius Khondji
• Emmanuel Lubezki

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It is ironic that John Wayne appeared for Gary Cooper at the 1953 Academy Awards to accept Cooper's Best Actor Oscar for his performance in High Noon (1952).  Wayne hated High Noon.  He hated the character Cooper played, Will Kane.  He probably didn't think much of Cooper either.

Rio Bravo (1959) was Howard Hawks's and John Wayne's reply to High Noon, a movie they both hated. They felt that no self-respecting lawman of the old west would have asked for the townspeople's help under any circumstances, including Kane's.  Wayne called the final scene in High Noon "un-American," erroneously asserting that Kane had stepped on his badge after having thrown it on the ground.  Cooper, in turn, thought Rio Bravo was "so phony, nobody believes in it."

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Howard Hawks has the most eclectic filmography of any director that I'm aware of.  Look at some of the movies he's made besides Rio Bravo: Bringing Up Baby (1938); Sergeant York (1941); Scarface (1932); Ball of Fire (1941); To Have and Have Not (1944); Red River (1948); and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

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Sight & Sound magazine in the UK has published a poll ranking the "Greatest Films of All-Time" once a decade for seven decades (1952-2012 so far).  The magazine polls a worldwide array of hundreds of film professionals—critics, directors, producers, distributors.  Film professionals, as do we all, come and go the way of all flesh, and so the mix of specific people is different each time.  But Roger Ebert said this poll is "by far the most respected of the countless polls of great movies—the only one most serious movie people take seriously."

So why would I write this under a screenshot from Rio Bravo?  Because Rio Bravo made the list.  Actually, the official list is only 10 films long, and this movie didn't make the top 10.  But Sight & Sound also publishes a list of the top 100 vote-getters, and Rio Bravo made that list at number 63.  It tied with Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Modern Times (1936).  Casablanca (1942) came in at number 84.  Lawrence of Arabia (1962), number 81.  Chinatown (1974), number 78.  The Third Man (1949), Grand Illusion (1937), and Nashville (1975), tied at 73.  Go figure.

U.S. movies don't translate well into foreign languages and cultures if they are dialogue-heavy.  I think that explains most of the apparent discrepancies in the list.  Not that Rio Bravo doesn't deserve its day in the sun or that it didn't deserve to make the 2012 list.  It is worth noting, however, that Dr. Strangelove (1964) and The Conversation (1974) didn't make the list.  Neither did Network (1976), Shane (1953), High Noon (1952), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967), Pulp Fiction (1994), Schindler's List (1993), On the Waterfront (1954), and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

DoP: Russell Harlan. D: Howard Hawks.