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Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
how the western was lost
PrintI don’t recall ever going to see a western when I was growing up, but when I became interested in classic Hollywood, I rented as many as I could. The films were simply marvelous: the excitement of lone heroes, standing for truth and justice against the lawless villains of the frontier. They came to town, restored the rights of the townsfolk, then rode off into the sunset. As I watched John Wayne and Gary Cooper walking tall, I couldn’t help but wonder why cinematic heroes today don’t have that same sort of mythical status.
The western is often described as the most recognizably American genre, largely because those movies take a nostalgic look back at an American landscape that no longer exists. Movies like Stagecoach, High Noon, and Shane represent the best of American ideals from 1930s to the 1950s—masculinity through strength, the power of individual authority, and a truly American attitude about getting things done.
But these sorts of heroes have been absent on-screen for some time. Action stars like Bruce Willis and Jason Statham just don’t carry themselves with the same strength and presence—the western hero simply stands while the action hero needs to shoot. Sure, every once in a while a major studio releases a western—think of films like 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James, and even No Country for Old Men. While these films present critiques of the old western formula through a retrospective lens, they lack the idealistic vision that made the westerns of the past so enjoyable. So why did the western, America’s most iconic film genre, disappear in the 1960s? Perhaps an examination of Howard Hawks’ 1959 classic Rio Bravo, released 50 years ago this week, could help answer my burning question.
At first, Rio Bravo may seem to lack many of its genre’s typical traits. The plot is strange, as far as westerns go—instead of an action-packed adventure, men sit around a jail and talk. Local sheriff John Wayne hauls antagonist Claude Akins to jail for murder. Later, his villainous gang prepares to break their comrade out while Wayne and his ragtag group wait for the impending storm. During that time, there are no shots of the frontier, only a few gunfights, and no final showdown. So why is Rio Bravo considered an iconic western?
Like other Hawks films, including The Big Sleep and Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo explores the theme of masculinity through professionalism. Although Wayne is billed as the star, the true focus of the film is Dean Martin as a sheriff recovering from alcoholism. Martin spends the entire movie attempting to sober up so he can once again restore his strong, masculine image as the best gunslinger in town.
But the protagonists of westerns are not supposed to be weak or recovering—they should be perfect, iconic heroes. Despite its cultural status, Rio Bravo is, at heart, a deconstruction of the western film. It is shot mostly indoors so that we never see the boundless horizon that dominates the films of John Ford, Hawks’ contemporary. Rio Bravo is also about a group of individuals working together—Wayne, Martin, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson—rather than a single man promoting justice on his own.
Rio Bravo takes the generic western formula and gives it a sense of realism. Iconic westerns like John Ford’s The Searchers are grandiose stories of epic proportions, but Rio Bravo is simple, believable, and practical. Maybe that’s why filmmakers like John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino often cite Rio Bravo as a major influence on their own work: It plays with the genre’s formula by featuring characters that seem sensible.
But Rio Bravo’s release came at a turning point in American history, just as the 1960s were beginning. During that decade, a generation turned away from its leaders and toward themselves, while the counterculture movement made it difficult to believe in heroes. New role models came in the form of over-sexualized gangsters in Bonnie and Clyde and the ultimate rebels at the center of Easy Rider. There was no longer any place for a great American symbol like the honorable cowboy. When Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone made his 1964 western A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood, he made sure of one thing—Eastwood’s goal was not to serve justice, but to get paid. In America’s changing landscape, the western hero was seen as a relic of the past, someone with no relevance in a world defined by protests, assassinations, and war.
Comic book heroes in films like Spider-Man and The Dark Knight seem to have replaced the western hero today, but these heroes also have to question their motives and whether they are truly fighting for good—something the traditional western hero would never do. And while many western films are considered classics, Rio Bravo is one of the best because of the way it strays from the formula. That movie stands out by positing that paragons can be real people with problems who nevertheless defend the world against criminals and outlaws. In a world that too often criticizes America instead of praising it, defending classic American ideals seem more important than ever. Maybe this would be the perfect time to turn to films like Rio Bravo for an image of what idealized men could be—flawed, perhaps, but still fighting for the good of their country.
2 April 2009
vol. 6, issue 8
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