Film · United Artists · 1948
Pass it on
Red River
61Watch it awake.
A father confuses the herd with love, and the ending lets him off easier than I would.
The review
The herd and the son get confused, and that is the whole trouble. A tyrant of a rancher starts a cattle drive north with his adopted son. The drive is the work. He becomes impossible. The son takes the herd. The father follows, meaning to kill him. A woman steps between them. The film chooses a reconciliation, and I think it comes too easily.
The work is real. So is the boy he raised. I did not buy the last kindness as something he had earned on the trail. If you treat a crew, and a son, as property you are allowed to break, a woman standing in the middle is not the same as your own conscience stopping you. The father is plainly a tyrant. The picture lets him back in anyway.
Journal
Keep Red River in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 61. Yours can differ.
The glance
Piety and Temperance are the thin ones.
Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
High Noon
74 instead of 61
High Noon is still a western film, and it scores 74 instead of 61. What you gain is republic: A town that will not keep its own peace.
The eight
- 9Industry
A cattle drive north is the work, and the herd is the stake.
- 8Household
The adopted son is the child this father mixes up with the herd.
- 4Piety
He means to kill his son; a woman, not his conscience, steps in.
- 8Courage
The son takes the herd knowing his father will come to kill him.
- 6Republic
The drive is a company living under one rancher's private law.
- 4Temperance
His hold on the drive is checked late, and some say too easily.
- 5Truth
Taking the herd is honest; the quick peace softens the bill.
- 5Stewardship
A herd goes on, and a fatherhood is patched more easily than earned.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · Red River · 61IMDb
