Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on Sue’s Mother’s Day present.
Some directors are noted for particular genres, and some become so closely tied to a genre that it becomes impossible to talk about the genre without discussing the director in question. With Westerns, that director is John Ford without question. The man is, was, and ever more shalt be an institution when it comes to the genre. Watch enough of his films, and it’s easy to see why the man is so revered. His films offer, despite being made in a golden time for Hollywood, a certain moral ambiguity a lot of the time. And there’s those great vistas.
Anyway, Rio Grande came in the heart of his career. In addition to being a classic Western of the old school right around the time of the revival of the genre spurred by Winchester ‘73, the film is also a romance and a family genre. There are similarities in tis respect to The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, although fewer than might be expected on the surface. Regardless, Ford manages to keep a lot of plates spinning through this one, even if it doesn’t mesh perfectly at the end.
