Movie Review 2: True Grit
I'm on a Western kick today! Rewatching the John Wayne classic TRUE GRIT. Can you believe it? Like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID this movie was made in 1969. But TRUE GRIT has none of the 1960s sensibility or hipster talent or Baby Boomer touchy feelies of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID; it feels very 1950s Western with its classic Western story line (strong, linear, with a moral), wonderful dialogue, good actors and one GREAT one - John Wayne, whose face, never handsome in youth but beautifully rugged in middle and old age, steals every scene. Wayne's craggier visage - the one we see in THE SEARCHERS, for example - should be carved in the cinematic version of America's Mount Everest. I'd make that pilgrimage! That's how colossal John Wayne the actor is to me!
I want to point out: this screen-play is a hum dinger! The dialogue is too terrific, many of the lines taken straight out of the novel the movie is based on. Phrases like "I heard you're a man of true grit" or "I admire your sand" or "you saucy thing" or "I'll paddle your rump!" or "baby sister, I was born game and I intend to go out that way!" give this movie a vintage, whimsical, maybe even Biblical tone. So ornate... so lovely. Did people speak this way in America in the 1860s? Doubt it, which makes the movie more entertaining.
Even though TRUE GRIT boasts two popular stars of the day - a young, cute Glen Campbell, who also sings its theme song, and a short-haired Kim Darby who plays the plucky, feminist Mattie Ross, it doesn't have Katherine Ross, Robert Redford or Paul Newman, the direction American films are turning. TRUE GRIT ain't the New Hollywood of the 1970s, but it's still great. It's got John Wayne!
Here, Wayne is U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, an older, overweight, grizzled guy who's seen better days and now finds himself living alone with a cat and a Chinese house keeper in a dump of a house. His home is visited by a fat rat who knows his way around Wayne's big lazy yellow feline, scampering straight to the sack of cornmeal with true brazenness. Rooster's bed frame has no slats so he has trouble getting out of it in the mornings! Often he's hungover, too, because, in the words of the town horse dealer, Rooster's "a notorious thumper" - TRUE GRIT-speak for alcoholic. Rooster cuts corners sometimes to get his man, but he's tough and always gets him. He exudes true grit.
So when Mattie's father is shot dead and then robbed of his sack of gold pieces by his worker Chaney during a road trip to buy some mustangs, Mattie, also displaying true grit, sets out to find Chaney to bring him to justice. She's tough but she's still a young girl so she hires Rooster to find the guy with her - by her side. Rooster balks at this arrangement, says she's a baby who'll just be in the way and slow him down. But Mattie, as strong willed as Rooster is, demands he take her with him or she won't pay him. Glen Campbell, as bounty hunter Le Boeuf, also jumps in as Chaney killed a Texas senator in his state a few years back while the old pol was rocking in his rocking chair on his front porch. Le Boeuf will get the $500 reward money if he brings Chaney to justice in Texas. So, greed and grief come together, and the three of them set out on their journey, which turns out to be one hell of an adventure, complete with shoot outs, knife fights, rattle snakes, dying ponies, river crossings, one hero's demise and gallantry. Very John Wayne.
I'll take Wayne starring in Ford's THE SEARCHERS over any Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western or any Redford or Newman flick any day of the week. I'll take MY DARLING CLEMENTINE with the magnificent Henry Fonda over almost any modern Western. John Ford. Howard Hawks. These two directors showed us Americans our America, its history, warts and all, their warts and all. And despite their personal shortcomings, prejudices, stubborn stereotypes and blind spots, I still think they did a pretty good job. I love their Westerns! Their actors (Montgomery Clift...Ward Bond .... Dean Martin!!), their vistas, their costumes, their "right down to the ground"-ness, in the words of Mattie Ross.
John Wayne wasn't politically liberal like Robert Redford and Paul Newman. He was rock ribbed Republican who said some demeaning things about the changing America he found himself in during his old age. But that never stopped Wayne from giving his complex, nuanced performance as Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS or his natural, totally believable take on Rooster Cogburn in this film. Both later films for Wayne. He's even believable when his Rooster shoves reins between his teeth and rides his tall horse straight into the enemy, blasting his two big guns, one in each of his two gnarly hands. Unbelievable but believable when the iconic Wayne, on his big horse Beau, does it. Wearing his old black hat and rough prairie coat, he takes the plunge into enemy fire - eye patch over one eye, creaky with rheumatism but still monumental.
TRUE GRIT isn't Wayne's swan song (I think its THE SHOOTIST w James Stewart and Lauren Bacall), but it is a film that gives him one of his last great roles.