Red River

There’s something about this film that feels like a step up. It’s weird because Hawks had been an assured directorial hand for almost two decades by the time he made this, with several great films to his name, but this production is so much bigger, complex, and intricate. Visually, it embraces the mythic feeling of a John Ford Western. This adaptation of Borden Chase’s serialized novel The Chisholm Trail feels like Howard Hawks really reaching to make something bigger and newer for himself, ...