Comparing Films Not Always Easy, But I Do it With Three Westerns

John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River

In the summer of 1998 I was talking with a friend of mine who’d recently seen an obscure film about Native Americans called Smoke Signals (1998) Eyre. He told me that he liked it better than Saving Private Ryan (1998) Spielberg, another recent release. I found this an extremely odd comparison and was tempted to ask how he thought Smoke Signals compared with Casablanca (1942) Curtiz. Other than the fact that they were new films Smoke Signals and Saving Private Ryan had nothing in common. In some respects it’s akin to saying that you prefer the orange you just ate to the spaghetti dinner from last night. They're both food but....

Comparing films, however much you stretch it, is what people do. It is what the Oscars are all about. Five acting performances are nominated, voters compare and pick the one they think is best. Never mind that Anthony Hopkins playing a man with dementia in The Father (2020) Zeller is a totally different process than Riz Ahmed portraying a young recovering addict who has lost his hearing in Sound of Metal (2019) Marder. 

But surely some comparisons make more sense than others. Comparing Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Lean with Schindler’s List (1993) Spielberg because they are both set during World War II doesn’t make a lot of sense. You may like one a lot better than the other but more likely you enjoy them for different reasons (or I suppose dislike them for different reasons). Speaking of Saving Private Ryan and the year 1998, I had another friend say he preferred The Thin Red Line (1998) Malick over Ryan, both were released around the same time. Though I disagreed with him, his comparison at least made sense as there were enough similarities to warrant a comparison. 

Certainly comparing Sean Connery as James Bond with portrayals by Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig is valid. Just as are comparisons of the different versions of films like True Grit, 3:10 to Yuma and The Getaway. A Night to Remember (1998) Baker and Titanic (1997) Cameron lend themselves to comparison as they are both about the same event.

Returning to ’98, it would have made more sense for my friend to have simply said how much he liked Smoke Signals and leaving the Spielberg film out of it. If he really needed to compare it to something he could have chosen other films that are about Native Americans.

All this has been a perhaps overly lengthy preamble to allow me to compare some films.

On Sunday I watched Silverado (1985) Kasdan a movie I hadn’t seen since its initial release over three decades ago. I had no recollection of my response to the film and have been meaning to re-watch it for years. I shouldn’t have bothered. It was not only a mediocre film (that’s being charitable) it suffered badly in comparison to the movie I’d watched the day before, Red River (1948) Hawks. 

I believe it valid to compare the two films because they are both Westerns. 

Silverado is a series of shootouts between very bad guys (why they all weren’t wearing black hats is a mystery) and very good guys (and why didn't they all don white hats?). The bad guys all got killed. The good guys all survived. There were moments of supposed tension but the film was such that one never worried about the outcome. Everything was perfectly predicable up to including an ending that I saw a mile way. But Silverado’s biggest offense was the one dimensionality of its characters. It was a terrible waste of a good cast led by Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Scott Glenn and Danny Glover. Not a one of them was nuanced.

Red River is all about character. As Thomas Dunson, John Wayne got one of the few roles he was really able to sink his teeth into and show his acting chops (limited as they were). The Dunson we initially meet is heroic, brave and determined. The man he turns into is cruel, paranoid and dangerously stubborn. There is great complexity to him and his relationship with his adopted son Matt Garth played perfectly by Montgomery Clift. Red River is a western epic with incredible scenes of a lengthy cattle drive from southern Texas to Kansas, replete with bad weather, stampedes, playful banter, conflict and the inevitable Indian attack. 

As Red River reaches its denouement viewers marvel at the incredible journey and wonder at how the central conflict between Dunson and Garth will resolve itself. 

Perhaps I was wrong, maybe you can’t compare Silverado with Red River as there is no comparison.

Paul Newman in Hud

Yesterday I watched a more modern Western, set in the early 1960s, Hud (1963) Ritt. I don’t know that it warrants comparison with Silverado or Red River but if so it far surpasses the former and is in the rarefied air of the latter. 

Paul Newman plays Hud, as self-centered and amoral a character as has ever been on screen. But audiences took to Hud the character and thus the movie. They actually liked Hud, most likely because he was played by one of the handsomest and most magnetic actors of all time. But also because, among his other undeniable characteristics, was cynicism. Cynics make for good film characters because they don’t ask audiences to believe in anything and indeed support their questioning of a lot. Hud is also a maverick and a womanizer and what film-goer can pass on someone like that when played by a blue-eyed beauty.

The cast also includes Oscar-winning performances by Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal. The later brings an interesting sort of sensuality to her role as the common but wise maid employed by the three ranchers (Grandpa, Hud and teenaged Lonnie played ably by Brandon De Wilde). Newman was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Sidney Poitier.

The film Hud is ostensibly about a successful cattle rancher who must face losing his entire herd to hoof-and-mouth disease. When the possibility of the herd being infected is first presented, Hud suggests selling off the herd to unsuspecting buyers. That’s his moral compass in a nutshell. And here he expresses it: “This country is run on epidemics, where you been? Price fixing, crooked TV shows, inflated expense accounts. How many honest men you know? Why you separate the saints from the sinners, you're lucky to wind up with Abraham Lincoln. Now I want out of this spread what I put into it, and I say let us dip our bread into some of that gravy while it is still hot.”

But Hud is a multi-layered film as most great ones are (and it is, in my estimation, a great film). It is about family, regrets, hidden resentments and open resentments. Lonnie is in some way the central character. He is torn between an abiding love for his charismatic Uncle Hud and his own basic goodness, doubtless inherited from his grandfather. Lonnie yo-yos back and forth between wanting to raise hell with Hud and do the right thing. He makes his choice at the end of the film. 

Neal’s Alma Brown is also crucial to the story’s arc. She is the oft-bemused observer, offering wry comments while tirelessly supporting the men. Hud and Lonnie both lust after her and who wouldn’t? She is all long legs, bare feet, a lithe body capped by smoldering smiles. 

Hud and Red River are exceptional films centered around complex characters in trying circumstances. Other than being Westerns, they are not easy films to classify. That’s a good thing.