Flick Pick: Red River

Red River
(United Artists, 1948)

Howard Hawks classic western with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, and one of the best westerns of all time. Wayne's performance is noteworthy, alongside Clift in his first major film role (though The Search premiered earlier in 1948, Red River had been shot in 1946, when film rookie Clift was then 26). The score by Dimitri Tiomkin was every bit as epic as the vistas in the movie, and the film had all the classic Western elements: cattle drives, a stampede, gunfights, Indian attacks, wagon trains, and vast expanses of the wide open American West. The only thing it lacks at all is being filmed in a panoramic format, and in color. But for a post-war film, and any kind of Western, it has everything needed and more.