Top 10 John Wayne Performances
I still remember how, when with 8 years of age I listened in amazement to the news of the death of actor John Wayne. It was such a day as yesterday, in the distant 1979, so in a movie-buff tribute operation we paid him a small tribute with one of those lists that they like so much. The image of the actor has always been linked to the genre of genres, the western, as is clear in the following list that only follows a chronological order, and which curiously contains very few directors, and it is very difficult to separate the actor from names like John Ford or Howard Hawks.
‘Red river’
Wayne's first collaboration with Hawks resulted in one of the director's best jobs. With a more complex character than it appears at first glance - a very widespread tonic in his characters - he created a school in the genre with one of the most remembered and best filmed sequences by Hawks, the one in which he felt betrayed by the character played by a promising newcomer Montgomery Clift, threatened him with the mythical phrase “I'm going to catch you, I don't know when, but I will catch you. Every time you turn around expect to see me because at some point when you do, I will be there. I'll kill you".
'The invincible legion'
'She was wearing a yellow ribbon' is the original title of the second installment of John Ford's trilogy dedicated to cavalry, along with the essentials 'Fort Apache' (id, 1948) and 'Rio Grande' (id, 1950) . Wayne is Captain Nathan Cutting, who six days before retiring must carry out his last mission in the army, to which he has dedicated his life. One of the actor's most melancholic characters, most beloved, most intimate.
'The Quiet Man'
Mythical film where they exist, is one of the best works of both John Wayne and his director, John Ford. Sean Thornton is a tormented ex-boxer who returns to his hometown in Ireland, where he will find the love of his life, played by the everlasting Maureen O'Hara. The couple's chemistry is something that exceeds the screen, and the long sequence of the final fight has entered the annals of cinema in its own right.
‘Desert centaurs’
Considered by many - Spielberg among them - as not only the best western in all history, but as one of the best films ever made - a certain renowned Spanish director considers it to be a failed film and very poorly narrated - in which Wayne plays one of the roles of his life: Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who must undertake a long search to rescue his niece kidnapped by the Indians. Intense and memorable, like that final shot with the actor's dislodged figure in a sequence a thousand times imitated.
'Bravo River'
We return to Hawks in a western very different from the previous one. Wayne is Sheriff John T. Chance, who with the help of a few men - a whole sample of Hawksian characters par excellence - must prevent the bad boy of the town from rescuing his brother who is imprisoned in jail. A claustrophobic film and a whole apology for friendship. Ricky Nelson's songs are anthologies.
'The man who killed Liberty Valance'
Tom Doniphon is undoubtedly one of the greatest characters in the entire western universe, and therefore of John Wayne and cinema in general. Legend and reality go hand in hand in a unique film about the passage of time, friendship, lost love and good deeds. Few Ford films have his lyricism and the ravishing melancholy that bathes some of his images.
"Hatari!"
Wayne is Sean Mercer, head of a group of men dedicated to trapping animals in Africa and then selling them to zoo. The arrival of a woman at the camp will change things a bit. With a script by the mythical Leigh Brackett - a pity that this writer did not lavish herself more than she did - the film is an adventure story pure and simple, with that touch of Hawks for virile friendship and the group.
'The Golden'
A kind of unconfessed remake of ‘Rio Bravo’ (id, 1959) with slight changes of nuances. Wayne is Cole Thornton - same last name as in 'The Quiet Man' - a gunman who joins forces with the drunken sheriff played by a great Robert Mitchum, and thus face a group of ranchers who want to steal water from a family that is also a rancher . The destruction of the sawed-off shotgun carried by a young James Caan is now historical.
'Value of law'
When the western genre was changing rapidly, thanks to the emergence of people like Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, the great Henry Hathaway gave us the latest classic westerns, this being probably the last of all. Rooster Cogburn is a character that earned Wayne his only Oscar as an actor, a marshall who will help a young girl to carry out revenge against her father's murderer. The actor repeated in a sequel, 'The Rifle and the Bible' ('Rooster Cogburn', Stuart Millar, 1975) with rather lesser results.
'The last gunman'
A project that was for Clint Eastwood, who was seen filming alongside Wayne and his good friend Don Siegel, and that is the last interpretation of the legendary actor. A gunman who seeks at the end of his days to die with some dignity. Wayne, who had overcome a cancer that would later return mercilessly, was taking laudanum to combat the horrible pain he felt. It is ironic that Wayne's last role, and one of his best, was this one.
