Relaxin' with Howard Hawks: "El Dorado," 1966/67

Thinking about Hawks for my contribution to the "Early Hawks Blogathon," it was the reflection from the late work which helped determine my subject in treating the early work. And that, in turn, led me to look at some of the late work in more detail. What the hell. To do so is certainly more fun than contemplating much of the contemporary cinematic scene. Although I do think I'm gonna go see He's Not That Into You next week. Looks like a clueless big-budget remake of Swanberg's LOL. Hence, I feel I must check it out before launching any contra-Swanberg salvo. So. Anyway...

"No story, just characters," is, according to some reports, how Howard Hawks described his project El Dorado to Robert Mitchum when offering him a co-lead in the film. "You and Duke play a couple of old cowboys." That's a fun story, one that inspired Godard, and it may have the benefit of actually being true, but watching El Dorado is hardly anything like a plot-free experience along the lines of Jeanne Dielman. There's a very definite story here, and how Hawks tells it showcases his acute sense, which by this point must have been second nature to him, of dramatic compression and expansion. 

The film is made up of three narrative modules, as it were. In the first, we meet gunman Cole Thornton (John Wayne, the aforementioned "Duke") and Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Mitchum), old friends who, in typical Hawksian mode, have loved the same woman (Charlene Holt's Maudie). Cole's in town to enforce for would-be land baron Bart Jason (Ed Asner), a typical won't-get-his=hands-dirty-villain, but Harrah tells Cole that Jason isn't a right guy, and that, if anyone, he ought to take the side of the MacDonald family, who for years have been working the land Jason wants to grab. A series of misunderstandings culminates with a young MacDonald dead and Cole with a bullet dangerously close to his spine, courtesy of would-be avenging MacDonald Joey (as in Josephine, played by Michele Carey). Thornton leaves town to seek other work and tend to his wound.

Some time later, Thornton returns to El Dorado, with a young, poetry-spouting, knife-throwing (because he's so lousy with a gun) would-be adventurer named Mississippi (nee Alan Bourdillion Traherne) in tow. Where he finds J.P. pretty much dead drunk in the jailhouse, attended by old coot Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt), and unable to cope with the coming storm of Bart Jason's gunmen. So, okay, here's a young pup named after a river/state, an alcoholic lawman, a posse of bad guys...sounds like Rio Bravo very redux. According to Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy, El Dorado's screenwriter Leigh Brackett (who adapted the story from the far darker tale The Stars In Their Courses by Harry Brown) called her initial work "the best script I've ever written," deplored the reworking Hawks gave the story, and called the end result The Son of Rio Bravo Rides Again.

Because, as McCarthy further points out, the reworking subsists largely of self-plagiarism. Not just of Rio Bravo, but of A Girl In Every Port. Not to mention The Big Sleep—anyone who recalls the fate of Eddie Mars will know how a particular ploy of Thornton's will turn out. 

What of Hawks' disinclination, late in his career, to break new ground with Brackett's tragic script? (The veteran screenwriter Brackett, whose final work was on The Empire Strikes Back, welcomed the freedoms that New Hollywood ushered in; she loved Altman's The Long Goodbye because it was the only film that had Terry Lennox get what was coming to him.) And what of his cynical rejoinder to those who disapproved of his recycling: "...the copy made more money than the original, and I was very pleased with it?"

We can make of it what we will, but the proof is in the pudding, and El Dorado is an entirely pleasurable viewing experience, one in which Hawks gives some extra leg room to the set pieces (the loping rhythms extend to some fairly tense scenes but don't compromise their tension; see, for instance, Thornton's first encounter with Joey MacDonald) and lets every performer's personality (with the possible exception of Asner, who just gets to glower) have more than a few moments. Wayne has rarely seemed more natural, Mitchum more disarmingly modest. Caan (below, with Hunnicutt and Carey) deploys a boyish charm that would soon vanish completely from his actor's toolbox. 

And what Manny Farber called Hawks "poetic sense of action" is on full display in the film's centerpiece,the climax of the picture's second narrative module, a long chase and shootout by night in El Dorado, with Wayne's Thornton reprising Rio Bravo's immortal line "let's make some music!" and then literally doing so, chiming the church bells in the belfry where some of Jason's goons are hiding. The film's final narrative module sees our heroes suffer a temporary defeat before re-claiming the town that Caan's Mississippi keeps spouting Poe about.

Nick Tosches has written of "the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnating," and perhaps we'd prefer to believe that Hawks was working from a belief in that, rather than in Giving The People What They Want, Again. In any case, El Dorado was released in the States (after a late '66 engagement in Japan) in the summer of '67. The summer of you-know-what, as well as the summer that New Hollywood started knocking down the door with the likes of Bonnie and Clyde (a film influenced by Godard and Truffaut, who had been influenced by...Howard Hawks...). Some revisionist historians might have you believe that Hawks' picture looked like a film out of its time at the time. In fact, it was a pretty big hit—the twelfth biggest picture of the year, according to McCarthy. And today, unmoored from any zeitgeist, it merely looks like one for the ages. 

UPDATE: Joseph Failla recalls a Hawksian education, and another of El Dorado's personalities:

Having discovered Howard Hawks' "lawman" trilogy, RIO BRAVO, EL DORADO and RIO LOBO out of order, it took awhile for all the pieces to fit and even longer to sort them all out. I had to keep reminding myself which one has the blood dripping into the glass of beer? Wayne being paralyzed by a bullet lodged too close to his spine? Or the woman out to avenge having her face slashed by a sadistic villain?

 

While I don't necessarily disagree with the prevailing opinion that each film loses something with each new reworking, I do find EL DORADO to have a most pleasing mix of character and story structure. It may appear less dependent on plot than the more celebrated RIO BRAVO (streamlining many side trips with various secondary characters), but it dosen't come off nearly as "lazy" as the later RIO LOBO would. It also seems to begin and end in progress, as if we've walked in late and decided to leave early. Keeping in mind that this should be looked at as a "middle" chapter, I suppose it's only appropriate.

 

Although I don't associate Robert Mitchum or James Caan with westerns any more than I do Dean Martin or Ricky Nelson, I think they're better paired with the likes of John Wayne and are not as obtrusive on the otherwise familiar landscape. For some reason Martin would continue to enjoy a run in westerns himself, even playing Wayne's brother (!) in THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER and then opposite Mitchum in the oddball FIVE CARD STUD.

 

I'd also like to point out the performance of Christopher George as McLeod, one of the gunfighters hired by villian Ed Asner. It's an exceptionally fine portrayal from an actor who's been entirely underestimated. He may be a vile and calculating character but he's extremely cool under pressure when dealing with Wayne. But I always feel bad when George meets his end because Wayne gets the drop on him by cheating! In their final exchange, Wayne admits "You were too good to give a chance to." It's an exciting scene that's excerpt during the title sequence of THE SHOOTIST depicting the career of JB Books / Wayne. Since the filmmakers decided to spotlight this moment, I think we should too.

 

Comments

[Ryland Walker Knight]

First saw this one on a crummy VHS and all I can remember from back then is that it made me giddy. I should revisit all those old westerns my grandpa liked. Also, I should just spend more time with Hawks, period. Every time I watch one of his movies these days I get something great from it; and that something is something so different from whatever thing I got back in, wait for it, el día.

[Campaspe]

Ahem. It has come to my attention that this post isn't getting enough attention, she said, pushing crickets aside with her foot. So, El Dorado. This is an excellent post and I loved reading it. But El Dorado is still my least-favorite Hawks ever. I even prefer Tiger Shark, which I wrote about for the Early Hawks blogathon. Or Barbary Coast, for that matter. I really wish I saw what you see in this movie, Glenn, but I find it anemic, pat, rote, like a singer on a farewell tour coming out for one encore too many. Michele Carey is hopelessly modern in this Western, and so is Caan. And Mitchum is overacting his underacting, something that was a habit at this point in his career. Wayne is good, though. He was always good for Hawks.

Howard Hawks was a super-genius, but in the words of Wile E. Coyote, even a genius can have an off day.

[Campaspe]

After sleeping on this, and before you kill me, I wanted to add that it's a funny thing, looking at a less-brilliant Hawks, because one is comparing it to his best. If I were comparing this movie to other, less gifted filmmakers it's possible I'd be less hard on it. Although to be completely honest I would prefer the very, very Hawks-derivative The Sons of Katie Elder to El Dorado. But then again, Rio Bravo would crush both movies like an egg.

One more thing I do like about El Dorado: the palette, very much on display in your screen grabs. Everything has this beautiful amber tinge, like it's filmed through whiskey.

[zerin hood]

I just finished watching El Dorado again. I just love it - but I do get it mixed up with the Dean Martin/Ricky Nelson film at times, which I also enjoy. (Five Card Stud was also an early favorite of mine). I really enjoy the characters in El Dorado. Because the plot is so simple, there is time to just enjoy these old gunmen, the older Indian fighter, the young poet and the women in the film. I think the poetry is both out of place and yet integral to the feel of the film - in fact, the name of my blog comes from the poem in the film. I guess the poetry is just awkwardly done, but appropriate to the place and subject matter.
I especially like your scenes from the movie. I would also like to see the paintings that run at the film's beginning credits.