Red River (1948) [The Criterion Collection]

Director: Howard Hawks, Arthur Rosson
Writers: Borden Chase, Charles Schnee
Stars: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru

No matter what genre he worked in, Howard Hawks played by his own rules, and never was this more evident than in his first western, the rowdy and whip-smart Red River. In it, John Wayne found one of his greatest roles, as an embittered, tyrannical Texas rancher whose tensions with his independent-minded adopted son—played by Montgomery Clift, in a breakout performance—reach epic proportions during a cattle drive to Missouri. The film is based on a novel that dramatizes the real-life late nineteenth-century expeditions along the Chisholm Trail, but Hawks is less interested in historical accuracy than in tweaking the codes of masculinity that propel the myths of the American West. The unerringly macho Wayne and the neurotic, boyish Clift make for an improbably perfect pair, held aloft by a quick-witted, multilayered screenplay and Hawks’s formidable direction.

Extras:
- 2K digital restoration of the rarely presented original theatrical release version, the preferred cut of director Howard Hawks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- 2K digital restoration of the longer, prerelease version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
- Interview with critic Molly Haskell about Hawks and Red River
- Interview with film scholar Lee Clark Mitchell about the western genre
- Audio excerpts from a conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich
- Audio excerpts from an interview with novelist and screenwriter Borden Chase
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Red River from 1949, featuring John Wayne, Joanne Dru, and Walter Brennan
- Trailer