'Red River,' Scene 3

Note: The analysis below focuses on the formal construction of the scene and how the scene fits into the film's overall development of character and theme. Unmentioned is the fact that the scene, characteristic of the Westerns of its era, is underpinned by some unfortunate assumptions about race and imperialism. To put it simply: the "good guys" are white settlers; the "bad guys" are Native Americans. Red River was far from the worst offender along these lines, but that doesn't mean it was innocent. Any claim for the film's greatness (and I still think it's a great film) needs to acknowledge this.

The first action scene in Red River occurs about seven minutes in. Prior to this, there have been two scenes: (1) the opening, in which Tom Dunson (John Wayne) and Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan) leave the wagon train, with Dunson bidding farewell to his lover, Fen (Coleen Gray), and giving her his mother's "snake bracelet"; and (2) a scene showing Dunson and Groot's arrival at the north bank of the Red River, where they witness distant smoke that indicates a Comanche attack on the wagon train. Dunson's pained reaction to the smoke indicates his fear (and guilt) about Fen's likely fate. "We shoulda took her along," Groot muses, adding, "They'll most likely be sendin' someone after us." With a look of grim determination, Dunson replies, "If they do . . ." The second scene ends as the two men prepare to set up camp in anticipation of an attack. 

Dissolve to Scene 3. Night has fallen. The scene’s first shot begins with a medium close-up of Groot (fig. 1) crouched beside the wagon, anxiously looking around. He turns his gaze to screen right (fig. 2), and as he does so, the camera tracks from left to right along the edge of the wagon to reveal Dunson, similarly crouching and similarly framed (fig. 3). Groot is no longer in the shot. This A-to-B movement simultaneously establishes the spatial relationship between the two characters and sets up the framing for the back-and-forth editing that follows—what Stefan Sharff has called “separation.”[1] Off-screen “birdcalls”—a signaling device used by the Comanches—alert Dunson and Groot to their dangerous presence nearby. The next several shots cut between Groot and Dunson, shifting, as the tension increases, from medium close-ups to close-ups. Included as well are a couple of shots of the wooded area just beyond the camp, the source of the Comanches’ birdcalls (fig. 4). With each new sound, Groot raises a finger to indicate to Dunson (and the audience) the size of the war party (fig. 5).

Figure 1: Groot looks around warily, crouched at one end of the wagon, looking and listening for any sign of a Comanche war party.

Figure 2: When he turns his gaze to screen right, the camera begins tracking in that direction.

Figure 3: The tracking shot stops on Dunson, crouched at the other end of the wagon. A "separation" begins, with alternating shots of the two men.

Figure 4: As Comanche "birdcalls" are heard, shots of the wooded area near the wagon are intercut with the shots of Groot and Dunson, raising the tension level.

Figure 5: Groot signals the size of the war party to Dunson. Note that the framing has shifted to closeup.

Most significant in the preceding is Hawks’s use of a tracking shot to set up the scene. Another director might have opened with a master shot showing both characters in a single frame, but that wouldn’t have had the same suspenseful effect. Framing each character separately in medium close-up, as Hawks has done, allows for a fuller, more immediate grasp of their individual emotions at this particular moment: Groot clearly looks nervous; Dunson appears less anxious but no less alert. Groot’s obvious fears cue our own, while Dunson’s solid presence offers some measure of reassurance. But why the tracking shot? It would have been simpler to pan from Groot to Dunson. By tracking, however, Hawks maintains the same angle on both men. A pan, with a tripod-mounted camera pivoting about 45 degrees, would have resulted in opposing angles, and that would have been wrong for the scene. The characters are not facing each other as if across a table in conversation; rather, they are united against a common (and, at this point, unseen) threat. Thus, once the alternating shots of Dunson and Groot begin, they are both visually oriented in the same direction—toward the potential danger and not toward each other.

This initial series of shots comes to a climax when, in close-up, Dunson is startled by the thump of a bow releasing an arrow (fig. 6). Cut to a shot of a flaming arrow streaking from the woods toward the camera (fig. 7). Then, as frenzied music kicks in, comes a shot in which Dunson and Groot appear in the same frame for the first time in the scene; this is essentially a master-shot setup, which Hawks had earlier avoided (fig. 8). To use Sharff's terminology, this shot resolves the separation, releasing the suspense even as the exciting central action of the scene begins.

 

Figure 6: The sound of a bow releasing an arrow draws a startled reaction from Dunson.

Figure 7: A flaming arrow streaks from the woods.

Figure 8: In this "master shot," Groot (left) and Dunson (right) are framed together for the first time, resolving the "separation" of the preceding shots.

Within this single shot, we see the following: Dunson fires his rifle, aiming screen left, while Groot tends to the now-burning wagon. Groot tosses his rifle to Dunson, who has dropped his own. (Apparently these firearms can only accommodate a single round each.) Dunson fires again. Such exchange of weaponry is familiar to any fan of Hawks’s Westerns, an emblem of efficient teamwork among seasoned men of action.

When Dunson fires the second time, Hawks cuts to a shot of a Comanche warrior racing toward screen right. He falls, and a new separation begins between Dunson (now using his six-shooter) and two more Comanches. Like the first, the second warrior falls. The third warrior is seen in a brief tracking shot that emphasizes his relentless momentum toward the protagonists (fig. 9). The separation is resolved when the warrior hurls himself onto Dunson (whose pistol has misfired) and the two of them fall into the river and struggle (fig. 10). Cut back to Groot, who picks off another warrior (this one on horseback) with his pistol and rushes to the riverbank to Dunson’s aid. In a second exchange of weaponry, he tosses Dunson his knife (fig. 11), who stabs his adversary repeatedly (fig. 12). The frenzied music subsides.

Figure 9; A Comanche warrior races toward Dunson and Groot as the camera tracks with him.

 

Figure 10: When the warrior hurls himself onto Dunson, the two men fall into the river.

Figure 11: From the riverbank, Groot tosses his knife to Dunson.

Figure 12: With Groot's knife, Dunson struggles to subdue his adversary.

Then, Dunson notices something. He lifts the warrior’s arm from the river, and in a close-up, we see the snake bracelet on the dead man’s wrist (fig. 13). Here is an echo of a moment from the film’s opening scene, when Dunson bids farewell to Fen. In that scene, as he prepares to leave, he notices the bracelet on his own wrist and then gives it to his beloved. We see it in close-up for the first time as Dunson slips it onto Fen's wrist (fig. 14). The close-ups of the bracelet in the two scenes are, compositionally, almost mirror images of each other. In Scene 1, the shot is framed so that Fen's arm is directed toward the left; in Scene 3, the warrior's arm is directed toward the right. The object’s second appearance powerfully signals the tragic ironic reversal that has occurred. The recovery of the bracelet confirms what Dunson has most feared: Fen's death.

Figures 13: In closeup, we see the bracelet on the Comanche warrior's wrist. Compare this shot to the one below, in which Dunson places the bracelet on Fen's wrist during Scene 1.

 

Figure 14

That fear has hung over the entire scene, in fact. At the beginning, before the Comanche attack, Groot whispers to Dunson that maybe the smoke they saw earlier didn’t mean what they thought it did, or, if it did, that Fen managed somehow to escape.[2] Dunson, not sharing his friend’s (false?) optimism, begins a dismissive reply when the first birdcall is heard. Now, at the end of the scene, with the two men reunited in a two-shot (fig. 15), Dunson returns the bracelet to his own wrist, while Groot tries (somewhat inadequately) to offer solace: “Aw, Tom, that’s too bad. We shoulda took . . .” He is about to say, “We shoulda took her along”—his words from scene 2, words that can only exacerbate Dunson’s feelings of guilt—but is interrupted by another birdcall from the woods. One Comanche warrior remains. “Answer him,” says Dunson, and as Groot does so, Dunson exits screen left, knife in hand. The camera tracks in on Groot as he glances around anxiously, framing him, in a nice bit of symmetry, in a composition (fig. 16) very similar to the one that began the scene.[3] Fade out.

 

Figure 15: Dunson rejoins Groot in two-shot and the two of them hear another Comanche birdcall.

Figure16: After Dunson exits the frame to go after the last Comanche, Groot answers the birdcall. His nervousness and the framing of the shot recall the shot that began the scene.

All in all, it's a beautifully crafted little action sequence with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. At just over three minutes long, with many of the shots lasting barely a second or two once the action heats up, it's executed with remarkable economy and effectiveness. Importantly, it marks the first display of Dunson's professional prowess—and Groot's as well, though he will recede to the background once Matthew Garth (Micky Kuhn as a boy; Montgomery Clift as a young man) enters the picture. And by confirming, via the recovered bracelet, Fen's death, it establishes Dunson's terrible misjudgment in leaving her behind.[4] That mistake will continue to haunt Dunson and be partially resolved, by proxy, when Garth forms a romantic attachment late in the film with Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), to whom the bracelet is finally passed.[5]

As with so much of Hawks, what impresses me particularly about the scene is how effortless the director makes it appear. Yet, a close analysis reveals just how well planned it was and how much effort was involved in its execution. Moreover, it's an action scene that tells us significant things about the characters while developing some of the film's main themes. It's certainly not action for action's sake.

NOTES
[1] Sharff defines "separation" as follows: "Shooting people in separate shots who are actually quite close together. A conversation may be filmed with one person looking right in MEDIUM SHOT and the other looking left in CLOSE-UP (probably after a TWO-SHOT establishing their nearness). A unique tool of cinema which can bring people in closer relation than if they were in the same shot." See Stefan Sharff, The Elements of Cinema: Toward a Theory of Cinesthetic Impact (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 180. Another term for the editing pattern Sharff describes is "shot–reverse shot," though that term is more appropriate in situations where the characters are actually facing each other, which isn't the case here.
[2] As it turns out, there is one survivor of the attack on the wagon train: Matthew Garth. He turns up in the next scene, wandering into Dunson and Groot's camp in a state of shock. The orphaned Matthew becomes, in effect, an adopted son to Dunson (and a replacement in his affections for Fen), with their relationship forming the centerpiece of the main narrative.
[3] John Belton has noted that ending scenes in close-up is characteristic of Hawks, who "tends to set historical patterns of inevitability in long shot against personal idiosyncrasies in close-up." For Hawks, the individuals who populate his films always take precedence over the larger backgrounds in which their actions unfold. See Belton, The Hollywood Professionals, vol. 3, Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar Ulmer (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1974), 42.
[4] Gerald Mast has written incisively about Dunson's error and its consequences in his chapter on Red River in Howard Hawks, Storyteller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Ironically, as dramatized in Scene 1, Dunson makes that mistake because he thinks Fen will be safer with the wagon train than she would be accompanying him to Texas. Against her protests, he assures her that he'll send for her later.
[5] I use the qualifier "partially" because the full resolution of the film's emotional tensions won't come until the movie's final scene when Dunson, who felt betrayed by Garth at a critical point in the cattle drive, confronts the younger man in a potentially lethal showdown that ends up as a comic fistfight. It is, finally, Tess Millay's intervention that forces the two men to acknowledge how much they actually love each other. Impressed by Tess's spunk, Dunson remarks, "You better marry that girl, Matt." The younger man agrees. Thus, for Matthew Garth, there will be a happy future with a loving woman—precisely the kind of future that Dunson was never able to enjoy because of his fateful decision to leave Fen behind with the wagon train.