The movie poster for Red River carries the tagline, “In 25 Years, Only Three! ‘The Covered Wagon’, ‘Cimarron’ and now Howard Hawks’ ‘Red River’.” What does it mean?
Hmm. I got nothin. *Cimarron *(1931) won Best Picture, but Covered Wagon (1923) predates the Oscars, and *Red River *(1948) wasn’t nominated. It was however included in the National Film Registry in 1990. Three different directors, three different stars; none of the writers or producers seem at first glance to overlap. The only bit of sense I can pull from the line is that the three movies do, indeed, span exactly 25 years.
I tried following the same lines of reasoning. The only commonality I could draw is that they’re all the same genre, and I’m pretty sure that there were more than three westerns between 1923 and 1948. (Actually, probably quite a few more than three, I reckon.)
Yeah, but, um, surely there were bigger epics? Even westerns? I mean top of my head, The Big Trail (1930) was just as big as Cimarron, and way bigger than Red River. Cimarron had a huge sequence of the Oklahoma Land Rush, but John Ford’s Three Bad Men (1926) had an equally impressive sequence on the same subject. So, yeah, pretty empty, even for hype.
